Apparitions from heaven???

[pocaracas]

[Jehanne]

[abaris]

If that's the one with Jack Nicholson (the haunting I mean) I loved that film.

No, it's not. Are you by any chance refering to Kubrick's adaptation of "The Shining"?

[GrandizerII]

Let me change tack for a moment. Let's just say that it was proved conclusively that this trult happened the way it's said to have. Let's say that either the Sun, or something that witnesses believed to have been the Sun, really did perform in that peculiarly eccentric way. No doubt at all for its being an actual historical event.

There's still a yawning abyss a thousand miles wide between that as an unexplained phenomenon and 'therefore a miracle from God'. How does the one possibly convince anyone of the other?

Was this ever answered? This is a great point as well.

[GrandizerII]

Well apparently those people who didn't see anything weren't devout enough.

I don't think so. 

Most people there, numbered in the tens of thousands, saw the zig zagging sun movements across the sky. But some didn't. Plenty of the ones who didn't were Catholic (as has been linked here already), and plenty of the ones who did were skeptic. 

That's the thing with miracles. We don't understand why God grants this gift to some but not to others.

Even if they were "skeptic", that doesn't make them immune to cognitive delusions. It's not always about whether you believe at first or not. It's more about how you are cognitively conditioned/wired.

[GrandizerII]

It happened at the same time because didn't one of the children yell out to look at the sun?  They likely all stood there staring at the sun wondering what they were supposed to see when it started affecting their eyes.  And as soon as a few people started saying that the sun was dancing in the sky, other people hoping for a miracle likely would have convinced themselves that they were seeing the same thing.  Because that's how mass hysteria works.

The reason nobody who saw it questioned it as merely a hallucination or optical effect is likely due to the fact that most people there were very religious and superstitious.  If you're very religious and superstitious and in a crowd where thousands of people start claiming they are witnessing a miracle, you're likely not going to pipe up and tell them they're just hallucinating.  It's hard enough to convince gullible Christians that Jesus really didn't appear on a slice of toast and what they're seeing is pareidolia.

I dunno... there were 100,000 people there. I doubt they all heard a little girl say "look at the sun". Also, what about the dry clothes and dried puddles?

I'm going through your points bit by bit, but ok, let's discuss the dry clothes and dried puddles. How many people talked about such phenomena, and how do you know they didn't exactly exaggerate in their stories?

Also, what makes these remarkable phenomena? There was the Sun high up in the sky sending out heat, right?

[GrandizerII]

How do you explain the many people that were there, that did not see a thing?

Some of them were believers.

That's the thing about miracles. God does not grant everyone the gift of witnessing them.

You can say the same thing about advanced extra-terrestrial aliens. Some people don't get to witness aliens because these aliens haven't granted them the gift of witnessing them.

[Catholic_Lady]

Yeah it happened in the 1940's.

What's your favorite scary movie or book?

I know you're not asking me but I'll butt in a recommendation anyway H.P. Lovecraft. If you look it up on amazon you can get the complete collection of 62 stories in one, cheap volume (on kindle). They're all short stories, so they make for good toilet reading , and some of them are very creepy. One of those stories is The Call of Cthulhu... so by reading that you get to learn the back story of our resident Mafia overlord but there are also plenty of other stories on a wide range of themes, but all of the horror genre.

LOL that's awesome. I may have to look into that as now I am curious.

[Catholic_Lady]

Anything bathroom humor to me is hilarious, though I don't fart.

An old lady visited her doctor for help with a problem.
"Doctor, I don't know what's wrong, but I fart all the time. It's weird because they are silent and odorless, but they keep coming out. In fact, I've farted about 6 times just sitting here. What can I do?"

The doctor replied, "Here, take one of these pills every morning and then come see me in a week."

A week later, the old lady came back to the doctor and she was upset. "Doctor, those pills didn't help - they made it worse! I'm still farting, but now they stink something fierce!"

The doctor replied, "Calm down, ma'am. Now that we've cleared your sinuses, we can work on your hearing."

Bahahahaha. Nice!

[Catholic_Lady]

Anything bathroom humor to me is hilarious, though I don't fart.

To me too... that's why I love Bottom (Rik Mayall et al) cos that's the ultimate in toilet humour "you're not supposed to be in there, it's out of order" "not as out of order as me mate" [long fart sound followed by a closing phut] And I can hardly get through the scene in Austin powers where he's in the toilet cubicle... "come on, we're gonna get through this"... for the tears of laughter

But seriously, never? I find it hard to believe it when anyone says that because it's just a natural bodily function, along with burping, which sometimes just has to happen. Sure you can be polite about it... let it out gently and silently, but it still has to come out

Girls don't fart, mate. Farting is unattractive.