The undeniable miracle at Fatima

[Whateverist]

As for the claims the newspapers were anti religious you have yet to provide evidence of this . And we have evidence to the contrary that they were pro religious . The claim that people saw it remotely is debunked by the fact that none saw the actual event of the sun dancing . And people who were in the immediate area didn't see anything. And all mr wizard said.

To answer your question, I just skimmed through chapters 3 and 4 in "Meet the Witnesses", and the author explains that a Marxist group of revolutionaries had taken the country by force in 1910, so at the time of the miracle in 1917, they were in complete power and had control over the media. In the years that followed the miracle, there were 3 primary newspapers that continually made fun of the miracle. The revolutionaries publicly vowed to remove all religion from the country within 2 generations and there was much bloodshed in the years that followed the miracle. Yet the crowds continued to grow at the site of the miracle throughout the 1920s, once recorded at 400,000 in 1926. What wound up happening is, even some of the revolutionaries were convinced of the miracle, and it eventually led the whole revolution to fail.
 
The book also speaks of multiple atheists who came to make fun of the miracle and were immediate believers. The book also mentions that from what the author could gather, that the miracle was visible within 600 square miles. There is just too much to relating these short posts. I would suggest getting a copy of the book.

Cath-y has made me forget catholics can be evangelists too.  Did you by any chance go to catholic apologist school with a guy named Randy?

Pabst, why are you so sure there must be supernatural things or occurences?  How do you even define "supernatural".  After all no one directly witnesses anything supernatural.  All we can do is infer it.  It only comes up at all when our ability to explain a sequence of events in terms of known natural causes falls short.  But our failure to understand anything's natural causes can be the result of our own ignorance individually or that of the culture we live in.  So why jump to the conclusion that there are any categorical phenomenon which exist entirely apart from everything else we know that can never be resolved into a more comprehensive natural explanation?  The 'supernatural' can never be more than a wild hunch.  The more important question is why you've fallen prey to such a thing.

[Mister Agenda]

But there were whole bunches of people making the same claim, so they claim.  I mean, how you gonna go against the numbers???[/sarcasm]

Everyone reading this knows very well that if one person were to point you out as someone who robbed a bank, people may not believe it right away. But if a CROWD of people point you out as the culprit, your goose is cooked, plain and simple. The more testimonials, the heavier the weight of those testimonials. Let's not play dumb people!

So all I have to do to get away with robbing a bank is disguise myself as you, safe in the knowledge that all that is required to convict you is the testament of dozens of witnesses? Cool story, bro.

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You're missing the point! I'm not comparing the events. I'm simply saying that history is handed down to us from people who came before us. We didn't know those people, and we didn't see any the events with our own eyes, yet we generally accept what they hand down to us and it winds up in our history books. Atheists are hypocritical because they accept some history if it sounds good to them, and reject other history if it doesn't make them comfortable. It's absurdity, especially when thousands of people said it happened.

History doesn't actually work by accepting what is handed down. Historians work very hard to corroborate and verify recorded events as best they can; and if they don't stand up to scrutiny, they are considered uncertain or myth.

We got the story handed down about young George Washington and the cherry tree. Didn't happen. George throwing a coin across the Potomac. Didn't happen.

What is that you think historians do with their time?

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And I notice people love to try and say there were no photos taken at Fatima that day. Look again - there are photos online. You also need to keep in mind that not many people had cameras in 1917, and the ones that did certainly weren't walking around with them like they do today. For the few people  that brought cameras, taking photos of the actual sun during the height of the event when people were all screaming it was the end of the world and that they were going to die, was obviously not a priority. In 1917, taking photos is the last thing I'm concerned about if I'm truly thinking I'm seconds from death.

You know who had cameras? Astronomers studying the sun.

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Can you predict an event months ahead of time to exact location and time of day?

On August 21st, I'll be able to see a solar eclipse begin at 1:13:07 PM, Eastern Standard Time.

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While you are all still scratching your heads about the miracle of Fatima, don't forget to look up another event that started similarly in Lourdes, France.

The only thing we're still scratching our heads over is your gullibility.

[Whateverist]

Yep, I'm counting on the very same prediction to view the solar eclipse near Greenville, S.C.

[Mister Agenda]

As for the existence of the supernatural, that's a no-brainer. Go tag along with a paranormal investigator a few times and you will become a believer VERY quickly. It will scare the living daylights out of you. I personally know many people have been involved and it is NO joke. If you think I'm kidding, call one up and ask if you can go along. Seriously.

My experience is that they are largely buffoons entertaining and scaring themselves and each other until they are ready to jump at any noise or shadow. It turns out that many things that alarm so-called paranormal investigators turn out to be quite mundane when you walk right up to them and examine them closely with a flashlight.

The most startling thing I've seen was a vase levitating in midair. The members of the local paranormal investigation group I was accompanying were practically shitting themselves and ready to get the hell out of there (though one had the nerve to take a snapshot). I walked up to it, and it turned out to be on a thin free-standing shelf the same color as the wall. If I hadn't, no doubt the story of the floating vase would be
circulating, complete with a photo that superficially appeared to support it.

