Illuminating the Fatima "Miracle of the Sun"

Did three children miraculously predict a dancing sun in Portugal in 1917?

Skeptoid #110
July 22, 2008
Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe

Today we're going to go back in time nearly a century, to the day of one of the Roman Catholic Church's greatest miracles; indeed, an event cited by some religious scholars as not merely our greatest miracle, but perhaps the most important event in history. This was the incident known as the "Miracle of the Sun", an inexplicable solar phenomenon predicted by three children to the day, and witnessed by tens of thousands of gathered worshipers and journalists. How can one be skeptical of something with so many eyewitnesses, so much printed news coverage, so many photographs, and such a specific prediction?

Three shepherd children, ten-year-old Lucia Santos and her two cousins, worked in a field called Cova da Iria near Fátima, Portugal, in 1917, during the first World War. Over a period of six months, the children reported a long series of religious apparitions, the most extraordinary of which were six visits from the Virgin Mary herself. Mary told the children many things, including three famous secrets; but the most extraordinary revelation was that on October 13 of that year, they would witness a miracle. The children's reports of these apparitions in the village church attracted the attention of a local newspaper or two, which in turn attracted the attention of a regional newspaper or two; and soon the Cova da Iria fields turned into something of a Grand Central Station of miracle seekers. And, on October 13, as many as 100,000 believers packed the area, and just as the Virgin Mary foretold, they witnessed an inexplicable miracle in the sky: From behind the rain clouds, the sun came out, danced, changed colors, spun like a pinwheel, and made a most sensational demonstration. Photographs and articles plastered the newspapers of the world, and thirteen years to the day later, it was officially recognized as a miracle by the Roman Catholic Church.

It's hard to argue with the facts of this event. The day was predicted in newspapers by a ten-year-old girl, and this is thoroughly proven. Tens of thousands of people personally witnessed exactly what the prediction said would happen. The sun's behavior was clearly unique, and couldn't have been mistaken for some chance atmospheric oddity. You add all this together, and the only reasonable conclusion is that Lucia Santos' vision and prediction was a genuine miracle.

Unless, of course, you set a reasonable standard for evidence, and start looking for things like alternate explanations. Let's point our skeptical eye at some of these details one by one, and see if they hold up to scrutiny. I'll start with the children's reports of six months of religious apparitions. These were three kids, ages 7 to 10, and came back home each night with wild tales. Is this surprising? Is the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary really the most probable explanation for stories told by small kids? The two youngest, Lucia's cousins, both died of influenza within a couple of years, but Lucia lived to the age of 97 and clung to her stories her entire life. Investigator Joe Nickell reports that Lucia's own mother said that she was "Nothing but a fake who is leading half the world astray." Friar Mario de Oliveira, who knew her well, described her as living in a "delirious world of infantile fantasies" and suffering from "religious hallucinations". There are alternate explanations for the children's stories, imagination and boredom being chief among them.

So onto the specific date of October 13, 1917, so widely publicized in print that tens of thousands of people appeared. Clearly you're not going to make a pilgrimage like that unless you're pretty religious and pretty confident that you're going to witness a miracle. So, we have a crowd preconditioned to expect to see something. Newspaper accounts estimated between 30,000 and 100,000 worshipers gathered at Cova da Iria. However, a number of photographs of the crowd do exist, and though it does look like several thousand to me, I certainly wouldn't go as high as thirty. Either the photographers chose not to show the largest part of the crowds, which seems an odd choice; or the newspapers reported exaggerated numbers. Interestingly, if you do a Google image search you'll find lots of pictures of huge crowds, many of which show a perfectly bright and sunny day. It is always reported to have been raining quite heavily during the event, and I only ever found a single picture that showed a crowd with umbrellas. So I think a snippet of skepticism is warranted when viewing these large crowd photos with thousands of faces staring heavenward.

How impressive was the sun's display? An old black and white photograph of the actual sun miracle event shows a lot of dark rain clouds behind some trees and the sun poking through. There is certainly nothing in the photograph that looks unusual, but of course a photograph is static. Whatever the crowd saw was not interesting enough to be noticeable in a photograph. A lot of skeptical explanations have been put forward: Dust in the atmosphere causing the sun to appear in different colors, a sundog or parhelion formed by ice crystals, a rainbow, and observations that the descriptions don't match where the sun should have been in the sky at that time. It's also been pointed out that observatories around the world reported nothing unusual that day, so whatever it was had to have been a localized phenomenon. Personally I gravitate toward an even simpler explanation, fueled by having spent many happy hours as a child laying on my back and staring directly at the sun. When you do that, you can't see a round, static disk. Your eyes and pupils spazz out, and "dancing" is certainly one way to describe what you see. Spinning would be another valid way to perceive it. If there are tens of thousands of people fully expecting to see something amazing, and someone shouts "Hey look at the sun," guess what, you've now got tens of thousands of people seeing something amazing in the sun.

There's an experiment you can do. Stand on the sidewalk and point up toward the top of a building. People walking by will look up too. Some of them will pause. If another person looks at them, they might point up as well. Anything anyone sees will be assumed to be what you were pointing at. Go to Starbucks, have a coffee, and watch the fun. To me it's not only plausible, it's probable that if a single person at Cova da Iria told that desperate crowd that the sun looked strange, you'd have had ten thousand people agreeing "Yeah, it did look a little funky, kind of jumped around and danced when I tried to look at it," or whatever they thought they saw. And this would have happened on October 12, June 1, or any other day you choose.

Most of what's popularly reported about the sun incident, such as the colors and the spinning, comes from Father John de Marchi, a Catholic priest who spent years interviewing eyewitnesses to build evidence supporting the miraculous event. But more objective assessments of the eyewitness accounts have found very little evidence of a single shared experience. Author Kevin McClure, who also compiled eyewitness accounts, reported that he had "never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts in any of the research I have done in the past 10 years." If you were there, as a devout Catholic (otherwise you wouldn't be there), you fully believed in a miracle happening that day (otherwise you wouldn't be there), whether you personally saw anything or not you'd support the majority opinion, and probably go to your grave insisting that a miracle happened there. There's no surprise that Father de Marchi was able to form a consensus description of a spinning color wheel of a sun, and no need for any actual event to justify his consensus.

Father de Marchi says the sun was a spinning color wheel that day, which cannot be reconciled with the photograph. I say there was nothing special in the sky that day, which reconciles exactly with the photograph.

Now let's go back to those three secrets that the Virgin Mary supposedly revealed to Lucia. The "miracle of the sun" was not one of the three secrets, in fact Lucia wouldn't tell anyone what the secrets were until many years later, when she was a nun, and was asked to write them down by the Bishop of Leiria in 1941. She would only write the first two. The first secret was a vision of Hell, not really a prediction about anything, nor much of a secret. The second secret was a prediction that World War I would end, and that World War II would start if God continued to be offended by man's crimes. This wasn't terribly surprising either, since World War II had already begun when she wrote it. Not the kind of prediction that blows my mind. It took two more years before the Bishop of Leiria finally got Lucia to write down the third secret, and when she did, she sealed it in an envelope marked "Do not open until 1960", because she felt that nobody would understand it until then. When the Vatican revealed its contents in 1990, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) warned that it was anticlimactic, saying "No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled," and even speculated that Lucia's vision may have simply been conjured from religious texts. It described a vision full of religious imagery: Angels with swords, masses of corpses on a mountainside, Bishops and Priests being killed by soldiers, souls ascending to heaven. The takeaway from Lucia's three secrets is that in no way were they miraculous or otherwise unexplainable predictions.

The Roman Catholic Church will only declare a miracle after all other possible explanations have been ruled out, leaving divine intervention as the only possible rationalization. Since the Fátima "Miracle of the Sun" is easily explained, and even falsified by photographic evidence, it's probably time for the Catholics to reexamine their criteria.

You should follow me on twitter here.

Brian Dunning

References & Further Reading

BBC. "Eye fears over holy shrine 'visions'." BBC news. BBC, 2 Dec. 2009. Web. 25 Jan. 2010. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8390184.stm>

Dawkins, R. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 133-135.

de Marchi, Joao. The True Story of Fatima. Saint Paul: Catechetical Guild Educational Society, 1956.

McClure, Kevin. The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1983.

Meesen, A. "Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun." International Forum in Porto “Science, Religion and Conscience”. 31 Dec. 1005, 1645-6564: 199-222.

Nickell, Joe. Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions, and Healing Cures. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1993. 176-181.

Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian. "Illuminating the Fatima "Miracle of the Sun"." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 22 Jul 2008. Web. 6 Sep 2010. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4110>

Discuss!

Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.

Here's one where I do disagree with you. (I thought the day would never come).

You have to expect that with such a bold prediction, people like you and me would have also readily showed up that day. There have always been and always will be skeptics.

So between 30,000 and 100,000 people may have been there, but I guarantee there was probably a good number of people looking to say 'I told you so' when nothing happened.

Not only that but most sources I've read up on (books, internet, etc) state that even people who weren't gathered specifically at the spot in the photos, people who didn't 'show up' preconditioned, ie, expecting to see something, did report noticing something odd in the sky that day. These were people from miles away that had no vested interest in seeing a miracle that day.

