The undeniable miracle at Fatima

[Nay_Sayer]

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.

Again I agree but have to stress the entire story was stolen and continue to ask where are my Kudos.

[Cecelia]

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. 

It's more like this:

A psychic tells you that you and your three friends will meet the loves of your life in 3 days.  Then the psychic introduces you to a man who she says is the love of your life.  Based on the psychic's say alone you decide to marry the man and believe he is truly the man of your dreams.  One of your friends does the same.  But then the third friend doesn't, and refuses to believe the psychic is really psychic.  Then you and your other friend tell her that she just refuses to see it!  Even when the man the psychic introduces is clearly a dirtbag.

[bennyboy]

So tens of thousands of people coming from all different parts of the country collaborated to fabricate this lie about seeing a moving sun, all before cell phones and the internet existed?

Hang on, sister. Do we have tens of thousands of testimonials? What is the actual evidence that we DO have?

I'll tell you what I've found-- pictures of assorted villagers pointing at the sky, and no pictures of what was supposedly IN the sky. What's up with that?

[Joods]

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

Shit....

100% of the people in opposition to the OP, who have replied in this thread, have ruined that fucking "miracle" 

lmao.

[Astonished]

You know what's really fucking neat about science? You can test a claim by repeating an experiment and producing the same results. So when we say throwing a lump of metallic Sodium into a glass of water will make it go 'boom', we can show that to anyone, over and over, and it'll happen the same way every damn time. You know what's really fucking disappointing and stupid about gods? Anything they are purported to do is only witnessed by one person or a small, isolated group, and anything that happens is so vague it seems more like a gross misunderstanding, hallucination, or scam, and hardly worth the time and effort of an all-powerful deity to be fucking around with anyway.

[Pat Mustard]

Seems like more lies than coincidences.  Once you dismiss the church's tale there isn't much there.

So tens of thousands of people coming from all different parts of the country collaborated to fabricate this lie about seeing a moving sun, all before cell phones and the internet existed?

No we are discounting the word of a couple of thousand people stupid enough to look directly at the sun for minutes on end. Fact, the majority of the c 30,000 people at Fatima saw nothing unusual that day, because they knew well enough not to look directly at the sun. Fact looking directly at the sun will cause your pupils to take a number of actions to defend themselves inlcuding watering, rapid blinking, rapid changes to the size of the iris and rapid movement of the eye. All these will make it seem like the sun is dancing in the sky (and then you've got the after images). Fact the accounts of the sun moving differ and are contradictory, you cannot at the same time have one person saying the sun dancing and another saying it moving from side to side at the same time without at least one being wrong. And final fact, in more recent similar miracles it's been found that people reporting similar solar movements suffer retinal damage consistent with staring at the sun too long.

So instead of an undeniable miraclre we've got an undeniable bunch of idiots blinding themselves. Which destroys the single girl's word over whether she ever saw a fictional dead woman.

[Harry Nevis]

Seems like more lies than coincidences.  Once you dismiss the church's tale there isn't much there.

So tens of thousands of people coming from all different parts of the country collaborated to fabricate this lie about seeing a moving sun, all before cell phones and the internet existed?

---

They all came expecting to see a miracle.  Mass delusion.

[Losty]

---

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
 

This thread is really long now, so I'm sure someone already said it, but it sounds like bollocks to me.

[Harry Nevis]

---

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
 

This thread is really long now, so I'm sure someone already said it, but it sounds like bollocks to me.

Didn't some witnesses testify that they saw what could have been "noodly appendages" coming from the sun?  Hmmm.

Moderator Notice
fixed quote and deleted multiple

[Astonished]

So tens of thousands of people coming from all different parts of the country collaborated to fabricate this lie about seeing a moving sun, all before cell phones and the internet existed?

No we are discounting the word of a couple of thousand people stupid enough to look directly at the sun for minutes on end. Fact, the majority of the c 30,000 people at Fatima saw nothing unusual that day, because they knew well enough not to look directly at the sun. Fact looking directly at the sun will cause your pupils to take a number of actions to defend themselves inlcuding watering, rapid blinking, rapid changes to the size of the iris and rapid movement of the eye. All these will make it seem like the sun is dancing in the sky (and then you've got the after images). Fact the accounts of the sun moving differ and are contradictory, you cannot at the same time have one person saying the sun dancing and another saying it moving from side to side at the same time without at least one being wrong. And final fact, in more recent similar miracles it's been found that people reporting similar solar movements suffer retinal damage consistent with staring at the sun too long.

So instead of an undeniable miraclre we've got an undeniable bunch of idiots blinding themselves. Which destroys the single girl's word over whether she ever saw a fictional dead woman.