The undeniable miracle at Fatima

[Minimalist]

Right.

In The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary Kevin McClure wrote that the crowd at Cova da Iria may have been expecting to see signs in the sun, since similar phenomena had been reported in the weeks leading up to the miracle. On this basis, he believes that the crowd saw what it wanted to see. McClure also stated that he had never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts of a case in any of the research that he had done in the previous ten years.[10]

According to theologian Lisa J. Schwebel, claims of the miracle present a number of difficulties. Schwebel states, "not only did not all those present not see the phenomenon, but also there are considerable inconsistencies among witnesses as to what they did see". Schwebel also observes that there is no authentic photo of the solar phenomena claimed, "despite the presence of hundreds of reporters and photographers at the field" and one photo often presented as authentic is actually "a solar eclipse in another part of the world taken sometime before 1917"

[ohreally]

Here is the modern version.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0_ysUivxE

You can read the comments and see people talk about the sun dancing.    LOL.   Forget about optical illusion or some natural weather phenomenon, people are wishing it to be true and saying it out loud and not even seeing anything.

[Catholic_Lady]

It was a visionary thing caused by a supernatural phenomenon - a miracle. Not caused by optical illusion or mental illness/delusion.

A visionary thing that caused puddles and wet clothes to dry? What is this, Superman's heat vision?

A visionary miracle, which miraculously, also caused clothes and puddles to dry... as was told by thousands of witnesses.

[Mister Agenda]

As someone who doesn't appear to believe in the incorruptibles, and given this phenomenon only occurs with devout Catholics, the question you should be asking yourself is how even a single incorrupt body could exist.

The phenomenon certainly is NOT confined to Catholics. There are obvious natural explanations, including secret mummification, which the RCC has been known to do; and climate and soil conditions.

It completely defies science no matter who's incorrupt body we are speaking about. They are on display all over Europe for you to go see. I am not the one having a problem understanding and believing in them, so it is up to you to go and see them. Next time you schedule a vacation, make it in Europe so you can go see them.

There are hundreds of naturally well-preserved human corpses in the world, if not thousands. Scientists seem not to have gotten the memo that they defy science at all, let alone completely.

As for differentiating between ordinary and extraordinary claims, that is relative. Atheists seem to categorize many things as extraordinary that others wouldn't. Again, let's assume for the moment that the sun never bobbed up and down in the sky. The question then becomes, why did thousands of people submit testimonies saying they think it did?

You've ignored numerous posts that address that question. Maybe you should pay more attention.

So if the body of a heretic or atheist were found to not decompose as expected, would that be a miracle, too?

Yes, that would be a miracle too. But given this phenomena only happens to devout Catholics, you need to ask yourself why. Not a single person in this forum has an answer to that and that's as much.

First of all, there are plenty of naturally well-preserved bodies of people who were never Catholic, so you seem to have pulled that factoid straight out of your ass. So no need to ask myself why, because that's not true. There are natural conditions that preserve bodies, you have to show none of them apply before you can reasonably even start claiming that something unusual is occurring.

---

I have to admit, this was a pretty funny analogy you came up with. But what people in this forum are doing is taking the situation a step further. Because you don't believe something extraordinary happened with the sun, you therefore to logically conclude that NOTHING happened at all. That's like saying in my baseball analogy that because you don't believe the batter took a swipe at the pitcher that therefore the whole game never took place.

I have pointed out before that it is not the position of anyone who has replied to you that nothing extraordinary happened. The extraordinary thing that happened was thousands of people perceiving the sun moving in an unusual fashion. It was a phenomenon confined to a particular part of the world, while the sun itself is not a localized phenomenon. Therefore there was something going on with the perception of the people on or near the site. At best for your miracle, they were having a God-induced vision; but it's likely that there were unusual atmospheric conditions, some people looked at the sun too long, and some people exaggerated or later misremembered. All things that are known to happen.

Our position is NOTHING like claiming the whole game never took place. It's like claiming the ball didn't wind up on the moon.

The fact remains that SOMETHING dried everyone's clothes within minutes and made them think they were going to die.

Heat and very low humidity can have that effect.

Thousands of people that don't know each other, both at the site and miles away, have no reason to lie about those facts. If you think they were wrong about the sun, fine, but saying therefore NOTHING happened at all is totally retarded.

You're the only one saying that anyone is saying that NOTHING happened at all. Why do you keep doing that? A natural explanation is not NOTHING.

And there are some very amusing books on mass hysteria that I can recommend. There's a reason there's a term for it.

---

Given the posts in this thread, why do you find it so difficult to accept as a natural phenomenon?

The skeptical consensus can be roughly summarized as: There was a local atmospheric phenomenon (haziness that encouraged people to look at the sun, maybe a sun dog, and it was a very hot day) that caused some people to perceive the sun as 'moving around' when it actually wasn't. The effects of staring at the sun too long combined with this to cause more people to perceive the sun as 'moving around'. Combined with 'miracle fever', this sounds pretty plausible to me, and explains discrepancies like why astronomers didn't notice the sun moving, why the sun moving wasn't a disaster, and why some people present did not see the sun move. Why does it sound implausible to you?

Again, there is no way the atmospheric phenomenon was predicted in the early 1900, months ahead of time, and to the hour.

That's true. No atmospheric phenomenon was predicted. Only that something miraculous would occur. So you had thousands of people show up looking for a miracle.