Sure, I'm skeptical of most things and I tend to agree with most anything you've posted, but come on.

I have to be just as skeptical of a mass hallucination where thousands of people saw the same thing that didn't happen.

Tony, Minneapolis
July 22, 2008 10:19am

Obviously the skeptics who attended are not those whose accounts Father de Marchi chose to publicize.

I didn't hear Brian trying to convince us that this was a "mass hallucination". Might be a bit of a straw man. I think his hypothesis is a lot more likely than that, or than yours.

Eric Schulman, Corona, CA
July 22, 2008 11:04am

Ah yes, the mighty Judeo-Christian God, easily defeated by chariots of iron, and whose greatest miracle of the modern day is a light show to some people in a field. He truly is an awesome God...

Daniel "Theophage" Clark, Tucson, AZ
July 22, 2008 12:20pm

I agree with Tony - where were the skeptics?

I think that people at this time knew the effect the sun has to the eye when someone looks directly into it, too. Why should they mistake this effect for a godly miracle?

Nevertheless a good episode which helps to think of more skeptic explanations.

Thank you Brian
Michael

Michael, Rain / Germany
July 22, 2008 2:40pm

There is also much more "at stake" here then in your building experiment. Though many people WOULD agree that they see something weird, they aren't really risking much by admitting to a perfect stranger that they see nothing.

Here you were talking about communities of people, many of whom likely came in groups, who very well may not to want to admit to one another they saw nothing. After all, all these people saw something, I can't be the only one who didn't and have all these people questioning my faith.

As for Tony's point, it's true there may have been skeptics in attendance, it's unlikely there were many there. For starters, it was just a more religious time. Secondly, let's say EVERY news source in the country today was talking for weeks leading up to some girl's prediction that the sun would dance in the sky. How far would you travel to see this? Even with modern travel conveniences, not far, I suspect. In fact I doubt most skeptics would step out onto their porch to watch, if it were supposed to be a global event.

I have to imagine there's a few skeptics at any demonstration of woo taking place. If I had to walk 20 feet to see for myself how bad a famous cold reader really was in person, I might. 99% of the people there will still be true believers. When it gets down to it MOST people who don't believe in something have better things to do.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Bullshit! and yell, with no one else in the room, about how stupid people are.

Jeremy Lindgren (vita10gy), Eau Claire, WI
July 22, 2008 2:45pm

Finally someone other than me that, at a young age, looked directly into the sun, without going blind or (as far as I know) loosing sight.

Daniel T, Sweden
July 23, 2008 6:55am

Does this topic even deserve the attention of skeptics?

Mass hysteria is well documented - my favorite example is the War of the Worlds radio broadcast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_%28radio%29#Public_reaction). Or how about claims that the World Trade Center towers collapsed at freefall speeds? This claim is delivered along with video of the towers collapsing, and thousands of people nod their heads and say,"Yes, they are collapsing at freefall speed!" Yet the video evidence before their eyes is clearly NOT showing the towers collapsing at freefall speeds. The expelled debris around the towers is falling at freefall speed, and this shroud extends well below the core of the towers, still collapsing hundreds of feet above.

Believers will filter their experience to see/hear what they need to maintain their world view. Skeptics, from the Greek skeptomai, are willing to look around, to consider - belief does not fall into the equation. The universe is what it is, believe it or not.

aganunitsi, San Francisco, CA
July 24, 2008 1:34pm

All I could think of the entire time I read the article was Tom Robbins' "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates". Great book.

AlanB, Long Island, NY
July 24, 2008 4:23pm

This story is so last century. Here's a story from just last February.

"Sun gazing 'for miracle' leaves many with blurred vision"
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1267879

Max, Boston, MA
July 25, 2008 7:53pm

"This story is so last century. Here's a story from just last February."

I didn't know February was before the turn of the century.

//Lighten up.

AlanB, Long Island, NY
July 27, 2008 3:19pm

Hi JREF, really like the show but thought this episode could use a slight clarification. The Catholic Church does not authoritatively declare whether "miracles" like this are factual or not, only whether they or the messages they contain contradict Church teaching. As long as the content is safe, the Church will declare the event as "worthy of belief" but not "required to be believed". The skeptical believer can reject Fatima and still be considered a good Catholic boy.

Can you tell I'm a catechist? :)

EegahInc, Cumming, GA
July 30, 2008 9:33pm

I just started listening to your podcast and I like it very much. I am a Catholic but I'm not a "religious freak", that said, your "analysis" of the Fatima Miracle seems, well, not so scientific. You assume many things that might or might not be correct. People do not necessarily go to an announced event because they are "devout beleivers", I'm sure many many people were just there out of curiousity and the human characteristic of being drawn to a crowd. You mention the discrepancy in the purported photographs from that day. If you had really researched the event, you would've easily found the accounts that stated that the sun not only rotated while changing colors and "dancing", the sun actually got bigger and bigger (or as most witnesses said, appeared to be coming down from the sky) and that in a couple of seconds the muddy dirt was totally dry and the sky became clear. You also mention that Lucia's mother discredited her and that the now pope minimized the "third secret"... this also might or might not be true, but you do a disservice to the podcast and your credibility by not mentioning ANY sources. In fact NOWHERE in the podcast is a source attributed to a quote or a comment made by someone. A basic requirement to have an intelligent discussion or to "debunk" anything. Without sources and a complete un-assumptious analysis, we just have to "beleive" in you. I'd rather beleive in Fatima...
I love this country... Keep up the good work.

Mario G, Miami, FL
July 31, 2008 8:56pm

Hello Skeptoid:
After reading your article, pretty much the only thing you prove is that "your" opinion of what you think happened at Fatima is, well, what should we say "skeptical."
I mean common, you say "To me ..., it's probable that if a single person at Cova da Iria told that desperate crowd that the sun looked strange, you'd have had ten thousand people agreeing "Yeah, it did look a little funky...
Huh? Are you talking about the same factual story supported by the atheistic press of the day that validated the fact that the sun exercised actions outside of cosmic laws? Nowhere did anyone say ANYTHING about the sun being "Funky." Those are "your" biased prejudiced words that ignore empiracle evidence.
Examine the eyewitness testimony by believers and unbelievers alike that were present that day. Most importantly the anti clerical press supported the eyewitness accounts of everyone there. If you think all these eyewitness testimonies amount to nothing then you know nothing about testimonial jurisprudence. If this were a court of law, clear and based on press and eyewitness testimony, it would be an open and shut case validated the events of the day.
But alas, we are reminded that your name is what- Skeptoid- which I believe can only mean people shuld be skeptical of anything YOU say!
Next time try to keep an open mind and be a little more tolerant of the truth!

Emanuel, Los Angeles, Ca
August 01, 2008 7:30pm

Sorry Emanuel, but eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. When people witness something that elicits an emotion it is most likely going to be exaggerated to the Nth degree, much like the acts of cannibalism in the recent bus beheading we had here in Canada.
Something like this sun "miracle" is akin to mass hysteria, where one person sees something gets over exited and then excitement bleeds into the next person moving thorough the crowed much like a wave "infecting" everyone the believers and the non alike.

My biggest question about this "miracle" is if it really did happen then why didn't the entire world see it? If the sun really did change shape, color and move around I can't see why people on the other side of the world, or even the next city, town, village or gorram hamlet over didn't see it too. I'm sorry but there is more evidence against this "miracle" then for it.

Nicki, Calgary,Canada
August 02, 2008 4:10pm

Here's an account by a science professor.
http://www.fatima.org/essentials/facts/miracle.asp

"The most astonishing thing was to be able to stare at the solar disc for a long time, brilliant with light and heat, without hurting the eyes or damaging the retina."
[Or so he thought.]
"During the solar phenomenon, which I have just described, there were also changes of color in the atmosphere. Looking at the sun, I noticed that everything was becoming darkened. I looked first at the nearest objects and then extended my glance further afield as far as the horizon. I saw everything had assumed an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color..."

Yeah, he describes burning his retina. If you stare at the sun, you'll see the same thing, but I don't recommend it.

Max, Boston, MA
August 02, 2008 4:31pm

Emanuel, anecdotes are not allowed in science. If I get two of my friends to say that they saw an invisible pink unicorn (that farts rainbows, obviously), is it true? If I get 10? A thousand? 10 million? At what number is it crazy ranting, and at what number is it truth?

The plural of anecdote, is not evidence.

Damon, Johannesburg, South Africa
August 03, 2008 10:25am

Max...so a science professor cannot be blinkered by his religious faith? This hardly gives any credence to the truth claims of the Fatima miracle...

Bob, Winnipeg
August 03, 2008 3:54pm

Bob,

I wasn't being sarcastic when I said the professor described burning his retina. First everything turned dark, then everything turned amethyst because he burned his cones. A few posts back, I posted a news story from last February about people damaging their eyes from staring at the sun.

Max, Boston, MA
August 03, 2008 9:26pm

If you read the original early statement made by the children - which are still available nowadays in a Fatima bookshop, in Portuguese only - you get the distinct impression that they have witnessed a close encounter.

