Let me begin with a confession: I honestly don’t know what to make of the “miracle of the sun” that occurred in Fatima, Portugal, on October 13, 1917, and that was witnessed by a crowd of 70,000 people (although a few people in the crowd saw nothing) and also by people who were more than 10 kilometers away from Fatima at the time, as well as by sailors on a British ship off the coast of Portugal. On the other hand, no astronomical observatory recorded anything unusual at the time.
Rather than endorsing a particular point of view, I have decided to lay the facts before my readers, and let them draw their own conclusions.
Here are some good links, to get you started.
Neutral accounts of the visions and the “solar miracle” at Fatima:
Our Lady of Fatima (Wikipedia article: describes the visions leading up to the solar miracle). Generally balanced.
Miracle of the Sun (Wikipedia article). Discusses critical explanations of the miracle, and points out that people both in Fatima and the nearby town of Alburitel were expecting some kind of solar phenomenon to occur on October 13, 1917: some had even brought along special viewing glasses. Also, the solar miracle on October 13 was preceded by some bizarre celestial phenomena witnessed by bystanders at the preceding vision on September 13, including “a dimming of the sun to the point where the stars could be seen, and a rain resembling iridescent petals or snowflakes that disappeared before touching the ground.” In short: the “solar miracle” of October 13, 1917 didn’t come entirely as a bolt from the blue.
The Fatima Prophecies by Stephen Wagner, Paranormal Phenomena Expert. Updated April 10, 2016.
Catholic, pro-miracle accounts:
Meet the Witnesses of the Miracle of the Sun by John Haffert. Spring Grove, Pennsylvania: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, 1961. John M. Haffert is a co-founder of the Blue Army of Fatima. He interviewed dozens of witnesses of the solar miracle at Fatima, and carefully records their testimonies in his book.
The True Story of Fatima by Fr. John de Marchi. St. Paul, Minnesota: Catechetical Guild Educational Society, 1956. Fr. de Marchi is an acknowledged expert on Fatima, whose account is based on the testimony of the seers, members of their families, and other acquaintances.
The Sixth Apparition of Our Lady. A short article containing eyewitness recollections, from the EWTN Website Celebrating 100 years of Fatima. (Very well-produced and easy to navigate.)
The Apparitions at Fatima. A short account of the visions and the solar miracle.
Catholic attempts to rebut skeptical debunkings of the solar miracle at Fatima:
Debunking the Sun Miracle Skeptics by Mark Mallett, a Canadian Catholic evangelist and former TV reporter. The author’s tone is irenic, and he evaluates the evidence fairly. His blog is well worth having a look at.
Ten Greatest (And Hilarious) Scientific Explanations for Miracle at Fatima by Matthew Archbold. National Catholic Register. Blog article. March 27, 2011. Rather polemical and sarcastic in tone.
Why the solar miracle couldn’t have been a hallucination:
Richard Dawkins And The Miracle Of Sun by Donal Anthony Foley. The Wanderer, Saturday, November 5, 2016. Makes the telling point that it was seen by sailors on a passing ship, who knew nothing about the visions.
A Catholic account by a scientist-priest who thinks that the “miracle” was a natural meteorological phenomenon, but that the coincidence between the timing of this natural event and the vision can only have a supernatural explanation:
Miracle of the Sun and an Air Lens (Theory of Father Jaki) by Dr. Taylor Marshall. Blog article. “Fr Jaki suggests that an ‘air lens’ of ice crystals formed above the Cova in Portugual. This lens would explain how the sun ‘danced’ at Fatima, but not over the whole earth. Thus, it was a local phenomenon that was seen at the Cova, and by others who were not present with the three children of Fatima within a 40 mile radius.” An air lens would also explain how the muddy and wet ground at the site of the apparitions suddenly dried up, after the miracle.
