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.
once again from the top of this very page
quote:
Revelation is pretty strait forward
Reveal–Make (previously unknown or secret information) known to others:
from here
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reveal
end quote:
peace
VJT, I would apologize for derailing your Miracle thread with the “god is a sick, sadistic bastard” line, but everyone is having way too much fun.
Does that mean I am a sick, sadistic bastard. 🙂 🙂 🙂
But that’s the verb “reveal”. I asked about the word you keep using. Remember? It’s the noun “revelation”.
I find the “God is a sick, sadistic bastard” line is the real subtext to everyone of these discussions. It’s not that you all think God does not exist it’s that you know he exists and you don’t like it.
So every thread on this forum is bound to end up here at some point if it goes on long enough 😉
peace
Revelation is just information that has been revealed.
Honestly there is nothing obscure here just basic English
from here
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/revelation
peace
That statement is an accusation of dishonesty. Please stop. It’s irritatingly untrue and repetitive to boot.
Right! Then we agree except that some of what you claim as “revelation” is simply your own delusions or those that have been passed on to you.
No it’s not it’s a statement about denial. As we discussed up thread it’s like telling an alcoholic in denial that he knows he can’t drink responsibly.
It does not mean he is being dishonest it simply means he has a problem and it would be a good thing to admit it to himself.
peace
I see you in that mirror.
This is akin to “stop beating your wife”. I’ve wasted too much time on this. I’ll just repeat that telling other people they are “in denial” etc regarding their beliefs or lack of them is in breach of our rules. Repetitions will end up in guano if I happen to notice them.
what? you just said
quote:
You can only know what comes in through your senses.
end quote:
How do you know this?
Was it by revelation?
If so who revealed it to you?
Do you know their information is reliable?
How do you know this?
It’s possible that we all are mistaken about things we think we know. That is not at the issue.
What is at issue is how we know what we know?
peace
I don’t want to offend anyone and I would hate to disobey any rules.
But I won’t lie or deny what I know to be the truth.
Perhaps a solution would be for folks to simply explain how they can possibly not believe in God (who is the truth) while at the same time claiming that their statement is true
peace
That’s a keeper.
That would be an example of how not to do it. 😉
peace
On a roll
Pork or beef?
Keeping the truth and the insight that accompanies it to yourself might be a solution also .See I am doing it right now.
What about when someone claims that
“the whole idea of gods is delusional nonsense”
and that my knowledge (presumably of God) is”simply your own delusions or those that have been passed on to you” ?
Should I just let claims like this of my own self deception stand unchallenged since I’m not an atheist? Is that the sort of thing that is required here for civility?
If it is OK for your side why is it not OK for me?
peace
FYI
quote:
A delusion is a belief that is held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception.
end quote:
From here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
peace
It is the truth that the Toronto Maple Leafs have not won the Stanley Cup in fifty years. Therefore, God must exist. There may be some logic to your assertion.
I see truth as an abstraction, invented by humans.
If you are saying that God is an abstraction invented by humans, then I guess I don’t have a problem with that.
According to my fictionalism, abstract entities don’t really exist. They are useful fictions. So I guess I should take your God to be a useful fiction.
intended as humor, not as a starter for a pointless debate.
I never said that everyone thinks God is worthy of worship. Only that everyone knows God exists. It’s only natural that you would want to trivialize this as much as possible.
Your take on who God is does not surprise me at all. In fact it’s what I expect though I think it is incorrect.
quote:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
(Rom 1:21)
end quote:
long story short we are cool
peace
What is this “evil” you speak of? If your god (who is “GOOD” and “TRUTH” finds sufficient reason to allow it, then it’s part of this god’s “GOOD PLAN!” How can anything not be part of the plan and thus absolutely the best? How can anything not be praiseworthy if ultimately it all comes from this god of yours? So “PRAISE GOD your daughter was sold into prostitution and your son had his leg blown off by an IED!” because hey…your god had “sufficient reason” for those things happening and besides, it will all be cherry in the end!
The moment you allow this god control of all, it becomes responsible for all (including all evil).
Civil: “since you believe in truth, and I believe that God is truth, then you would believe in God if you shared my belief that God is truth.”
Uncivil: “You really believe in God but you don’t realize it”
The problem with the ‘uncivil version’ is that it directly accuses the other person of being self-deceived. And while that could be true (self-deception being ubiquitous in human psychology, and you can’t think of yourself as being self-deceived), actually saying of another person that they are self-deceived is perilously close to violating the rules of TSZ (as currently interpreted).
It also takes precise verbal expression of one’s thoughts to distinguish between saying of someone that they are self-deceived and saying of someone that they are insincere. (These are very different psychological states but easily confused without paying careful attention to language.)
But there’s nothing wrong with the civil version. I strongly recommend you stick to it.
Why? You clearly haven’t applied any thought to the issue at all.
Or folks could simply deny that God is truth.
Or make any number of crucial distinctions that are obliterated by parroting simplistic slogans like “God is truth” over and over.
Kantian Naturalist,
KN, you aren’t even aware that most people in the history of mankind believe in a God who is involved in the world.
You are not only ignorant, you are proud of being ignorant*
*THAT’S the uncivil way!
Oh…this is going to be idiotic…
sigh
You really don’t think very much about your claims before you make them do you?
Human surgeons have “sufficient reason” to choose a single temporal event over another because…wait for it…
…human surgeons aren’t omnipotent or omnipresent!
Or are you suggesting that this god of yours is just some joe from the dinner with no more miraculous power or supernatural capability than
an elementary schoolgirl with a peanut butter and jelly sandwicha first level D&D magic-user (1st Addition rules) with a Read Magic spell? In which case I gotta ask…why the EFF would you call such a pathetic blob of puss a GOD?C’mon FMM…at try for some logic and consistency. Sheesh!