And how weird is that, having an improbable UFO encounter as an alternative to a divine miracle?

Antonio, Lisbon, Portugal
August 11, 2008 12:44pm

You've not really been fair, impartial and honest in your account. For one thing there were a significant number of sceptics, journalists and even atheists and freemasons who had gone there to mock. It is silly to say that only the devout had attended, though I grant you that they were in a majority. These sceptics, journalists also witnessesed the miracle of the sun.

The ground when they arrives was soaking wet and they were all standing in mud with wet clothes. After the miracle the entire crowd found themselves dry. How did they imagine that?

A number of witnesses who were not in the field at Fatima but working in fields up to tens of kms away also witnesses the Sun moving and dancing. This really puts pay to any mass hallucination theory.

Greg, London
August 12, 2008 5:48am

Great analysis of the miracla but as with all miracles, false or true, they can not be explained with logic and reason that's why they are miracles. I have noticed that even two people who have a religious encounters whatever its kind can have diffent experiences, it all depends on one personal background! So one person can see the son dance while the other sees nothing.

Mirko di Wallenberg, Wallenberg
August 14, 2008 1:12am

i think you got the third secret wrong. it talks about a "white bishop" getting killed, which people related to pope john paul II's murder attempt, which occurred in the day of our lady of fátima: may 13.

I watched the beatification ceremony on the telly, specifically the part when they revealed the third secret, and i remember the guy talking about a "white bishop" getting killed. maybe he said a little more, but i wasn't rly that interested

Johny, HAR!
August 14, 2008 3:34pm

I was a Pagan for 17 years. From the start I tried to debunk my faith, but always was hung up on the collective nature of the spiritual experiences we had: seeing spirits or mystical energies which were identical, and the like. Then, one Halloween, I faked a rite. I departed from our inherited rites, substituting my own. "Miraculously" everyone saw exactly the same, utterly invented sights. No drugs were involved, just classical conditioning. I banked on the expectations of the participants. I am no longer Pagan. I strongly suspect miraculous events are much like my contrived one.

Jason, Saint Louis, MO
August 30, 2008 8:27pm

People always want to see what the group sees.... this is so anti-human to me... we put so much emphasis on independence and freedom, and then completely surrender it, if it is not what the group wants.

Wouldn't it be wierd if humans were solitary instead of social creatures??

Dan, North Carolina
September 26, 2008 9:02am

There is an easily verifiable evidence in that episode. A secular newspaper is said to have a mocking tone before the event. But it became more respectful after.
Verify this and if it is so, how would you explain the change?

Pio Yap, Tacloban City, Philippines
October 05, 2008 6:17am

Pio - if it is easily verifiable, would you mind posting a link to the material?

Thanks.

An anecdote "said to have..." isn't really evidence.

Brenton, New Zealand
October 05, 2008 4:36pm

The newspaper O'Seculo was apparently quite a secular newspaper at the time; and at the very least its account of the miracle itself does not conflict with what the people saw:

"Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people."

That's from Wikipedia, as quoted in John De Marchi's /The Immaculate Heart/. I'm afraid I don't have an actual newspaper citation for you, but I can tell you /TIH/ has been interesting reading so far.

Also, nowhere in this article has anyone dealt with the prediction itself.

Also, assuming Lucia's account of things is even half-way accurate...these children wouldn't do what they were doing as a game. Their penances were things most monasteries wouldn't touch. So yeah, it's _possible_ they were deluded, but they musth ave been deluded at least. Childrens' games don't lead them to fast and thirst in the hot sun during lunch, or wear cords around their waist to bed until the 'hallucination' tells them to stop.

I'm not saying for sure it was a miracle. I am saying that this post definitely doesn't cover all the evidence, and it's way too quick to wave away De Marchi's account of things.

D.L., Portland, OR
October 14, 2008 12:30pm

Falsified by the photographic evidence? The author claims this, but does not make a credible case for the claim. How can a still photograph falsify claims of a dancing, spinning, colorful sun? Sounds like bias to me. A non-proliferation of opened, in-use umbrellas in the crowd also proves nothing.

Ned Jacobs, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
October 29, 2008 11:42am

The fact that people up to 40 miles away observed the same thing is ignored. Your argument that people were all there expecting to see something does not hold up. Also, the people present were of MANY different backgrounds; not all miracle-seeking Catholics, as you suggested.

Kyung, Ohio
November 12, 2008 3:34pm

Can you prove it? Cite an article please.

Until then your claims are meaningless.

Joseph Furguson, Brawley Ca
November 19, 2008 7:33pm

Thank you for your article. Since I am not Catholic I have the freedom to say the Fatima events also seem dubious to me; but a wonderful vehicle for Fatima tourism dollars and for the church's case as the one true church, however misguided.

Conrad, China
November 30, 2008 5:31pm

As a very skeptical person myself if I was told that a miracle, UFO or spagetti monster was going to appear somewhere close I'd probably go check it out. Because thats what a real skeptic would do. So your point about only religious people being present is an estimation and should be nullified. So what were these contradictory accounts? Did a large Portuguese population in 1917 own umbrellas? How is assuming what people saw was due to them staring into the sun too long considered a science? If you were outside a someone suggested that a cloud looked like Barbara Walters nose would you agree just because they suggested it? Where is your impirical evidence backing up any of your theories? Wouldn't a skeptic or atheist be just as biased to disprove and disbelieve this occurence just as much as a devout Catholic? How can you say you easily "explained" this "miralce" when most of your evidence is based on your own personal assumptions? Whether their is God or not when will realize there isnt always going to be an easy explanation for everything, and that there are some things BEYOND our understanding at this point in time.

Luke, Washington DC
December 01, 2008 9:41pm

One of the strongest pieces of evidence that I find convincing, which you don't deal with, is the fact not all of that large crowd were "worshipers" as you describe them. Among that crowd were a number of skeptical newspaper reporters who had basically ridiculed the children's claims beforehand and were there to disprove their predicted miraculous prediction. I believe that to a person they all agreed that that day the sun did something truly amazing. People like that aren't typically ones you would think would get swayed by the mass hysteria you theorize happened. For them their sole purpose for being there was to prove that nothing miraculous happened but I repeat in their articles which followed they all stated that something tremendous DID happen.

Mark M, Long Island. NY
December 04, 2008 1:23pm

Here some words for the faithful to consider.
Heliocentric.
Inertia.
Momentum.
G force.

Still, if god did it, he would have been able to counter these inconvenient scientific realities.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour plain, Australia
December 04, 2008 6:05pm

Haha. Your name is vanderLubbe!

Luke in DC and Mark in Long Island know what they are talking about. Do you really think skeptics are going to see different colours from looking at the sun too long and then admit something amazing happened. Really?

Will Skrebels, London
January 19, 2009 9:31am

Ho, ho, yes, it is! Would you like to join my silly name club? You seem eminently qualified.

Marius vanderlubbe, nullabour Plain, Australia
January 19, 2009 3:48pm

Fatima falls into the same class of incidents as the Cottingley Fairies and the Witches of Salem, Massachusetts: little kids joking around; ignorant, autocratic grown-ups taking them seriously; and the kids not daring to confess they were joking because of the trouble they'd be in with the grown-ups if they confessed. When the whole credulous world believes the story, they really, really don't dare come clean. I feel sorry for the kids who are taken seriously where they ought not to be. But I suspect Lucia Santos came clean when she spoke with Albino Luciani, who supposedly emerged ashen-faced from a private meeting with her and then died soon afterward, even though he was in perfect health! The true "Secret of Fatima": "We were only playing around!"

Joseph, New York State
January 24, 2009 10:23am

I'm not a papist and am tempted to agree with the skeptics, but there were dozens (if not hundreds) of non-pilgrims, and even non-catholics in attendance, and the event occured nearly to the hour that the children said it would--quite odd. A newspaper editor (not a catholic) described it, with the vivid colors, sun spinning etc. It <i>might</i> have been a wild sun-dog (seen in the desert, or sometimes in high clouds at sunset, or mountains, usually in winter), or perihelion or some atmospheric effect, but the descriptions do not sound like that.

That said, even if one grants something very strange and extraordinary occured, that does not mean it is a "theological miracle": why rule out..... Aliens? Some bizarre collective hallucination? A quantum anomaly involving light....or even....demonic? (that Fatima occurred near the end of the brutal WWI, the rise of the Bolsheviks, etc also interesting). Fortean considerations might be as of much assistance as the padres' views. On the other hand, who's to say Mary and christ weren't themselves some strange or perhaps extra-terrestial beings? Unlikely, but if the reports of Fatima were accurate (as it appears), some extraordinary explanation is required as well.

Perezoso, LA CA
January 29, 2009 8:21pm

From Wikipedia:

"Many years after the events in question, Stanley L. Jaki, a professor of physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, Benedictine priest and author of a number of books reconciling science and Catholicism, proposed a unique theory about the supposed miracle. Jaki believes that the event was natural and meteorological in nature, but that the fact the event occurred at the exact time predicted was a miracle."

