The undeniable miracle at Fatima

[Thumpalumpacus]

The only miracle about Fatima is that so many people nowadays believed it to have happened.

[Mr.wizard]

I'm convinced that the only reason that this story has been able to maintain any traction among believers is because it has a number attached to it.

[pabsta]

You lost me at 3 young children. You know the kind of shit I would say when I was little, especially if I thought it would make my parents happy with me? I had imaginary dogs with their own stories, who lived and died, and once gave such an impassioned speech to the church congregation after their "deaths" that some people actually believed they were real, and prayed for them. If three children think they'll get attention by saying they were visited by an angel with a message, they'd jump on that instantly.

If you read the account of the story, the children were ages 7-10 and were abducted by the police and put in jail, and told they would never see their parents again, and that they would be boiled in hot oil if they didn't say their story was false. All 3 of the children held to their story, even under such pressures. If they were just looking for attention the very first thing they would have done in such a situation would be to fess up. They didn't.

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Look, I found this picture on the internet of the sun dancing at Fatima. It came from the catholics.



It's just got to be true. All praise be to god.

 
That is a photo created for the movie, "The 13th Day". It is not an actual photo of the miracle in 1917.

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I read the news report in Portuguese. The one that came out three next day. Written by a reporter that was present at the site.
He didn't see anything... Except a few idiots claiming they were seeing the sun wobbling.
A few is most definitely not thousands.

And it is common practice, among any assembly of people where differing opinions are to be expected, to have a few agents spread out to incite a particular message on the silent majority, thus making it look like most people share that message.
Testimonies from the 60's come more than 40 years too late to be anything more than anecdotes.

 
Isn't it funny that all the testimonies gathered in 1960 from people all over the world but didn't know each other, all coincided and said the same thing?
 
By the way, after the miracle in 1917, it took the Catholic Church 13 years and thousands of pages of testimonials to investigate the matter. If they were out to just scam the world to somehow draw attention or make a profit, they wouldn't have spent so long looking into it. In the end, in 1930, the Catholic Church made an official pronouncement approving of the authenticity of the miracle.

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First of all, not all events in this world leave behind physical evidence. If I shined a bright light in your face yesterday, there is no physical evidence of it today.

Yup but you could shine it again on my face that same day . Can you get god to move the sun and have it not throw the structure of the solar system into chaos that same da.y I think not so the comparison is trivial .

 
Well thousands of people gave testimony that it appeared the sun moved in the sky, and that their clothes and the ground were suddenly instantly dried afterward. Obviously no human can make the sun move, or even pull off a trick to make it appear to move. Since this happened at an exact location and time predicted months beforehand, this is not just a random flareup of the sun. If there is a God capable of such an event, then He is certainly also capable from keeping the solar system from going into chaos.

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Even if you could prove that the sun moved, what evidence would you have that there is a god and he is the one moving it? Also if you are a person who believes that this actually happened and that it was god, don't you have to ask yourself why? Why would god choose to move the sun for a group of people instead of performing a useful miracle, like ending disease, ending evil, ending poverty, or feeding the hungry?

 
Of course, every rational human being asks themselves the questions you mentioned. I don't know if anyone will ever be able to answer those questions because only God could know the answers. But these questions don't take away from the fact that an incident certainly occurred that was beyond what any human being could do.

[Chad32]

If you read the account of the story, the children were ages 7-10 and were abducted by the police and put in jail, and told they would never see their parents again, and that they would be boiled in hot oil if they didn't say their story was false. All 3 of the children held to their story, even under such pressures. If they were just looking for attention the very first thing they would have done in such a situation would be to fess up. They didn't.

You got a citation for that? I mean I've read Fucking Cops, so I know they can be psychotic bastards, but I still feel this is a bit outlandish.

[pabsta]

Someone should have told Dominic Reis not to stare at the sun because it creates optical effects not optimal for walking around afterwards. With the upcoming eclipse this lesson is of major importance. I was arguing on another forum with this gullible fool and halfheartedly told him about sunlights effect on the retina and optic nerve. He actually went outside and stared at the sun. He had to admit the sun did swirl and dance around. He continued his argument unthwarted by his own experience by claiming his visual effects did not match the Fatima accounts.

 
You obviously haven't read a single testimonial that has been posted. All the testimonials agree that everyone could look straight at the sun during the miracle without it hurting their eyes. Some compared it to looking at an eclipse. No one can explain that either. Read the testimonials posted earlier.

[Amarok]

Keep telling yourself that. Your claim to undeniable has been denied and successfully wiether you do the honest thing and accept it is up to you.

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If you read the account of the story, the children were ages 7-10 and were abducted by the police and put in jail, and told they would never see their parents again, and that they would be boiled in hot oil if they didn't say their story was false. All 3 of the children held to their story, even under such pressures. If they were just looking for attention the very first thing they would have done in such a situation would be to fess up. They didn't.

You got a citation for that? I mean I've read Fucking Cops, so I know they can be psychotic bastards, but I still feel this is a bit outlandish.

Children can be unbelievably stubborn even in the face with retribution . Assuming the children even believed the threat .Children are inexperienced not stupid .

[pabsta]

Undeniable?

Nope.  Definitely denied.

Three kids sharing a story and then mass delusion?

Hardly undeniable.

 
Here are some testimonials from people who saw the miracle from miles away. That rules out mass delusion or mass hysteria.


Father Joaquim Lourenço, Canon lawyer of the Diocese of Leiria, who saw the miracle from a distance of nine miles. Father Lourenço was a school boy then, and was with his brother and some other children in the village of Alburitel.
 
