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.
Satisfied for you, insufficient for others
Of course. I already knew that you would think that God was unworthy of his office.
Wanna guess how I knew that 😉
The issue is that you don’t have any viable alternative as KN has just acknowledged
peace
And that they’re hardly necessary for getting and using information successfully anyway.
Glen Davidson
fifth,
No, the regress never terminates, and no, the answer is not always the same.
This is extremely easy to see. That you find this stuff deep and difficult is remarkable. One might say that it’s… revealing.
Here’s how Fifth Logic™ actually works:
fifth: Jesus is God.
critic: How do you know that?
fifth: God revealed it to me.
critic: How do you know that the revelation is genuine?
fifth: God revealed that the revelation is genuine.
critic: How do you know that the second revelation is genuine?
fifth: God revealed that the revelation that the revelation is genuine is genuine.
critic: How do you know that the third revelation is genuine?
fifth: God revealed that the revelation that the revelation that the revelation is genuine is genuine is genuine.
…and so on, stupidly.
The regress never terminates, and the answer changes each time. The argument is invalid, just as Argument I is invalid.
Extremely obvious to an intelligent person. Utterly baffling to a fifthmonarchyman.
keiths,
We just need a “How do you know that?” for total circularity.
Glen Davidson
That’s not what terminating a regress actually means. (“How do I know that?” “Because I’ve read several books about epistemology.”) Giving the same answer each time is not the same thing as showing that the demand for foundations has been satisfied.
It’s false that Christianity can provide foundations, as the entire discussion here makes clear to everyone except you. And it’s false that knowledge needs foundations in order to count as knowledge.
I know that because I actually can follow a philosophical argument — what Sellars called ‘the Myth of the Given’. I posted the link to a podcast about Sellars’s criticism on the myth of the given, plus additional readings. But I can’t do the work for you. You have to make an effort to learn this stuff for yourself.
By the way, there are Christian theologians who embrace anti-foundationalism. Nancy Frankenberry and William Placher both come to mind, among others.
Giving the same answer is not was satisfies the demand for foundations. The Christian God is what satisfies the demand for foundations.
He can do this because he can reveal things so that I can know it. And yes revelation is a public rather than private exercise so it’s within God’s power to do so even according to you.
Having a secure foundation for knowledge is not the same thing as holding to foundationalism. My personal approach is a combination of Infinitism Coherentism and foundationalism. All of that is beside the point.
It’s comments like this that make repetition necessary
Once again
It’s not about whether you can know stuff with out knowing how you know stuff. It’s about whether you can justify knowledge.
You can’t from within your worldview that is why you need to borrow from mine.
You act as if you have a reason to trust that you know stuff and you don’t
peace
In your argument perhaps.
In mine it’s the same every time—– revelation.
The content never changes it’s—— truth
The method never changes it’s —–revealing the truth
Regression halted full stop
If it was obvious you could demonstrate how you came to realize it.
IOW how do you know?
peace
Out of curiosity, fifth, did you graduate from high school?
I ask because you don’t seem to understand what the word ‘terminate’ means.
Seems a bit insulting to high school students
quote:
terminate-coming to an end or capable of ending
end quote:
from here
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terminate
The regress terminates in revelation. I’m not sure why you are having trouble with that.
There is nothing beyond or in back of revelation.
There is no change in the answer. It’s the same every single time.
keiths–what is 1 divided by 1?
FMM—one
keiths–OK what would you get if you divided that answer by one?
FMM—one
keiths–OK what would you get if you divided that answer by one?
FMM—one
keiths—See the process is an infinite regress.
FMM—Really?????
peace
Yes, because if revelation cannot be false , it wasn’t revelation. How did you know that?
It’s definitional.
To reveal is to share information.
If you are sharing something that is false it’s not information it’s noise or worse it’s disinformation or misinformation.
peace
Yes that is one alternative ,the other is the revelation is true and you misinterpret it , you would then compound your error by concluding the revelation is false by definition.
No what I incorrectly think is revelation would not be.
If it’s true it’s revelation.
That does not mean that I always get it right. Not by a long shot.
If I do get it right it’s because God graciously chose to reveal.
peace
keiths:
fifth:
Unbelievably, you managed to screw even that up.
We’ve been talking about the verb ‘terminate’. You looked up the adjective ‘terminate’, which doesn’t even share the same pronunciation, much less the same meaning.
Good grief, fifth.