God and the Sun at Fatima by Fr. Stanley Jaki. Real View Books, 1999. Reviewed by Martin Kottmeyer. See also the attached footnote by Joaquim Fernandes, Center for Transdisciplinary Study on Consciousness, University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal, who argues that on the contrary, it was a UFO.
A Catholic, “anti-miracle” account by a scientist who thinks it was an optical illusion:
Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun by Professor Auguste Meessen, Institute of Physics, Catholic Univeristy of Louvain, Belgium. Paper given at the International Forum in Porto, “Science, Religion and Conscience,” October 23-25, 2003. Excerpt:
“So-called “miracles of the sun” were observed, for instance, in Tilly-sur-Seuilles (France, 1901), Fatima (Portugal, 1917), Onkerzeele (Belgium, 1933), Bonate (Italy, 1944), Espis (France, 1946), Acquaviva Platani (Italy, 1950), Heroldsbach (Germany, 1949), Fehrbach (Germany, 1950), Kerezinen (France, 1953), San Damiano (Italy, 1965), Tre Fontane (Italy, 1982) and Kibeho (Rwanda, 1983). They have been described by many witnesses and from their reports we can extract the following characteristic features, appearing successively.
“· A grey disc seems to be placed between the sun and the observer, but a brilliant rim of the solar disc is still apparent…
· Beautiful colours appear after a few minutes on the whole surface of the solar disc, at its rim and in the surrounding sky. These colours are different, however, and they change in the course of time…
· The sun begins to ‘dance’. First, the solar disk rotates about its centre at a uniform and rather high velocity (about 1 turn/s). Then the rotation stops and starts again, but now it is opposite to the initial one. Suddenly, the solar disk seems to detach itself from the sky. It comes rapidly closer, with increasing size and brilliancy. This causes great panic, since people think that the end of the world has come, but the sun retreats. It moves backwards until it has again its initial appearance…
· Finally, after 10 or 15 minutes, the sun is ‘normal’ again: its luminosity is too strong to continue gazing at it. But after about another quarter of an hour, the prodigy can be repeated in the same way…
“…It is shown that the hypothesis of an extraterrestrial intervention is not sufficient to explain all observed facts, while this is possible in terms of natural, but very peculiar physiological processes. The proof results from personal experiments and reasoning, based on relevant scientific literature.
“…Dr. J.B. Walz, a university professor of theology, collected over 70 eye-witness reports of the ‘miracle of the sun’ that occurred in Heroldsbach [an ecclesiastically condemned apparition – VJT] on December 8, 1949. These documents disclose some individual differences in perception, including the fact that one person saw the sun approaching and receding three times, while most witnesses saw this only two times! The ‘coloured spheres’ that were usually perceived after the breathtaking ‘dance of the sun’ are simply after-images, but they were not recognized as such, since the context of these observations suggested a prodigious interpretation.
“…The general conclusion is that apparitions and miracles of the sun cannot be taken at face value. There are natural mechanisms that can explain them, but they are so unusual that we were not aware of them. Miracles of the sun result from neurophysiological processes in our eyes and visual cortex, while apparitions involve more complex processes in our mind’s brain. The seers are honest, but unconsciously, they put themselves in an altered state of consciousness. This is possible, since our brain allows for ‘dissociation’ and for ‘switching’ from one type of behaviour to another.”
Meessen’s own explanation of the miracle as an optical illusion is based on experiments which he performed on himself, while looking at the sun under carefully controlled conditions (so as not to damage his eyes). However, I should point out that Meessen’s exposure to the sun’s optical effects was fairly short in duration (30 seconds), whereas the solar miracle at Fatima lasted far longer (over 10 minutes) and didn’t damage any of the spectators’ eyes.
Catholic blogger Mark Mallett also points out: “Professor Meesen’s logic further falls apart by stating that the dancing effects of the sun were merely the result of retinal after-images. If that were the case, then the miracle of the sun witnessed at Fatima should be easily duplicated in your own backyard.”