Jeff, Houston
February 23, 2009 3:01pm

So this is what I'm tripping on. Why is it that I can only find ONE picture of the sun during this so called "miracle". It was supposed to have lasted around 10Mins and there were over 70,000 people watching! Photography was an affordable and common practice in 1917. Even the quality of the single picture shows that the camera in use was a piece of shit or out of date. The first color photographs were taken almost 50 years prior to that year and for some damn reason all we have of this "massive" and "inspiring" event is is this black and gray blur. I mean if anything there had to be newspaper photographers there whose very job was to capture the event. Why does more of this evidence not seem to exist?

Toki, Long Beach, CA
March 22, 2009 12:02pm

Look everybody,
Like it says in scripture "even if someone came back from the dead, they would not believe."
There isn't ANY miracle that would convince you, because you have not left open your brain and intellect, but have shut it off with a prior decision.
There were plenty of reporters and scoffers there, and people who came to make fun. ALL of them left shaken. And 70,000 witnesses. What more do you want? You do not trust other people to tell the truth, probably because you are afraid of what the truth will tell you. Revisit this event with less pre-judgement. Why persist in fantasy?

joe, maryland
April 03, 2009 11:40pm

I have nothing to say about this Fatima thing. I've given Christianity a second look after discovering what has been done to our culture. I see that on your website, you have an entire stock of readers who share your opinions about 9/11.

That particular event is not that important in the grand scheme of things. It is a dot on the timeline of the global totalitarian takeover by the descendents of the shareholders of the East India Trading Company as well as various collaborators along the way.

Do you idiots really think that during the 17th and 18th centuries, while America was still wide open and barely developed, that the immeasurably wealthy royalty and gangsters let the land of opportunity develop without them? Oh, you thought they lost all their money? You thought they were loyal to nations? You thought the government and the fed are legitimate? Oh, poor baby. You go back to sleep and your mother and I will take care of everything.

Dave, Dallas
April 27, 2009 11:02pm

The miracle of sun is not clear enough?
+
Just wait the promised miracle of Garabandal...

Alejandro Villarreal, México, Distrito Federal
May 05, 2009 6:44am

I am in the process of losing my faith. The only remaining bits of it are held by this kind of miracle, where you have tons of people agree on something. I liked your explanation of the mass hallucination and predisposition but it still makes you wonder... thousands of people made it up?

There could be other explanations though... this was a small town, a couple of intelligent priests could have fabricated a lot of the evidence... but to go against thousands of people in the 20th century still seems far off...

I really want to dismiss this story with skepticism, but it's not the easiest one to dismiss.

Henry, Houston
May 12, 2009 11:54am

The Miracle of the Sun is real. I'm a 33 year old attorney (med. mal. defense). When I was 10 or 11 (1985 or 1986), my parents took my siblings and I to Medjugorje because my mother heard that Mary was appearing to children like she had done at Lourdes and Fatima.

My father was not religious (he thought Jesus was merely a good man), but agreed to take us if he got to visit Rome, Paris, etc.

While Mary was appearing to the children inside a building near the Catholic Church, crowds gathered outside to pray the Rosary. My father (cardiologist in Baton Rouge) warned us not to look at the sun no matter what the crazy people said because it would permanently damage our eyes. While the crowd of a few hundred prayed the Rosary, my siblings and I were bored to tears.

Out of nowhere, my little brother, who was about 4 years old, clung to my mother's legs, started crying and pointed at the sun. We all looked up (my father even eventually looked up), and all six of us saw the miracle of the sun.

It lasted for about 30 minutes. It looked as if a host (or Eucharist) was dancing in front of the sun. The rays of the sun could be seen behind the sun. The sun even moved at times and appeared to pulsate and come closure to the earth. We could all look directly at the sun the entire time. The entire crowd was astonished. My father was the most impressed because he was the biggest skeptic. Ever since that day, my father has been a devout Catholic that goes to daily mass.

Eric Edward Helm, Esq., Baton Rouge, LA
May 14, 2009 3:16pm

Read this account, sceptics:

http://www.fatima.org/essentials/facts/miracle.asp

And as for the size of that crowd, look at this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBIs8cuIwTo

Some of the scenes are reminiscent of Woodstock, touted at the time to be the largest peacetime gathering in history. I say 'reminiscent' because I was there. And of course, even in a huge gathering like that, there are empty spaces; there's an edge where one can wander off and be relatively alone. Some of the Fatima photographers seem to have found such clearings for doing their work, but not all.

Bill

Bill, Falls Church, VA
May 23, 2009 6:53pm

You seem very sceptical of the contemporary newspaper reports. What I find most compelling, is that the miracle was reported in secular, anti-clerical newspapers - how could these have been displaying religious credulity?

You can read some of the contemporary accounts here. http://www.overcomeproblems.com/fatima.htm

The most compelling is surely the article in the anti-Church "O Secolo". Granted, in this account, it is evident that on the day the witnesses diverged in their descriptions of what they saw, but nobody describes a non-event in this fashion. Clearly, something miraculous happened to the sun on that day, and this was attested to by everyone, who then tried to explain in language just what it was they saw. Your empirical approach is narrow - thus it ignores the fact that this happened on the very day which the children predicted.

Jane Teresa, Bradford
May 25, 2009 1:29am

Everybody:

Please read this peer-reviewed paper:

http://www.meessen.net/AMeessen/MirSun.pdf

The guy experimented with the miracle himself (i.e. by staring at the Sun for a while) and he describes most of the effects seen by people (explained by retinal burn and image persistence). I wanted to believe, but now I tend to agree with the guy... the mind is a powerful thing.

Henry, Houston
May 26, 2009 9:18am

I think that the miracle of the sun was a real, physical event. A large disc shaped object spinning in the sky between the earth and the sun will produce the effect of the sun "spinning". The sun at Fatima was described as a metallic disc. I have seen a photo of the "spinning sun" taken in Conyers, GA, where Nancy Fowler reportedly had visions of Mary, and you can clearly see what looks like a metallic disc, which has markings like a communion wafer, spinning in front of the sun. What is behind this, one can only speculate. Is it a miracle? Well, it certainly increases the faith of hundreds of people. Someone, somewhere wants us to believe. Is it from God? Well, to quote scripture "a house divided against itself cannot stand".

Joseph, Atlanta
May 26, 2009 7:04pm

If you've seen a picture, then it must be true, since nobody fakes pictures. Could you upload the picture? Thanks.

Henry, Houston
May 27, 2009 10:51am

how do you explain skeptics, agnostics, and atheists there who also reported seeing something extraordinary? They were obviously not "preconditioned" as posibly the "believers" were. There were also witness accounts from university professors and doctors, people who I think are not likely to fall for mass hysteria and illusion...

Peter, new albany/indiana
May 27, 2009 2:01pm

Peter, I have heard of these impartial witnesses too... I have read several testimonials but scattered in questionable websites.

I'm having a hard time finding their testimonies on the web (I mean the respectable professors and doctors).
Could you point me to some of them? I'm really interested in contacting them directly if possible.

Thanks.

Henry, Houston
May 28, 2009 10:24am

Henry, the accounts of the people I mentioned can be found in the book, "True Story of Fatima" by Father John de Marchi..among the skeptical witnesses were the following: Avelino de Almeida, a celebrated Lisbon journalist for the paper "Seculo", Professor Almeida Garrett of Coimbra University, and probably most interesting was the account of Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, a noted eye specialist in his day, also interesting was the account of a Portuguese poet, Alfonso Lopez Vierira, who was more than 20 mi away at his home and reported seeing the extraordinary sights...

Peter, New Albany, IN
May 28, 2009 7:12pm

It seems like after reading all the posts so far, there are 3 possibilities (that I can think of):

1. The miracle happened. The Sun did not physically move (since we would be dead) but the people present saw imagery produced by God (Or the Sun did move but God kept its physical effects unchanged for a while).

2. The miracle did not happen, and mass hallucination/predisposition accounts for the witness reports (as suggested by skeptoid).

3. The miracle did not happen, maybe a few saw something and exaggerated it. The only accounts we have conveniently happen to come from a priest who "gathered" them years after the fact. How credible is this evidence? You decide.

I lean more towards 3. Today, I would prefer separate accounts from CNN, the BBC and FOX news or something.

Henry, Houston
June 02, 2009 3:46pm

Henry..re your explanation #3, I acknowledge that the priest could have had his own motives...however you seem to dismiss the fact that agnostic journalists were THERE, witnessed the events, and reported them directly in their newspaper accounts, which in that time were generally anti-religious...I suggest that if you're interested, research newspaper accounts of that event to get a more unbiased view..and re todays' CNN, FOX news, etc, they all have their own biases and although they are not as bad now, sometimes their biases are very obvious...

Pete, New Albany, IN
June 02, 2009 5:09pm

Peter, I'm agnostic myself and even I'm skeptical. I am a very imaginative person. You can't even put me in a creepy house or I'll start tripping and jumping at every sound I hear.

I WILL check out that book, but there is no really good evidence that the "miracle" happened. The logical explanations fit this situation much better than the supernatual explanation.