“I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zigzag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment. It was a crowd which had gathered outside our local village school and we had all left classes and run into the streets because of the cries and surprised shouts of men and women who were in the street in front of the school when the miracle began. There was an unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the ‘simpletons’ who had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up his arms, fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to God. But meanwhile the people continued to cry out and to weep, asking God to pardon their sins. We all ran to the two chapels in the village, which were soon filled to over flowing. During those long moments of the solar prodigy, objects around us turned all colors of the rainbow... When the people realized that the danger was over, there was an explosion of joy.”
 
 
Deposition of Mr. Albano Barros, a successful building contractor who was a child of 12 years in a village near Minde, about eight miles from Fatima:
 
“I was watching sheep, as was my daily task, and suddenly there, in the direction of Fatima, I saw the sun fall from the sky. I thought it was the end of the world.”
We asked if he remembers that it had been raining and whether afterward his clothes were dry.
“I was so distracted that I remember nothing but the falling sun. I cannot even remember whether I took the sheep home, whether I ran, or what I did.”
 
 
Mrs. Guilhermina Lopes da Silva was living in Leiria, sixteen miles from the place where the miracle occurred. Mrs. da Silva had seen the crowds passing through Leiria in great numbers. She wanted very much to join them going to Fatima to see whether the miracle predicted by the children would happen.
 
“But I could not go because my husband was an unbeliever. I was looking toward the mountain at noon when suddenly I saw a great red flash in the sky. I called two men who were working for us. They, of course, saw it, too. One of my relatives, Mr. Louis Lopes from Arrabalde de Santa Margarida, went to Fatima and told us afterward that although he had taken every precaution to avoid the rain (because he suffered from bronchitis) he was soaked through from his feet to his waist. But as the sun came down from the sky he noticed, to his astonishment, that he was completely dry. And my former neighbor, Dona Nazare Pinheiro, when she came back from Fatima that day, told me that when she had seen the sun coming down like a spinning wheel, she was so frightened that she fell to her knees reciting the Act of Contrition, believing it to be indeed the end of the world.”

[Amarok]

Not to mention the lynching they would allegedly suffer at the hands or religious fanatics if the admitted it was a lie. So pressure goes both ways.

It was popularly believed that if the miracle failed to happen the children would be lynched (page 54, What Happened at Fatima?) so there was pressure on people to claim that they saw something.

[Ravenshire]

Just curious what atheists think of the miracle at Fatima in 1917? A quick summary of the facts:
 

• 3 young children claimed a "lady from heaven" appeared out of nowhere in a remote field in Portugal where they were watching their animals, and the lady gave them a Catholic related message to relay to the people where they lived. This lady also told the children to meet her in this same location on the 13th of the month for the next 5 months at the same time where she would tell them more. Of course no one believed the children when they returned home with this news, and it caused a massive stir in their town.
  
• The 3 children returned the following month, and many curious people came along with them. The children again claimed to see and speak with this "lady from heaven", but other bystanders could not see her. Since no one would believe the children, the lady told the children she would perform a miracle on her last visit (Oct 13, 1917) so as "to make the people believe".
  
• The children returned home, and publicly predicted a miracle would occur on Oct 13, 1917 at 12 noon at the exact location in the field. This was months beforehand.
  
• Massive crowds began to gather in the field as the days and weeks passed and this angered the government. The children were put in prison and threatened with death if they did not say this was all a lie. Despite the children being only ages 7 through 10, and being taken from their parents and threatened with death, they still insisted their story was true. They were later released.
  
• On Oct 13, 1917, people from all over Western Europe traveled to the field in Fatima, Portugal to see if they could catch a glimpse of this predicted miracle. The rain was so heavy that day that the ground became flooded and muddy, forcing people to abandon their carriages and travel the rest of the way on foot. Despite the bad weather, 70,000 people still showed up.
  
• As high noon arrived, the pouring rain suddenly stopped and the sun appeared. Suddenly the sun began to move and spin in the sky, casting all colors of the rainbow on the people. At first people were amazed, but then suddenly the sun appeared to hurl toward them such that most people thought they were going to die and began pleading for their lives. Testimonials state that the heat was intense and most people thought it was the end of the world. The sun then returned to its normal place.
  
• According to testimonials, the incident lasted a full 10 minutes so there was no confusion that it happened, and there were many testimonials from people miles away who saw it as well. Most significant of all is the fact that all unanimously agreed that though they were all soaked to the bone from the pouring rain, their clothes and the ground were instantly dried after the incident!
  
• The incident was in the newspapers the following day (available online), and multiple movies have been made over the years regarding the miracle, the most recent being "The 13th Day". A book of testimonials was also published called, "Meet the Witnesses" of which I have a copy here on my bookshelf. I can post many of those testimonials separately.
  
• As I see it, some of the most significant facts that make this incident undeniable is 1) The 3 children's prediction of the miracle months beforehand to the exact place and time - that place and time given to them by this "lady from heaven". And 2) the instantaneous drying of the clothing of all the bystanders within minutes - impossible when you consider how long it would take to dry drenched clothing in a standard clothes dryer.
  

 
I'm curious what atheists think of this incident. Thanks
 

A simple search of the forums would have saved you the time of writing all that out (or, copypasta?) and saved us from spelling out, yet again, how it's all bullshit.

[The Valkyrie]

"Testimonials".

There we come to the crux of the issue.

Testimonials are only evidence to those who are willing to accept the claims of others as evidence.

There are many things that could have caused so many people to "see" what they claimed to have "seen". They've all been explored in earlier responses and it won't do any good to repeat them all here.

One has to wonder why a deity would arrange such "miracles" in an isolated location instead of somewhere more important, such as Rome or another major city?

People can be easily stirred up to believe anything while in a religious fervour. We see it all over the world in many religions.

Claims are not proof. And I'm not inclined to believe claims.