However, Meessen does a good job of debunking the “UFO hypothesis”: he points out that had it been a UFO covering the sun, it could not have been seen 40 kilometers away. Also, at least some witnesses would have reported seeing a “partial eclipse,” but none ever did.
A paranormal explanation of the solar miracle at Fatima:
The First Alien Contact And UFO Sighting Of The 20th Century by Tob Williams. Blog article. April 10, 2011. Updated June 18, 2016.
The Fatima UFO hypothesis by Lon Strickler. February 11, 2012.
https://www.paranormalnews.com/article.aspx?id=1562
“Live Science” debunking of the solar miracle:
The Lady of Fátima & the Miracle of the Sun by Benjamin Radford. May 2, 2013. Ascribes the miracle to “an optical illusion caused by thousands of people looking up at the sky, hoping, expecting, and even praying for some sign from God,” which, “if you do it long enough, can give the illusion of the sun moving as the eye muscles tire.” Also suggests that mass hysteria and pareidolia can explain some features of the visions.
Skeptic Benjamin Radford on the Fátima Miracle by Dr. Stacy Trasancos. A response to Radford’s debunking. Points out that plenty of dispassionate observers at Fatima also reported seeing the sun move. Promotes Fr. Stanley L. Jaki’s carefully researched book on Fatima. Acknowledges that there may be a scientific explanation for what happened with the sun that day, but argues that this doesn’t explain the timing of the event, and why it coincided with the visions.
Virulently anti-Fatima accounts:
Solar Miracle of Fatima and
Fraud at Fatima. The author places too much reliance on discredited sources, such as Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Incident by Portuguese UFOlogist Joachim Fernandes (critically reviewed here by Edmund Grant). The author also tries to argue, unconvincingly, that only half the people at Fatima actually witnessed the miracle, whereas in fact there were only a few people who saw nothing. See Jaki, Stanley L. (1999). God and the Sun at Fátima, Real View Books, pp. 170–171, 232, 272. The author is right in pointing out, however, that Lucia’s own published account of her visions at Fatima is highly retrospective (being written over 20 years after the event) and contains a lot of added material. Also, the seers didn’t all see the same thing: Lucia, for instance, saw Our Lady’s lips move while she was speaking, while Francisco (who saw Our Lady but never heard her speak), didn’t see Our Lady’s lips moving – a point acknowledged by Fr. de Marchi (see above). Finally, some of the prophecies associated with Fatima turned out to be false.
My own take:
Given the evidence that the solar miracle was witnessed by passing sailors and also seen at several different locations within a 40-kilometer radius of Fatima, I cannot simply dismiss it as a hallucination. Professor Meessen’s arguments (discussed above) appear to rule out the possibility that it was a UFO. The theory that it was an optical illusion founders on the fact that nobody reported any damage to their eyes, subsequent to the miracle. The hypothesis that it was a natural, local meteorological phenomenon sounds promising, but the fortuitous timing of the “miracle” (which coincided with the seers’ visions) would still point to supernatural intervention of some sort. Finally, if it was really a miracle, then one has to ask: what, exactly, was the miracle? After all, no law of Nature was broken: no-one seriously suggests that the Sun actually hurtled towards the Earth, as witnesses reported. The notion of God messing with people’s senses sounds pretty strange, too: why would He do that? On the other hand, the testimony of 70,000 witnesses is very impressive, and the event clearly meant something … but what? Beats me.
Over to you.
let’s try something different
Truth is “my” God. Just as the mountain is the native’s God in my analogy.
When you deny that truth is God you are really only saying that Truth is not “your” God. In other words you don’t feel that truth is worthy of worship.
That is fine. I knew it already.
peace
I actually have no problem with that post. And I do think it would be a nicer way of putting your view. I believe you’d find much less animosity if you did that consistently.
Untruth is simply the absence of truth. It’s temporal existence is one of those necessary evils we discussed up thread.
It does not have to exist but it must exist in a temporal universe (I think).