When you look at the sun for a few seconds, it does screw up your eyes. And if everyone around you is euphoric, you might lose yourself in that group and become euphoric, too. (Google mob psychology) And even if the Sun did do something strange, that doesn't necessarily prove that a God had something to do with it like the Catholics believe. It would just be a mysterious occurence.

My problem is that only the people in the area saw that occurence. Other people around the world didn't. The sun should have "jumped" for everyone, not just the people who were EXPECTING something to happen. And the people EXPECTING something to happen could have been religious or non-religious, prestiguous or non-prestiguous.

P.S. Did you notice that the kids made up wild stories all of the time? It wasn't just that one prediction like a lot of Catholics claim. There is a problem when important facts are left out of the story. That is not truthful and it makes the story seem less credible.

Mar, Georgia
June 07, 2009 12:19am

Is Brian Dunning really serious in writing this article above? His line of reasoning in picking out bits and pieces of any account of a mysterious occurance (Fatima or any other alleged remarkable report)and putting his own bent on it is really no different to those fanatical followers of religious cults or conspiracy theorists who pick and choose bits out of Nostrodamus to predict the Second-Coming or Doomsday is imminent. Brian, if something remarkable really does occur, you will always spin an argument why is didn't occur or must have been something else. It is a mentality of naive denial. Sorry to be so blunt but if you ever do find the truth you will never be able to accept it, whatever it is.

John, Sydney, Australia
June 07, 2009 8:33pm

John, can I refer you to episode 134 - "Who is closed minded, the skeptic or the Believer"...

Ad Hominem attacks are a logical fallacy for a reason. I disagree with some of Mr Dunning's assertions (in other episodes) but the correct response would to point why I think the argument(s) are invalid or incorrect, not make pointless attacks on character.

Adrian, Brisbane, Australia
June 08, 2009 4:16am

"Investigator Joe Nickell reports that Lucia's own mother said that she was "Nothing but a fake who is leading half the world astray."

I got this far then I realised who was leading whom astray. Lucia's mother's words have been reported by Catholic sources since 1917.

However, those words were spoken before the miracle of the sun and were later well well and truly recanted.

Would you use the the fact that Saul started out as a persecutor of Christians to demolish belief in Christ even though he subsequently became Paul the Apostle?

Faced with this disingenuous ploy I couldn't be bothered reading any further.

I will however inform Henry of Houston that some Fatima witnesses were interviewed on American Television in the early 1960s by John. M. Haffert. Obviously the Catholic Church also has innumerable witness statements.

Philip Maguire, Melbourne Australia
June 18, 2009 8:08pm

Henry:

I read Auguste Meessen's paper. He had to stare at the sun for several minutes to achieve the same effect that everyone in the crowd observed suddenly (simultaneously). Also, his theory does not explain the dry clothes, or the fact that others saw the same thing who were miles away (again, at the same time), or that the Pope saw it too (see http://www.zenit.org/article-24149?l=english). I think that certain parts of it might be able to be explained naturally; for example, the physics professor saying that everything around him assumed an amethyst color.

A natural hypothesis can't explain the dry clothes, the sudden onset, or the people who saw it from a distance. It also would seem to have difficulty explaining why the Pope saw it several times right around his infallible declaration, including on the day of the declaration itself! Meessen's theory about staring at the sun may seem to explain the duration of the event - but it leaves too much unanswered to be a complete explanation.

anonymous ..., clinton, massachusetts
June 19, 2009 7:52pm

Yes, and since anything unanswered must have a divine explanation, it must have been God.

The veracity of any of these tales does not hold up to much scrutiny. People insist that thousands of people experienced this, but we don't have all their direct testimonies. Like it was mentioned earlier, all the "evidence" comes from a priest who gathered it years later. Have you heard of pious lies? Now you have.

Meessen chose a day when the sun wasn't so strong so he had to look for a few minutes, he wasn't as crazy as to stare at a midday sun in summer. The Pope saw it too... come on, is this "independent" confirmation?

If you need to believe in these cheap hoaxes to feel your religion has any value, go ahead, it's your decision.

Henry, Houston
June 22, 2009 1:08pm

When I was a Seminarian in Spain I used to visit Fatima atleast once a year, all the seminary did. What importance this "modern day" phenomena had for us all. It still spins me out a bit: but given the fact that I left seminary and never did become a Priest and expanded my reading and education beyond the censured parameters of seminary life, I now have several major difficulties with Fatima and with Catholicism too for that matter.
Why did the Virgin Mary allegedly say to these kids that their recently deceased cousin would be in purgatory until the end of the world simply because "she had had a boyfriend!" Purgatory in Catholic dogma is no picnic: the flames are esteemed to be the same as those that burn in hell: they are just not eternal. The Virgin Mary is also alleged to have told these infants that "most people who go to hell do so because of sins of the flesh." Sex! I doubt if the Virgin Mary would have really taught such banal and antiquated morality through mere kiddies (Huhumm now declared Blesseds!) THese are the kind of sweeping judgemental statements they would have heard every Sunday at Mass and amid the village mindset. Do we want to go back to that mentality? The moral zeitgeist has moved on and as always the Church lags behind it, but even the ardent fatima heads keep quiet generally about Mary's mysterious hatred of boyfriends! Sun dance or no sundance I can't bring myself to accept this; but these miracles do require serious consideration and investigation.

Clive, Scotland
July 20, 2009 4:02pm

The "o Seculo" article with photographs was published many years after 1917 as were the witnesses statements. 70,000 people would not have waited for decades to speak out. Read the original description of the 'Lady' by the three children; 3'6" tall wearing a short skirt and white socks. We have an edited version of Fatima begining in the 1940s not 1917.

Dennis, England
July 22, 2009 8:31am

I work in the medical field. Everything is science, has an explanation. Everything. A man comes in, hypoxic. No Brain activity...eeg is flat, except for the involuntary breathing which , at best , is agonal. The man is intubated, then trached. Neurologist tells the family: this is as good as it's honna get. Make arrangements. 2 weeks later the guy is awake, talking. 2 months later, it's as though nothing had happened. I think if you have faith no proof is necessary, if you don't, no proof is enough. I have had more thatn my share of "blessings". I don't need to"see" a miracle. They exist. In patients who recover, in people with cancer who should have unbearable pain lasting till their last breath with peace and a smile and , no , they aren't medicated. So those who think they have disproved Fatima, knock your socks off. I'm educated. I very scientific and clinical, and I believe that God will do what He will do to love and teach us to be the best we can be to honor Him. And that may be the greatest miracle of them all- to learn humility. debora, cct

DEBORA M. CAME, Port Charlotte, FL
August 01, 2009 12:40pm

Henry
You wanted 70,000 written testimonies? The newspaper journalists stories mean nothing? Were they reporting fantasies so as to increase their newspaper sales?

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
August 26, 2009 6:23pm

The miracle of the sun is ludicrous. It would have been a world-wide phenomenon not an isolated one. Yet no other reports about the sun dancing. One also has to look at this being too Christian. Jesus, Joseph, Mary..the whole fairytale comes up. And it comes up to 3 kids who are already devoutly religious. Deep thought and rationality is not something one would attribute to peasant children indoctrinated with religion.
The secrets revealed were, as stated, not really big secrets. Especially when one reveals the only one that could be held up for real scrutiny after WWII started. To have secrets but not tell them is a pretty good way of not looking foolish.
Let's face it, if God wanted to make the impression he needs to make he could just appear in the sky to the whole planet. Problem solved. Instead , the big message is handed to three kids? Why not make the sun dance for the whole planet that day so when the Miracle of Fatima was mentioned the entire world would have been witness to it? But no, again, it occurs to a bunch of people engulfed in religious fervor waiting for a miracle.
Photography of the event is limited to one crappy pic when people show up expecting a miracle?
Why doesn't God heal amputees? Talk about front page news!
Myths and fairytales that still rule the world. That is the real argument against evolution! That we still cling to this nonsense by the billions.

Dave, Ottawa, Canada
September 03, 2009 7:38am

It was very clear that the solar activity that day was intended only for those thousands in that crowd.
These children were hotly questioned with dire consequences if they were not telling the truth and they remained steadfast in spite of these threats etc.
It is impossible for them to successfully conspire for such a length of time.
The crowd was composed of all types of people, doctors, agnostics, atheists, fools, idiots, but the journalists were there to debunk the fervor which had built up over the preceeding months. These reporters from Lisbon were from anti-clerical papers and reported what they witnessed.
You are posing questions about why God does'nt do this or that which is the old stand-by of atheists.
Forget the photographs, the secrets and all that followed which in no way undermines the spectacular activity that was documented that day and foretold by the children.
You would be more believable in your argument if you claimed that the children were astonomers and had computers at their disposal.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 03, 2009 10:49am

People seeing what supports their own belief system applies just as much to atheists as it does to those of a devoutly religions persuasion. We all look to validate ourselves

Robyn, Canberra, Australia
September 03, 2009 4:53pm

I think what Robyn is saying is that objectivity does not exist. As a scientist, I reject that.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 03, 2009 7:00pm

So, you Steve Leone, as a "scientist", accept that the sun danced about the sky?. Or was it the earth doing the dancing?