You claiming that God is truth does not mean that others are in denial. It just means that you have an unsubstantiated assertion.
Alan,
I agree with you that fifthmonarchyman’s baseless, arrogant assertion directly violates the rules against accusing others of dishonesty and accusing others of being delusional. By the “assume good faith” rule the only acceptable response is for him to accept it at face value when another participant states a lack of belief in gods.
However, the last time I raised this issue with our gracious hostess she disagreed. I’ll see if I can dig up her comment, but the upshot was that fifthmonarchyman is to be allowed to continue with his obnoxious, insulting behavior.
Patrick,
You know why Lizzie doesn’t want you to do that? Because that is EXACTLY the thing she accused UD of doing to her. Of forcing her to argue in a manner that Barry determined was in good faith. And Barry decided she couldn’t follow the rules, and after repeated warnings he was forced to ban her. Which is why she started this site.
But it seems some of the moderators here want to side with Barry’s way.
Your logical fallacy is appeal to popularity (bandwagon).
Personally I think we need fewer rules, not more. Since this is Lizzie’s site, I do want to follow her guidance, though. The reason I raised the issue with her is that fifthmonarchyman’s behavior does violate the letter of the rules. I’m perfectly content that she is willing to allow him to do so.
We could easily say that your behaviour- that is all evos here- violates the letter of the rules. And we can easily make our case…
Most people who have ever lived believed that evil spirits caused disease.
Most people alive today believe that their favorite prophet took dictation from god, received gold or stone tablets from god, or were god. Not the same prophet in all these cases.
And now we know it is darwinian/ blind watchmaker evolution that causes disease.
Just to be clear, the part you quoted came from phoodoo, not me. The board software doesn’t handle attribution nesting well.
As usual, you are conflating what little you know of Western civilization with “the history of mankind”.
Here’s what we know: Homo sapiens evolved between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. We have every good reason to believe that the very first human beings, like hunter-gatherers that we know of, were animists: they perceived their environment as a community of beings. (For insight into the animistic world-view, I cannot recommend highly enough David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous. It is one of my all-time favorite books.)
The whole character of religious experience and practice is radically changed with the rise of civilizations, a mere 10,000 years ago — the most recent 10% of our existence on this planet. Civilization changes the social function of religion (see Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Moreover, the kind of monotheistic, prophecy-based religion that begins with ancient Judaism was itself a radical break from polytheism (for a very difficult but compelling version of this argument, see The Disenchantment of the World.
In short, what gets called “God” in any of the Abrahamic religions — particularly where strong infusions of Plato and/or Aristotle are involved — is going to be very different from what we see in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto, Native American religion, any number of hundreds of African religious traditions, Aztec metaphysics, and so on.
And all of those are going to be very different from the hundreds of thousands of years of hunter-gatherer animism that preceded them — in large part because of how myths function in oral cultures as distinct from literate ones.
So when I say that it’s just not true that “most people in the history of mankind believe in a God who is involved in the world”, it is because I actually know things about the history of human cultures, civilizations, religions, and philosophies.
Except we don’t know that. Heck we don’t even know what makes a human a human.
No one is accusing you of lying, no one doubts you believe what you say you believe. No one is saying you really don’t believe God exists, or that it is impossible to really believe that God exists.
You on the other hand are saying you know atheists are liars, either intentionally or not.
See the difference?
Same rules apply to everyone. It would be breaking that rules if someone says they know you don’t believe God exists. If they say the reasons for your belief are groundless, no violation.
But that is not what you are saying, you say you know they believe God exists not not that their reasons for belief that they don’t know God exists are groundless.
Just quit telling people they don’t know what they believe no matter how sure you are, it is non productive and rude.
This just doesn’t seem that difficult.
What does revelation tell you? If someone else breaks a rule it is ok for you to break a rule?
peace
The truth hurts…
Kantian Naturalist,
You know the religious thoughts of hunter gatherers?? Furthermore, I said societies, since we have no way of knowing what individuals in the wild thought. But they probably thought lighting and the sun were caused by someone I am willing to bet. Furthermore, I even stated that “as long as man has had the ability to ponder”, so you certainly don’t know when that started now do you?
But what we do KNOW is that EVERY society since the beginning of man has held a belief in a God. It matters not what God that is. We also know that as soon as man started creating art, they already had a history of rituals, and dances-which almost certainly was in response to Gods.
You are not only ignorant, you are proud of your stubborn ignorance. Now go apologize to FMM like a civil person would do.
Thanks for demonstrating my point Frankie
Kantian Naturalist,
Heck, you don’t even have your facts right.
Gobekli Tepe is well over 10,000 years old itself, and it would be a ridiculous stretch to believe this was the first ever sign of archaeology tied to religious symbolism.
What a nitwit post.
Don’t be so hard on yourself,phoo.
Don’t blame the messenger…
Kantian Naturalist,
African Carved Python Head May Be Oldest Religious Object
70,000 years old!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/11/30/african-carved-python-head-may-be-oldest-religious-object.html
You know what people were thinking 70,000 years ago KN?
Not only “unsubstantiated” but clearly ridiculous.
Nice post. This point has been made to FMM numerous times (though perhaps not as eloquently), but it just doesn’t get through.
Patrick,
Ah! I happened to spend a few moments today reflecting on the fact that, perhaps due feeling a little low from a bad cold, I allowed myself to be goaded into some rather uncharitable remarks yesterday and had thought I might post an apology. But if Lizzie says it is OK for FMM to implicitly call all atheists dishonest, then I guess it was OK for me to be blunt about thinking that belief in deities is delusional nonsense.
Quite to opposite Frankie, you are as dependable as the sun rising in the east