Yes, God could choose to not allow untruth but i don’t think I could exist in such a universe.
peace
I would think that it would be implicit that when I speak of God I mean Yahweh the Christian God and I’m not talking about some other person’s personal god.
quote:
we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge.
(1Co 8:4b-7a)
end quote:
peace
OK when I say that God is truth if you like you can simply chime in with
“he is not my God”
And we will be golden
peace
… God is an immaterial personal mind, not the status of a logical proposition.
I’m sorry but the way you use words don’t make any logical sense. God isn’t “truth” because that particular sentence isn’t so much wrong as it’s just plain nonsensical. Nonsense. None-sense. It doesn’t make sense.
You just sitting there and pressing the letters on your keyboard doesn’t mean you’re actually typing something coherent or sensible.
Fair enough.
I don’t worship truth.
I value truth.
By contrast, you worship truth. That’s why you are so often wrong. Worship is blind, and because you worship truth, you are blind to truth.
Here’s what Kantian Naturalist wrote above:
Please explain exactly how version 1 of his restatement of your position grants godless relativism. It seems to me to be a well articulated example of exactly what Elizabeth is aiming for with this site: An understanding of the root causes of our disagreements.
Is it really so difficult for you to discuss your beliefs dispassionately?
No, it is simply recognizing that it is possible to make statements that correspond more or less closely with reality. Belief in the actual existence of abstractions is a very different thing.
It is also against the rules to accuse another participant of being delusional. When you claim that people here who have no belief in gods actually do believe, you are violating the rule of assuming good faith. You are also failing to abide by the guideline of leaving your priors at the door.
Why don’t you just stop being rude and start aligning your behavior with the goals of this site?
As Kantian Naturalist and others have pointed out, you have never supported that claim with any rational argument.
Your second premise is both disingenous and ungrammatical. You don’t believe that your god is simply the abstract noun truth, you believe in some variant of the Christian god. Claiming that truth exists and therefore the Christian god exists is gross equivocation.
Further, the claim that “truth exists” is nonsensical. If you simply mean “it is possible to make statements that correspond more or less closely to objective reality” then there is no need for gods. If you mean that an abstraction literally exists, you need to explain exactly in what sense you mean that. I suspect it will turn out not to support your grandiose claims.
Actually most of us probably started in junior high or high school. We just don’t do it in public.
Exactly so. An immaterial personal mind is not the correspondence of a proposition to a state of affairs.
I wouldn’t mind if FMM were taking “God is truth” as a metaphor, or as a compressed slogan for a much more complicated view. It’s when he insists that “God is truth” is literally true, self-evident, necessary, and implicitly acknowledged by everyone, regardless of whether they are aware of it — well, that’s when I have a problem.
It’s not possible to have a dialogue with a presuppositionalist, because presuppositionalism is a theological position designed to make reasoned dialogue impossible. The whole point of the entire position is that it’s only possible to have a discussion if you start off by agreeing with presuppositionalism.
It’s disgusting.
Noting that I lack belief in any gods is neither inflammatory nor false. Park your priors at the door, assume others are posting in good faith, and follow the other rules of the site. They are not onerous.
No one is telling you what you think you believe you don’t, you are the only one doing that. Try that on your wife, ask her opinion then tell her that it is not her opinion. Report the results.
You seem to be missing my point,of course you can respond however you want.
It is not my blog, do whatever you want.
Obviously false, but I do think you believe that.
Ah yes, first a truth, second with “respect”. In my opinion telling somebody that they are either deluded ,stupid or a liar because you know what they believe better than they do is hardly respectful. Again I think you believe that you are sharing the truth with respect.
I respectfully share this truth with you.
Yes, but fascinating in its own way. It’s almost like it evolved in response to arguments against other forms of theism until it became one solid, impenetrable core of pure, distilled nonsense.
It has the quality of simplicity, my way or my way.
Murderer, huh? In your bible Sarah has a heart attack after being visited by Satan. Satan also kills Job’s wife, children, and servants with your god’s sanction. That’s it. 10 or so people.