There's a reason why paranormal investigation outfits usually only have one skeptic, at most...for flavor and to give them credibility. The few skeptical ones basically go around and show people that their houses aren't actually haunted.

Sometimes things happen that we can't explain or figure out the cause for. You don't always find out what went bump in the night. But that doesn't mean it was a ghost and couldn't possibly have been a raccoon.

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Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It was worth a good yawn. Now what?

You obviously didn't give it long enough. You are not going to come across big cases on every call. Have them call you when they come across a big case. I personally knew a priest for 25 years where people from all over the country and even in other countries would BEG him to come and help them with paranormal related problems in their homes. These people were desperate and tried everything to get rid of the problems and no one could help them. This priest was world-famous for being one of the few that could actually help these people. Catholic prayers were the cure - proof of the supernatural. Watch episodes of, "A Haunting" - he is portrayed in many of the episodes. That show is the real deal.

It only takes one trip with pseudoscientific investigators to realize that you're among people determined to be fooled.

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Picture a stadium full of 70,000 people. Can you think of a way that you could freak all of them out at once and make them think it's the end of the world? I can't.

Any competent stage magician could.

[Astonished]

Why the fuck don't people understand that, okay, fine, what if what you experienced was, for a fact, supernatural? Why should anyone believe what you experienced without any ability to prove it? Why not, instead of wasting others' time and making yourself look like a jackass, spend every waking moment trying to study whatever phenomenon you experienced in an effort to prove it and show others definitively that your claims are legit? Oh, right, because that requires both effort and thought.

[Pat Mustard]

Mr.wizard



It doesn't matter if an incident occurred that no human being could do, that doesn't mean god did it. "God did it" is not an answer, you haven't even established it as a possibility until you can establish that this god actually exists.  You also must establish the fact that an incident occurred, which in the case of the sun moving around sky you have not done. You keep wanting to use that 70,000 person figure as your evidence, but you ignore the fact that the same sun was visible to millions of people who didn't see anything.

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Man, I really butchered that reply, it was directed at PABSTA.

Can you predict an event months ahead of time to exact location and time of day? Of course not. If someone does, the supernatural must be involved. As for the incident actually occurring, I've already posted the text from the newspapers the following day. They were in no hurry to print those articles because they were both known to be anti-religious newspapers. And I already gave samples of testimonials of people who saw the event remotely.

Since you can't prove that the supernatural exists I don't see how you can make the claim that its necessary for anything. 

Why do you put so much stock in the testimonials from the people who said they saw it, you do realize that you wouldn't actually have to be in that town to witness the sun move, right? If you realize that, then you must recognize that there is a far greater number of people who didn't see the sun move, why are they discounted? Your also not only ignoring everyone who didn't see the sun move on that day, your also ignoring the science and what we know about the sun and the earth's orbit.
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I give you credit, Mr. Wizard, for coming up with some good and logical questions throughout this discussion - better than most others I have seen on here. You must realize that the author of the book, "Meet the Witnesses", when gathering data for his book, placed an ad in the newspapers around Fatima to gather his testimonials, and he also contacted people in the US who immigrated since. If he spoke with people in other countries and they said they didn't see anything, that doesn't mean that the incident didn't happen either. I am not claiming the sun ACTUALLY spun, or ACTUALLY hurled toward the Earth, I'm simply pointing out that that was what the people thought when you read their testimonials. SOMETHING happened without a doubt, and that was the best way they could describe it.

As for the existence of the supernatural, that's a no-brainer. Go tag along with a paranormal investigator a few times and you will become a believer VERY quickly. It will scare the living daylights out of you. I personally know many people have been involved and it is NO joke. If you think I'm kidding, call one up and ask if you can go along. Seriously.
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Google Derek Acorah some day. He's done a one man demolition of "paranormal" investigations scams (as one of the scammers he managed it without meaning to).

[Alex K]

Why the fuck don't people understand that, okay, fine, what if what you experienced was, for a fact, supernatural? Why should anyone believe what you experienced without any ability to prove it? Why not, instead of wasting others' time and making yourself look like a jackass, spend every waking moment trying to study whatever phenomenon you experienced in an effort to prove it and show others definitively that your claims are legit? Oh, right, because that requires both effort and thought.

Yup, it's always "It's a miracle, I can feel it. Now you disprove it..."

[Cyberman]

Derek Acorah? As in Most Haunted?





Kreed Kafer

Has he gone straight now?

[Astreja]

Looks like Mister Agenda, Whateverist and I all concur on the prediction for August 21. Saros cycle > Fatima BS.

[Joods]

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Probably not. Both Huggy and Dripshit have been smart enough to stay out of this shit and we're 25 pages in already.

You're undeservedly giving them the benefit of the doubt...

Yeah well I try not to be an asshole all of the time.