One thing I’ll you give you credit for: no matter how much I lower my expectations, you consistently manage to fall short.
fifth, to newton:
That’s the understatement of the (very young) year.
fifth,
It’s because I lack the intellectual deficits that would be required in order for me to repeat your mistake.
No, and not even if you robotically repeat the word ‘revelation’ as usual.
Revelation is not a monolith. If it were, then things could not be revealed piecemeal.
This:
…is exactly equivalent to this:
At any point the last ‘revelation’ is always dangling in mid-air. That’s why the follow-up question always makes sense, and it’s why the regress never ends.
Even a child could understand this, fifth.
Who said anything about things being revealed piecemeal?
Revelation is about sharing information.
There is nothing piecemeal about it.
Every piece of true information when properly understood contains within it all truth.
I don’t presuppose theism or monotheism but the Christian God of the Bible in who is found all knowledge.
If anything whatsoever is true it’s all true every bit of it. If you don’t grasp the entirety of the revelation it’s not because the revelation is lacking in some way.
That is why I can say that you know that God exists if you know anything whatsoever.
Nothing can be further from the truth. Revelation is never dangling mid-air it is the very core of the Being of the eternal God.
The “last revelation” always rests firmly in that being.
blockquote cite=”comment-157977″>
I think you are really grasping at straws now.
adj
coming to an end or capable of ending
verb
to extend only to a limit (as a point or line); especially : to reach a terminus
Either definition works
It’s a terminate regress if it ends in revelation
and
The the regress terminates at revelation.
Both sentences are true and there is no practical difference whatsoever that I can see.
peace
fifth:
What a crock of shit. A pseudo-profundity.
Think about it.
When your grandma reveals to you that she want’s an album for her birthday the revelation has a context. It’s your Grandma who is revealing so the context includes everything there is to know about your grandma. Her experiences, environment and proclivities etc.
If you extend it out far enough the context extends to everything there is to know in the entire universe
Therefore every piece of true information when properly understood contains within it all truth due to context.
No pseudo-profundity at all it’s simply what revelation is.
Peace
??? So revelation tells us everything there is to know about everything? Odd that science even got started in a world depending on revelation, much less expanded our understanding by orders of magnitude by NOT relying on revelation.
Whether those who DO rely entirely on revelation have anything valid to contribute is open to question.
Science is just one means by which God reveals
We all rely entirely on revelation.
If you doubt this tell me how you know? 😉
peace
So in order to know something about her you first need to know everything about her?
fifth,
That’s obviously wrong.
A piece of information is not the same thing as its context, and it does not include its context.
If Grandma reveals that she wants a Metallica album, she is revealing that she wants a Metallica album. She is not revealing that she used to babysit James Hetfield when he was a boy. If you know that about her, you learned it separately. Her desire for the album does not convey the context.
This is extremely simple and obvious stuff, fifth. Why does it baffle you?
fifth:
No. As anyone who understands grammar can tell you, verbs and adjectives fulfill distinct functions and are not interchangeable.
Out of curiosity, did you graduate from high school, fifth?
No but everything in our lives is interconnected. There are no isolated facts
Context means that If you know anything about her comprehensively you know everything about her.
peace
sure it does.
If my grandma wants an album there are reasons why she want’s it and reasons why she asked me instead of buying it herself. To fully understand her reasons we need to know everything about her. Her whole life is bound up in every action she takes.
That does not mean that I need to know all of her reasons to understand that she wants an album but if I fully understand the revelation I will know where it came from.
Surely you are familiar with those Sci-fi stories where changing one small detail has an effect on everything else in the world.
There really is no isolated event or information. Everything is connected in some way even if it is just at the level of sharing the same interconnected universe.
I did not say they were interchangeable. I said that either definition works
peace
Out of curiosity, do you always through out juvenile insults when a discussion is going badly for you?
fifth,
I’m genuinely curious about your educational background, fifth. I answered phoodoo’s question. How about answering mine?
As for the discussion “going badly for me”, do you seriously think anyone reading this thread would actually buy that?
Not one indoctrinated before being capable of critical thinking.
fifth,
The apostrophe in “want’s” is incorrect.
None of which (even if true) would change the fact that when Grandma reveals that she wants a Metallica album, she is revealing that she wants a Metallica album. She is not revealing that she used to babysit James Hetfield when he was a boy. If you know that about her, you learned it separately. Her desire for the album does not convey the context.
A third-grader could understand that “I’d like a Metallica album for Christmas” does not mean, or convey, “I babysat James Hetfield when he was a child.”