How many do you supposed died in the flood your god caused?
Thank you.
Presuppositionalism is completely incompatible with the norms that Lizzie has intended for TSZ.
She intended a place where people of good-will who disagree about fundamental issues can meet in a spirit of dialogue aimed at mutual understanding. It’s an ethos of Socrates, John Stuart Mill, and Jurgen Habermas. She never had any interest in perpetuating “the culture war” or the “us vs them” mentality.
It’s an interesting question as to why TSZ has so utterly failed in its mission.
Be that as it may, presuppositionalism is completely incompatible with the liberal norms of respectful dialogue, because you cannot have a dialogue with someone who insists that dialogue is only possible if you start off by agreeing with him.
Nor is FMM even really interested in respectful dialogue. As he’s indicated a few times, his primary motivation for being here is the hope that something he says will occasion regeneration and repentance amongst one of us non-believers.
In other words, he’s just here to witness.
I would encourage all of you to think very seriously whether his behavior is such that it should be rewarded with your attention. There is nothing anyone can say here that will indicate to FMM any of his many, quite basic, conceptual mistakes. He isn’t here to argue; he’s here to witness.
In other words, he’s trolling.
Any engagement with him at all is going to encourage him further. If that’s what you want, by all means, continue. For me, I’m exercising some self-control. Better late than never.
I know, never liked that definition, it seems the lack of truth could be nothing, that doesn’t make nothing untruthful.
I will not refer to truth as a “he.” I will say something like “As we’ve discussed, I don’t think of truth as God.” Plus I believe you said you would say “Truth is MY God.” Please don’t backslide on this if you’re actually interested in comity.
Same.
In your own case, I guess you mean except when hotshoe was around.
Yes.
Hah. Good point.
Well, I’d like to see if he’ll actually keep his promise to say things like “Well, MY God is such that…..” I’ll give him that opportunity….but I did notice him starting to backslide already.
Hunh. Interesting point.
Still with the bad analogies I see.
Once again, doctors are not omnipotent. If they were, no needle prick would be necessary. So once again, all your analogy indicates is that your god is as limited and no better than a temporal, physical human. All the constraints, none of the “godly” bonuses. So…why are you calling this lame-ass “God”?
You’ve obviously not faced a lot of needles. Having had five kidney transplants, let me tell you – I’ve praised a LOT of doctors, nurses, EMTs, PAs, etc for their needle work. The vast majority of treatments that the vast majority of patients receive have little to no discernible or associative effects. Heck, the vast majority of “illnesses” don’t have discernible effects. You can’t “feel” things like high cholesterol or even hypertension for example.
Your entire analogy, to say nothing of your way of thinking, is just plainly based on a strawman of reality.
But you don’t know that. THAT’s the whole point. For all anyone knows the “alternative” is nothing but extraordinary bliss. An eternity of the taste of the best foods and wine and sex and all other grand sensations, but with only .0000000001% of the calories. You don’t know.
But what really amazes me is that someone who believes in this supposed “good” “god”…a “god” that is “Truth”…you’d even consider posting such. How, given such a “god”, could any “alternative” in any context be “worse”? It boggles my mind that post such things about some “god”, but clearly don’t really consider what they mean.
Ahhh…so you’re an Operative, huh? You believe in something greater than yourself and your job is is to try and create “better worlds”, but you’re not actually going to live there because there’s no place for you? Got it. At least now some of your claims make a little more sense.
I presume this “peace” you put at the end of your posts refers to this hope for “better worlds”?
Oh, absolutely. Tycho Brahe was smart, too.
You have to claim that, or your God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
I would simply ask you why you call a mountain “god”. I’d then wait for the mountain to do something “god-like”.
This is precisely why I keep asking you why you call this “Truth” thing that apparently has no actual power or capability “god”. Such doesn’t fit any definition of “god” as I understand the term.