Thinking the government was not only able to predict this, but that they told the kids to tell this elaborate lie in a crazy conspiracy doesnt make much sense.

I'm not familiar with the conspiracy theory to which you are referring. I certainly didn't refer to such a thing in the post you're responding to.

Also, they were not staring at the sun for too long.

How could you possibly know that?

It was rainy and cloudy up until the time of the miracle. The sun started acting up pretty much right when it appeared.

How long do you think you have to look at the sun before your eyes begin to move involuntarily to save your retinas?

To your last point, the sun didn't actually physically move around in space.

No kidding. Now convince pabsta. He thinks the sun swooped so close it dried everyone's clothes off miraculously fast.

The miracle was the vision of it moving to the people who were lucky enough to be blessed with such gift as to witness a miracle. Like an apparition, where only the kids themselves were able to see the Virgin Mary, though thousands of people were there.

Either that or a combination of atmospheric conditions, looking at the sun, motivated belief, and/or mass hallucination; though frankly, any one of those could account for it.

---

I don't see how that makes much sense either. If it was merely a complete delusion and not real at all in any sort of way, then it is quite a coincidence that tens of thousands of people had the same delusion at the same time. I don't see how that is realistic.

There's quite a body of work on mass delusions and mass hallucinations. Maybe you should check it out.

---

That sundogs and pareidolia would both be present at the same time, which happens to be the exact time that a miracle was predicted months before hand... and to be seen by thousands of people...? Just seems a little too perfect to be likely. 

Pareidolia is a brain glitch that's ready to go all the time. It requires no coincidence to see patterns you're looking for. And right after a rainstorm is an ideal time to spot atmospheric optical phenomena. Would you think it was too much of a coincidence if there had seen a rainbow instead? Did you know that often haloes and sun dogs often go unnoticed because they appear to be close to the sun and people usually don't look at the sun too closely?

Before you're astounded at the odds of something happening by coincidence, don't you need to know what the odds are? The only study of the frequency of sun dogs and haloes that I'm familiar with found them on 21 days in March 2015 in San Francisco.

It also doesn't explain the instant drying of people's wet clothes and puddles.

Neither does a vision. But a sudden drop in humidity and rise in temperature would be a pretty solid explanation.

[Cyberman]

A visionary thing that caused puddles and wet clothes to dry? What is this, Superman's heat vision?

A visionary miracle, which miraculously, also caused clothes and puddles to dry... as was told by thousands of witnesses.

So there was a physical component to the supposed event?

[Catholic_Lady]

Imagine this scenario. A psychic comes up to me and says "Three days from now your cousin who lives in Alabama and who's name starts with a letter B will be struck by lightening at 3pm." And exactly 3 days later I hear that my cousin Bob from Alabama got stuck by lightening at 3pm. There are 2 possibilities: this was some sort of insane coincidence, or the person who gave me this info is exactly what they claim to be. I don't believe in psychics, but if that happened to me, I think it would be more likely that this person actually does have some sort of supernatural ability to see into the future, than for something like that to have been a complete coincidence.

This works the same way for me. I find it more unlikely that this sun thing was all a string of lucky coincidences and multiple crazy chance events that lined up perfectly, than for it to have been a supernatural phenomenon.

The fact that you broke down and separated literally every sentence I wrote, kind of defeats the whole point I'm making. The whole point is that all those things are applied together. It's the combination of all of those factors that would have made this a crazy, far fetched, freak of nature, impossible coincidence... if it was merely a coincidence.

Thousands of people gathered to see if a miracle would occur, having no idea what it would be or that it would have anything to do with the sun. The miracle was predicted to the hour, months in advance. To me, it sounds like a huge coincidence that on the same day, at the same time which was predicted months before, tens of thousands of people saw the sun moving, and had their clothes dried in seconds.

As an isolated incident where a few people out of nowhere said they saw the sun moving, I would believe the sundog theory. Or that those people were just tired. Or that they just happened to have the same hallucination at the same time. But it's not an isolated incident. It was predicted to the hour. There were thousands of witnesses. Soaking clothes and puddles dried up in seconds.

You can say these were all a string of coincidences, if that sounds more likely to you. To me, that sounds more unlikely than the claim itself.

[ohreally]

You can say these were all a string of coincidences, if that sounds more likely to you. To me, that sounds more unlikely than the claim itself.

I can't speak for everyone but I'm not saying there was a string of coincidences.  Watch the video I posted, people are already convinced at what is going to happen and you can't tell them otherwise.

[Minimalist]

A visionary thing that caused puddles and wet clothes to dry? What is this, Superman's heat vision?

A visionary miracle, which miraculously, also caused clothes and puddles to dry... as was told by thousands of witnesses.

Much as with "paul's" 500 witness crap, where are these people?  I would like to cross-examine them.

I don't believe anything because some guy wearing a dress says so.

[Jehanne]

Maybe I missed this thread, but the so-called "miracle" was LATE, by 20 minutes or so!  It had been raining all morning, and around 1:30 local time, people started getting antsy.  Lucia, seeing the clouds starting to clear, started screaming, "Look at the Sun, look at the Sun!!!"  The crowd complied, and they saw what they wanted to see; HOWEVER, some individuals there, believers included, disavowed any supernatural occurrences of any kind!!

[Minimalist]

Ssshhhh..... you'll ruin their fucking "miracle."