As dazz noted, you are baffled by the simplest of concepts, fifth. You see why I wonder about your educational background?
A deepity, perhaps?
Moved some posts to guano. Address the post, not the poster.
keiths:
fifth:
Which is incorrect, precisely because verbs and adjectives are not interchangeable.
The definitions for ‘terminate’ as an adjective don’t work when ‘terminate’ is used as a verb.
Not guanoed.
Guanoed:
See the problem now Flint?
Were you wearing your glasses?
So if you know Grandma really likes to do the hoky poky and shake it all around, you then know her deepest secret? That would be convincing.
Just curious, you are using your senses to get this revealing, are you presupposing your senses are accurate?
keiths, to fifth:
Patrick:
That’s what I wrote originally, but then I changed it because fifth’s fatuous remark doesn’t quite fit Dennett’s description:
I don’t see a reading on which fifth’s statement is true, trivially or otherwise.
Yes, you keep posting comments that deserve to be moved. Never insult someone’s mama
Yep. One person’s insults are quarantined, while essentially identical insults from favored people are left alone. And while this is obviously biased, I think the problem lies more in the insults than in the selection of which insults to move. If we keep calling one another ignorant jerks, nobody is enlightened no matter whose calls get moved.
Not Guanaoed (Neil didn’t have a problem, nor did Patrick, with a single one of THESE posts Alan even replied to some of them, and we know they read them because they guanoed my post after them):
Is the problem becoming more obvious Flint??
And we KNOW the moderators read EVERY one of these posts, because they even commented on some.
Of course they will now say, oh please discuss in moderation. What the fuck for?? What is going to change?? These comments are fine!! ???
Thank you captain anal retentive
It’s Grandma who wants the album. Grandma is the person who used to babysit James Hetfield.
That is who she is. Her identity includes everything about her. If you know fully who Grandma is you know who she babysat. Of course you might not know everything about her overtly but everything about her including who she babysat form her identity. It makes here who she is
peace
I most certainly do.
You went from saying that revelation could not justify knowledge because it was not necessarily certain to saying it was an infinite regress to now arguing that information is discrete and isolated and with out any context. It’s been one long retreat.
At the same time you have still failed to offer any alternative justification whatsoever despite repeated requests that you do so. I’d say it’s pretty obvious that you are not fairing too well.
A good indicator of that is that instead of talking about substantive issues you are harping on grammar and flinging schoolyard insults
peace
yes, It’s Grandma who likes to do the hoky poky and shake it all around
and if you really know Grandma you know everything about her.
I’m presupposing the Christian God.
The Christian God created me with the ability to receive revelation. In fact I’d say giving and receiving revelation is what I’m made for.
Do you think your senses are basically accurate? How do you know this? How could you possibly know this given your world view?
peace
keiths:
fifth:
You think that anyone who pays attention is “anal retentive”. The problem is that you’re just as sloppy with ideas and arguments as you are with spelling and grammar. Sloppiness pervades your thinking, even when you’re defending your faith. Getting it right just doesn’t seem very important to you.
Cases in point:
1) Your goofy claim that this premise is false:
2) This argument, which you presented in all sincerity:
3) Your belief that a regress which continues forever can be said to have terminated.
4) The pseudo-profound claim we’re currently discussing:
Augustine was thinking of things like that when he wrote:
Which sites are those?
fifth:
Grandma reveals to you that she wants a Metallica album for Christmas. From that alone, you cannot infer that she used to babysit James Hetfield. The truth of the latter is not contained in the former and cannot be gleaned from it.
As I said:
Your statement is incorrect:
You mean if you really know one thing about her, the ability not to be mistaken about people must be very valuable.
That is actually at least two presuppositions,
Let’s test your insight ,what is my worldview?
peace
Even if this is so. It changes nothing. The idea is what is important not how it’s presented. I do my best to follow your arguments even through the roguish insults and irrelevant tangents. That is because in the end ideas are what matter.
You have not demonstrated that it is true. Do that and I will withdraw my aprasial
It was not an argument it was a silly parity of your irrelevant argument. A parity that you have not refuted.
This is simply false acquisition.
I don’t beleive a regress that continues forever terminates. I believe that the regress halts at revelation full stop.
You apparently don’t get this but have been unable to show why your view is the correct one. That is what drove you to present the weird argument about integers and infinity.
There is nothing pseduo-profound about the idea that information has context. It’s simply the way things are. No information occurs in isolation.
Get a grip keiths. insult is not argument
peace
peace