Did god issue the laws of physics a temporary dispensation?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour plain, Australia.
September 03, 2009 7:45pm

Steve,
Why God doesn't do this or that may be an old atheist standard but making excuses as to why God never does anything unquestionable is the old religious standard.
As for the sun dancing in the sky, diving, spinning...that would have been seen by everyone experiencing daylight.The argument that it was just for those thousands that gathered makes no sense when people up to 30 miles away supposedly witnessed it. Not to mention, the sun leaving it's place in the universe to perform for a group of people would have been catastrophic. The other argument is that that didn't really happen, it was more like a fireworks show. The sun never did anything really it was all illusion. Either way, photography existed at the time yet like Bigfoot, no pictures of any consequence or that would confirm the story.
Yes, my argument is the silly one. Floating midget gods telling secrets to little kids is far more rational.

Dave, Ottawa, Canada
September 04, 2009 6:04am

To all above that have remarked all
of us were not there for this so all we have to go by is the NEWSPAPER reports from the Lisbon press who were there and witnessed this. This must be very painful to all the so-called atheists but you will continue to be in denial I suspect even if you were in that crowd. None are so blind as they who do not want to see.
The reporters were all duped, the children were duped, the entire crowd of many many thousands all fantazized simultaneously all were duped, all conspired. Can you really question the event in an objective manner in spite of your mind set?
Who said that 10,000 Frenchmen can't be wrong? What about 70,000 Portugese?

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 04, 2009 7:27am

Scenario 1.
The sun did the dancing.
For sol to appear to dance(this implies rapid, rhythmic movement)
it would have to move visibly at least one span of its width at a clearly visible rate. The energy required to achieve this feat would indeed be of divine proportions. Indeed, a deity that can conjure everything from naught should easily be able to prevent the star from being torn to shreds by the prodigious forces of inertia and momentum that such movement, and rapid changes of direction would generate.

Ergo, God did it.

Scenario 2.
The Earth did the dancing. we do after all , live in a heliocentric solar system.
God therefore must have prevented these same inertial forces from alternately mashing us into the ground and creating tsunamis kilometers high, then flinging us of the ground at escape velocity. he obviously calmed the subsequent gravitations perturbations that almost certainly would have visibly affected the moon.

Ergo, God did it.

Scenario 3.
It never happened. It was kids making shit up, and grownups with agendas egging them on.. In this universe, that happens sometimes, Steve.
Ergo, god didn't do it.

Hard to do something when you don't really exist, but that is another debate.

Marius vanderLubbe, nullabour Plain, Australia
September 04, 2009 4:24pm

One always leaves out believers and non-believers on the scene who reported seeing nothing unusual. There is more credibility in seeing nothing happen because if you did see something why deny it? Especially when it was predicted and expected. Let's also look at the fact that if 70,OOO people were there(which I highly doubt), how many were actually interviewed? 10? 20? 50? How many reporters from non-local, swept up in the hype papers were there? Let's look at some accounts. Some say they saw the sun dancing. Others, the smiling face of the Virgin herself. Some that the sun changed colour. Others that it came down so close it could have scorched the earth! So, "witnesses" who claim different things. Zero credibility. Plus a lack of photos. Add in religious fervour and ignorance and voila!
Again, 3 peasant kids with strong religious upbringings. A vision or visions of nothing outside of their knowledge. Mary, Jesus, Joseph , an angel. The Secrets that aren't really secrets and a revelation about Russia and WWII after the fact.
Let's add the final nail to this. Visions that confirm Christianity to the letter. A clearly overblown myth that is unsupportable and a product of fantasy and ignorance. Again, a bit of reading and all religions become man-made stories and legends to try and explain what they can not explain. Myths that share common threads throughout history.
People suffer today for Falun Gong. A recent and ridiculous fantasy they swear by. Wow!

Dave, Ottawa, Canada
September 05, 2009 8:38am

I appreciate your Physics lecture in Scenario 1 and 2 Your statement in Scene 3 leaves me cold. I guess you were there after all. This tells me you did not look into the story about the 3 children or the adults involved. As a so-called atheist what else can you conclude. You are stuck in your muddle. Children have the same fantasies for 6 months, adults followed them or egged them on until many thousands somehow got involved and of course after all that, they saw NOTHING???? Do you also want to say, if you dare, that the newspaper reporters who were there to debunk the event in the first place, reported an outright LIE ??
Sun dancing or spinning or color changes and drying up the muddy soil or fireworks or UFOs or whatever, something unusual happened that day and it was fortold as such by peasant children to occur just at that time. This event is worthy of belief by any obective reasoning.
By the way, I have heard many times that there are no atheists in fox-holes. Can this be true???

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 05, 2009 11:52am

Marius Vander Lubbe > It never happened

Nice video for Marius:

http://tinyurl.com/fatima-miracle

Mike De Vito, Rome
September 05, 2009 1:13pm

Steve,
The stories differ. The witnesses don't agree on what they saw. That is hardly something that adds to the credibility. It is like 5 eyewitnesses to an alleged robbery saying the guy was Chinese, Black, a midget, a giant and a goldfish. But there was a robbery, you better believe it! If you ask somebody if they saw a movie and they never saw it they will say they did, with nothing to gain from it. To feel as though you were part of an event, a miracle? Oh, you will say you saw it. Again, what about the people there who saw nothing? They missed it? Or is this going to become one of those God chose not to reveal it to them arguments? According to the story, Lucia pointed and said "look at the sun!". Not a crowd member. A bit of a lead in. Pictures. Photography was not unheard of, even colour photography. Not a definitive photo of the event? Reporters but no photographers? Why not have 3 foot Mary appear to the gathering? Or 80 foot Mary for that matter.
Let's move to today. In a world full of video cameras, even ones in our phones..where are the miracles? They aren't happening? Why? Because they don't happen. I heard a preacher challenged with that question and his answer...Miracles are happening regularly in Africa. Really? Bit of a video camera shortage in the jungles. It is ludicrous and again..if you wanted to bring the world around..one big indisputable miracle would do it. Doesn't happen because they don't happen. And either did this.

Dave, Ottawa, Canada
September 05, 2009 2:13pm

No muddle,Steve Leone, it's all to apparent that the whole Fatima gig was some Catholic fantasy. Unless, of course, you were there yourself, and had an accelerometer.

Its a nice story, in the same way that the wolf in grandma's bed is a nice story, but it's about as factual.
Again we have an example of faith in the supernatural seeking justification in the natural world.
Never the twain shall meet, Steve. Keep it behind the doors of your church, lest it should get run over by a truck.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 05, 2009 4:12pm

Marius
You are avoiding my evidence that the journalists who were there reported the event. WHY did they do that if nothing happened.
You were not there, they were and documented the occurence whatever it was a dancing sun a UFO a sundog
Your responses are not involving the reporters and I can see why. I challenge you to say they made up that story to sell more papers or to promote tourism. It is no fun being an atheist in or out of the fox-hole. Good Luck to you

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 05, 2009 7:31pm

They made up that story to sell more papers or to promote tourism. Of perhaps brain washed children, and their brainwashed adult contemporaries made it up because it tickled their pituitary glands and released a flood of endorphins.

Thing is Steve, this part of this tale is a complete irrelevance.

What is the likelihood of an immense celestial body, Sol, or a significantly smaller celestial body, Earth, dancing about the place, with no consequent repercussions that the laws of physics would dictate.

That is the issue. Not this fixation you have with some journalists. (Are we to assume that journalists never embellish, or invent stories?)
I challenge you to describe how these alleged events occurred, without the old favorite "god did it" routine, and unless you have a pack of terriers and foxhounds, might I suggest that we leave the foxholes out of it.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 05, 2009 8:47pm

Marius
Your first sentence tells all. You simply cannot accept the fact that there is a God.
Do not buy any newspapper and do not read them as they serve only to brainwash.
You are dealing here with many thousands who were not all brainwashed who were not all idiots
who were all not fanatics.
The immense body was present in Germany, Spain, Italy, England as usual. The Fatima event was a sign from on high to confirm what the children had been saying for some
months. You are in your foxhole and cannot see outside of it because your atheism will be meaningless. Let us ban Newspapers.
Dave I wll respond soon but forget the photographic evidence and do you think like Marius that newspapers lie to their readership?

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 06, 2009 9:47am

Steve.
What is the likelihood of an immense celestial body, Sol, or a significantly smaller celestial body, Earth, dancing about the place, with no consequent repercussions that the laws of physics would dictate? How did magic guy negate the laws of physics? where was the moon during all this commotion?

Let us attempt to move past the journalistic angle, and the canis vulpesreferences, and deal with the issue.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour plain, Australia.
September 06, 2009 8:04pm

Marius
The newspaper angle is the crux of the issue. It represents the documented evidence that a phenomenon occurred in Fatima that day.
The major implication would be that there is a God. Many learned men of phycics are not atheists, you may know one of them, Albert Einstein.
Sorry the journalistic angle must remain. I know this must hurt you since you must prove that the editors and journalists conspired to lie. Amen
Dave Let me haer what your journalistic views are before we go at the other angles.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 07, 2009 7:42am

For Marius all this people are crazy...

"Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was biblical as they stood bare-headed, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws — the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people." ― Avelino de Almeida, writing for O Século (Portugal's most widely-circulated and influential newspaper, which was pro-government and anti-clerical at the time Almeida's previous articles had been to satirize the previously reported events at Fátima)

"The sun, at one moment surrounded with scarlet flame, at another aureoled in yellow and deep purple, seemed to be in an exceeding fast and whirling movement, at times appearing to be loosened from the sky and to be approaching the earth, strongly radiating heat." ― Dr. Domingos Pinto Coelho, writing for the newspaper Ordem

"The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible." ― Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 07, 2009 4:25pm

"…The silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn in the circle of broken clouds… The light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral, and spread itself over the people who knelt with outstretched hands… people wept and prayed with uncovered heads, in the presence of a miracle they had awaited. The seconds seemed like hours, so vivid were they." ― Reporter for the Lisbon newspaper O Dia

"I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment." ― Rev. Joaquim Lourenço, describing his boyhood experience in Alburitel, eighteen kilometers from Fatima

"On that day of October 13, 1917, without remembering the predictions of the children, I was enchanted by a remarkable spectacle in the sky of a kind I had never seen before. I saw it from this veranda…” ― Portuguese poet Afonso Lopes Vieira

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miracle_of_the_Sun

http://tinyurl.com/fatima-miracle

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 07, 2009 4:35pm

Did none of you faithful bother to read/listen to Brian's podcast?? Its the big block of text directly above.

If religious fervor and an inclination toward accepting the miraculous at the drop of a rosary equals crazy, they yes, Mike De Vito, they were all crazy.
This all happened too long ago to grasp any real picture of the numbers involved. Again, read what Brian has written.

What I have issue with is how Yahweh/Zeus/Marduk/Osiris managed to actually handle the sun like it was some billiard ball without feeling the need to employ those inconvenient laws of physics. You know, the ones that keep the universe nice and orderly.

Can you help me, ladies and gents?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 08, 2009 2:19am

Marius "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions" by David Berlinski is the book for you.

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 08, 2009 8:48am

Marius > any real picture of the numbers involved

For real pictures of the numbers involved:

http://tinyurl.com/fatimaphoto

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 08, 2009 9:38am

Those are nice crowds, Mike, but where is the miracle of the sun? No matter how many people believe something, or say they saw it, doesn't make it true. Evidence does. Quotes are not evidence.

Eric, Winnipeg
September 08, 2009 10:03am

Eric & Dave
I did not think it is possible to photograph the sun especially in 1917. No motion pictures exist of the event I guess because they did not know there would be any motion of anything.
I continue in a very serious way to state: forget the photos. Explain the documentation in the Lisbon papers that reported the event. Do newspapers lie? Do they report fiction? Do they conspire with chidren or the crowd?
Maybe like Marius you believe that they wanted to increase their circulation in sales and lied? Let us be logical something phenonenal happened that day as foretold by 3 peasant children. How did they know? Dave Where are you?

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 08, 2009 10:25am

Yes, it is possible to photograph the sun, even in 1917. Were a intensely bright light source dancing, you would likely get a large wiggly image against a still background. Where are such images that relate to this alleged event?

As for your continued fixation on the newspapers of the time, they are concrete evidence of a working printing press. Nothing more.

As mark crislip is want to say;
" The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data"

Marius vanderlubbe, Nullabour plain, Australia.
September 08, 2009 7:54pm

Marius
You are something. Photographs of the zig-zag motion do not exist. Newspaper documentation are just print. Therefore nothing happened. If that is the best you can do then lets stop this.
I await Dave to respond about witnesses varying in their testimony.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 08, 2009 8:23pm

Actually, Steve ol' chum, the burden of proof is not mine. Tis thine.
I am just pointing out the serious flaws in this fantastical tale.
Dave will likely say something similar about the witness testimonies. That is, they are proof of nothing other than someone can write.

You see, Steve, unlike you, we rationalists have no faith. despite what you might think, this is a good thing, as it allows us to think and act rationally. This is an issue of faith for you, thus unfalsifiable. The rotten timber that you are attempting to shore up this tale with in an attempt to legitimize it, are very falsifiable.
Namely newspaper reports.

I think you might be the one needing to do better. Either that or just let it be an act of faith for you, which requires no proof or justification. Like the rest of the Bible.
Once you cross that line of attempting to use the natural to justify the supernatural, you are presenting a lovely big target above the parapet of faith.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 09, 2009 12:59am

The witness to miracles incurs accountability. The more you know, the more you will be held responsible for...

Joh 14:11 "Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves."

John 10:37,38 "Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father."

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 09, 2009 5:00am

Marius 3:16. I'll believe anything, if you can prove it. If you cant, try the church down the road.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 09, 2009 6:33am

> if you can prove it

Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe. - Galileo

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 09, 2009 10:53am

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use

-- Galileo Galilei

Joseph Furguson, Brawley, Ca
September 09, 2009 1:37pm

In 1509 has been published the De divina proporzione ( The divine proportion - a treatise on mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture) written by Luca Pacioli, an italian mathematician and franciscan friar and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci. The adjective “divina” (divine) used in the title of the treatise referes to two deity’s characteristics: the golden section is UNIQUE and TRIPLE as the Trinity ( indefinable, irrational and invariable ). Luca Pacioli has been probably the first who used the term Sectio Aurea (Golden Section).

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 09, 2009 2:10pm

Interesting irrelevant historical trivia, Mike. What's your point?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 10, 2009 2:15am

> What's your point?

If Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe what do you think about the Quantum Mechanics?

Sacred Geometry is the key:

http://tinyurl.com/godgeometry

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 10, 2009 5:12am

I don't think about quantum mechanics, as there are only about 5 people on the planet who come close to understanding it.
This is one of the main reasons it has been hi-jacked by the supernatural brigade. They don't get it. Nor do I, but I don't pimp it out-in an attempt to justify my medieval death cult.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 10, 2009 2:56pm

> only about 5 people understanding it

All is energy:

http://tinyurl.com/mathquantum

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 10, 2009 3:54pm

So...,whats the relevance to Fatima, Mike?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 11, 2009 2:30am

> whats the relevance to Fatima, Mike?

Because the Sun is pure energy and we have the obelisk of Heliopolis (from "the city of the Sun God") at the center of the Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome:

http://tinyurl.com/sanpeter

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 11, 2009 9:12am

Well, I don't Know about everyone else, but that nails it for me.
The sun danced about the sky because there is an obelisk at the Vatican.

I guess that the image of Mary in my toast is because of the Madonna C.D in the record shop 30 miles away.

Thanks Mike, for sharing your processes of cause and effect with us.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 11, 2009 2:56pm

> Marius

Marius, do you know who you really are?

When you know that you know all the rest.

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 12, 2009 3:23am

On this planet we have thousand of animal species but only the human being have consciousness.

Do subatomic particles have free will?

We are God.

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 12, 2009 7:47am

Your neibours in Vatican city have a word for that, Mike.
Heresy.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
September 12, 2009 2:54pm

I'm not priest but pysicist and for me it would be impossible for atoms to adhere together to form molecules - in, say, a finger - unless there were some "organising field” behind or before the atoms that could hold them to their form....

Mike De Vito, Rome, Italy
September 12, 2009 3:35pm

Have a look at this link, Mike.
Though as a physicist, I would have thought that you would be familiar with the four fundamental forces.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/funfor.html

I think you will find that is what hods your finger together.
Note the lack of obelisks, free will and deities.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 14, 2009 3:03pm

Marius -> you would be familiar with the four fundamental forces.

For Freemasons like Newton and Einstein the only force in the universe is the The Great Architect of the Universe. From one point.

Robert Da Silva, New York
September 18, 2009 4:30pm

I don't recall freemasonry being relevant to this discussion, but since you brought it up, what is that one point, Robert?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 19, 2009 3:49pm

The symbol of The Great Architect of the Universe is the Sun at the center twelve constellation while the New Testament describes twelve apostles of Jesus....

Robert Da Silva, New York
September 20, 2009 7:55am

None of us know with 100% certainty whether or not God exists. However if God does exist, then certainly He would be capable of suspending or altering the laws of physics, or doing anything else for that matter. To try to analyze scientifically why something is not possible is only valid from a human perspective...

petras, new albany, in
September 20, 2009 6:19pm

My neibour's daughter has twelve "my little ponies", Robert. She loves those little cuties.

I guess that only adds substance to your belief. How can one argue with such logic?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 20, 2009 8:05pm

Marius Vander Lubbe > has twelve "my little ponies"

Scientifically the Jungian Archetypes and the "Pattern-Recognition" is symbolic process of creation from circle to triangle to square, to physical volume through the Platonic Solids. In the Platonic Solids dodecahedron represents unconditional love. Unconditional love by itself is the sweetest blissful experience. It is a necessary step toward realizing Christ Consciousness.

Matilde Young, Alabama
September 21, 2009 3:59am

~ > In the Platonic Solids dodecahedron represents unconditional love...

This is True !!