Why should I answer this question when the very asking of it demonstrates that you don’t read what I write?
What is my position on hell?
Lead the way Patrick, lead the way!
This deserves to be an OP.
I value value.
There’s no such thing as “choice” for an omnipotent and omnipresent being. What would constrain an omnipresent/omnipotent being? It’s got instant and unlimited time – it can’t be “late”; it can’t have a deadline; it would never have to “choose” between doing one thing or another in some time-frame because there is NO TIME-FRAME for such an entity. It would never have to consider things like “cost” or “resources” or “obstacles” or “manufacture process” or “work flow”.
All the activities we humans engage in are constrained by our physicalness in space-time, so unless your “god” is physical, non-omnipotent, non-omnipresent being, your analogy to “sufficient reason” makes no sense.
That makes absolutely no sense! That statement is completely ridiculous, unless you are defining “omnipotent” as “limited potency” and “omnipresent” as “living within the confines of space-time”. But then your use of the terms is simply pointless. Why define your “god” as “omnipotent” if it isn’t actually “potent” at all? Why call it “omnipresent” if it’s confined or affected by time? It’s not even wrong; it’s self-defeating.
I don’t even understand your statement above. There’s nothing contradictory about life living on the “dusk” fringe of a planet that always faces a star. It’s perfectly feasible for such a world, even one constantly “watered by thunderstorms” to contain life. So really…if your “god” can’t make such a world, it’s really not much of a “god” at all.
No, you really haven’t. You really seem not to understand the meanings of the words, let alone the implications of such concepts, that you wish to apply to this “god”…idea…you have.
Right. It’s not so much that FMM uses a wildly unorthodox definition (though he arguably does that), it’s that he (fallaciously) takes any aspect of god to itself BE god. So if god is good, then goodness is god. If god is conscious, consciousness is god. Etc. It’s nonsense stew of biblical proportions.
What we are disputing and trying to get you to explain is why some mountain should be called “god”.
Let alone why we have to call the mountain “god” even to discuss the issue, or anything else.
It’s a matter of sheer aggression, in a passive-aggressive stance.
Glen Davidson
I agree with Mung. It’s a post-Kitzmas miracle.
In principle, I don’t have a problem with the “X = God” concept. Truth, love, goodness, warmth, comfort, etc…I can see where some folks might hold them as as actual manifestations of God. It has it’s own internal issues, but I can at least appreciate the perspective.
The problem I have is when someone like FMM then wants his cake and wants to eat it too. He claims his “god” = “Truth”, but then insists such can also be a personal being. Sorry…nope. He insists on using terms like “omnipotence” for his “god”, but clearly none of the terms he uses to reflect said “god” – truth, love, logic, goodness, etc. – are omnipotent in any sense of the term. He then tries to rationalize such a perspective by claiming that “omnipotence” includes constraints, which is an utterly bizarre mental defense mechanism to me.
His thoughts and subsequent claims about his “god” are far too muddled and inconsistent for me to take seriously.
I never called anyone delusional. However Alan did call me that, more than once.
I missed the part where you reprimanded him on it
peace
I thought I already did that. What is does is make you the judge as to what qualifies as God.
You are not
peace
Is that true?
peace
One Christmas miracle this week is enough don’t you think?
Is there some logical reason why Truth can’t be personal? I’d love to hear it
Why? I would say that love and truth are the most powerful thing in the universe
peace
Worship is just what happens when you are in the presence of what you most value.
What do you value more than truth?
peace
I think this is a bunch of malarky. What makes you think she doesn’t like to perpetuate a culture war? Look at the name of her site. Look at the moderators she chose. Any moderators from a side which disagrees with her points of view?
She started this site because she felt UD wouldn’t let her say whatever she wanted without calling her on it.
There is pretty much free rein to be an asshole here now, because the captain jumped overboard, but I don’t believe your claims about her mission.
phoodoo,
More motive mongering from Phoodoo. How’s that gone for you historically?