Salvador Dali and The Sacrament of the Last Supper:

http://tinyurl.com/dalidodecahedron

Robert Boile, Washington
September 21, 2009 2:42pm

Marius > How can one argue with such logic?

Ironically today we have atheistic legend and scientific proof:

[ ... ]It was this psychoid aspect of the archetype that so impressed Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Embracing Jung's concept, Pauli believed that the archetype provided a link between physical events and the mind of the scientist who studied them. In doing so he echoed the position adopted by German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Thus the archetypes which ordered our perceptions and ideas are themselves the product of an objective order which transcends both the human mind and the external world. [ ... ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes

Robert Da Silva, New York
September 22, 2009 6:51am

So, you guys come to some sort of agreement yet?

Dave, Ottawa
September 22, 2009 7:53pm

I cant agree with what the faithful are saying because I have absolutely no idea what they are trying to say, and I strongly suspect, neither do they. I guess when you just make stuff up, you can say whatever you want. It all has the same value.

"The sun danced in the sky because I washed my whites with my colours this morning"

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 23, 2009 7:34am

Marius
It is noteworthy that the sun appeared at just that moment in time. These children may have been at least meterologists if not astronomers. Of course this is an amazing coincidence. Also you must say that journalists headline lies,
the crowd of many thousands simultaneously hallucinated, and that in this huge crowd that looked into the sun nobody went blind nor did anyone even hurt their eyes. All this is conviently dismissed because it has to be or otherwise atheism becomes meaningless. Faith is fine but evidence strenghtens faith. I hear that there was a child hydrologist at Lourdes. But that is another story.
Good Luck

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 23, 2009 7:41pm

I heard there was a child herpetologist in the Garden of Eden, but what does that prove?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 24, 2009 2:52pm

Is that the best you can do? 1917 is yesterday, historically speaking
To you and your ilk nothing can be proven because anything at all that can be proven will undermine atheism. You cannot have this happen.
Where is this Garden of Eden anyway? I am talking real places on this earth not fairy tales.
My best to you.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 24, 2009 6:12pm

Anything can be proven to myself and my "ilk" (I assume you mean rational, logical folk)with what we like to call good evidence. repeatable, observable, quantifiable and actual. An indeterminate number of prepossessed to belief people staring at the sun? Well, I used to do that as a kid, and it was a unusual effect. The sun did appear to oscillate strangely, but there was no holy hand spinning that celestial top, I assure you.

Refreshing to hear that you think the garden of Eden a fairy tale.
As do I.
Why then is the garden of Eden a fairy tale, yet the sun dancing in the sky, despite our extensive knowledge of the laws of physics, not?
This undermines my atheism in the same way as a bridge spans a river.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 24, 2009 7:47pm

Marius, there is also this complication:

...Well, the day and the hour had been foretold three months earlier by three little shepherds, who claimed that a Lady from heaven was appearing to them. They had got a lot of hassle from friends and neighbours and had asked the Lady to give a sign so that everyone would believe. She promised to give a sign at noon on October 13th, 1917.This was why over 70,000 people, including newspaper reporters, had gathered there on the eventful day...

Robert Boile, Washington
September 25, 2009 5:37am

Marius
It is clear that you and your group will and must deny anything about the documented story on Fatima. Yes you realize that this event more than any other destroys atheism because of the huge numbers of people involved. As I have ststed before you are in denial. There is no hope in proving anything to you even if you were there in 1917 you would deny that anything happened. Irrational hard hearts will never soften regardless of the overwhelming documented evidence.
Yes keep looking directly into the sun maybe you will see the light or remain blind to all the evidence.
Maybe we can meet in the Garden of Eden someday.
My best to you

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
September 25, 2009 8:16am

Marius, what do you think about the "Miracle of the Sun" at Heroldsbach?

The sun miracle on Dec. 8, 1949 with 10.000 witnesses.
The crib visions on Christmas evening 1949 and 1951.
The mystic communion.
The dug mystic source of mercy.
The holy trinity process.
The special light effects (among them a sun/light wonder sawn by 70.000 pilgrims on Feb. 2, 1950 and a light wonder on Nov. 1, 1950 when The Holy Virgin Mary appeared to the praying pilgrims). On the 9th day of the 9th appearance month, the Mother of God manifested her title for Heroldsbach as “Queen of Roses”...

www.heroldsbach-pilgerverein.de

Robert Boile, Washington
September 25, 2009 10:49am

The same as I think about any solar miracles, Robert. No one miracle is more plausible than another.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
September 25, 2009 4:15pm

Marius, how plausibile is the Sun whitout God? I think the traditional five senses don't tell the truth...

Gordon Mc John, Missouri
September 26, 2009 4:11pm

Fatima was designed to defy explanation. There's my explanation of why it doesn't have to be worldwide; if you really examine the evidence--not just what this podcast tells you about it--it seems to be pointing to something beyond what Skeptoid wants to admit.

The village 18km away? There goes auto-suggestion.
The skeptical news-reporters who reported the same phenomenon as everyone else, at least in the basics? There goes religious fervor.
The fact that the three children were ostracized for their stories and in many places looked upon as delusional? There goes "they told the stories to get attention."

The prophecies then, were legitimate, or at least sincere. The sighting happened. These people saw something, including (again) reporters for anti-clerical newspapers. It's an alleged miracle, but it's a real event. It was not suggestion or hallucination. If it be shown somehow (as if!) it were the result of some very localized phenomenon, like a sundog? Well, that's one hell of a well-timed sundog.

And is it just me, or does the variance in reported experience of witnesses make this one harder to dismiss, not easier?

Dan Lower, Portland, OR
September 28, 2009 9:42pm

"Fatima was designed to defy explanation. There's my explanation of why it doesn't have to be worldwide;"

Dan, Portland

And this is called "special pleading."

It's just a way of saying that a miraculous event/psychic power/snake oil is outside the realm of proof or evidence, and so can't be tested.

Somehow the miracle-creating super-being made the sun "dance" in the sky in this single place, but didn't fry the planet, or let anyone outside the area see it?

Since the planet didn't get nuked or freeze, and this universe operates using specific principles of physics, the sun didn't move.

Which means that, if the event actually occured as described, it was a visual hallucination-whether generated by a god, or by retinal burns. If it was merely a visual hallucination, then it's not much of a miracle.

"Well, that's one hell of a well-timed sundog."

If a bunch of people are waiting around for "something" to occur, and a sundog occurs, then the people waiting have their "miracle".

If the same bunch of people are waiting around and a rainbow occurs, then they have their miracle.

If you're waiting for a miracle, and anything at all happens, you've got your miracle.

This is little different than ghost hunters seeing "orbs" when the rest of the world sees the effect of a camera flash on dust in the air.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
September 29, 2009 9:29am

I try to avoid special pleading, and so I'll consider what you're saying. But I'm not sure it would be too much of a miracle if it were explicable in completely naturalistic terms, either. So part of my definition of a miracle is that it defy explanation; if that is special pleading than so be it.

I do not believe that I ever stipulated that the sun did in fact dance. I stipulated that something did happen at Fatima; I do believe it to have been some kind of mass-vision, and in my mind the possibilities of source generally boil down to God, the devil, or extraterrestrials.

I sort of doubt that a rainbow would have done it for those people.

Dan Lower, Portland, OR
September 29, 2009 7:02pm

"So part of my definition of a miracle is that it defy explanation;"
"I do not believe that I ever stipulated that the sun did in fact dance. I stipulated that something did happen at Fatima; I do believe it to have been some kind of mass-vision, and in my mind the possibilities of source generally boil down to God, the devil, or extraterrestrials."

I sort of doubt that a rainbow would have done it for those people.

Dan Lower, Portland, OR
------
I didn't indicate that you used the word "dance." It's just one of several words used among the eyewitness reports to describe what the sun "did."
But, as I mentioned, since the rest of the world was unaffected by the event, my position is that the sun didn't physically "do" anything, at least in the sense that its proximity, position, or composition were changed. So we at least agree that if anything "happened" it was likely a visual event, not a physical one.
But, we part company on the scource. I see no reason to choose between a god, devil, or EBEs to explain the event. I think simple euphoria, herd behavior, and meteorology are sufficient.
So, if as you suggest, inexplicability is necessary for something to be "miraculous", then I submit that the Fatima "Miracle" was not miraculous.
And, I do think that a sundog or rainbow would have been enough for two reasons:
1)They were looking for some unspecified "miracle" to occur. Anything odd would do.
2)The rainbow is described in the Bible as a sign from God. (Gen 9)

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
September 30, 2009 4:41pm

Hello Dan L
It has been my experience with atheists that there is no way for them to agree that the events were spectacular. This Fatima episode destroys atheism and they cannot allow this to happen. They have gone to great lenghts to rationalize this as mass hallucination, conspiracy, coincidences, seeking 70,000 written testimonies, children's fantasies, adult brainwashing, newspaper headlines are fiction, looking into the sun for 7-10 minutes causes no damage to the eyes, photographs show nothing etc.
They cannot accept that this was a sign from on high and that the children were indeed sincere and proven to be correct.
FATIMA DESTROYS ATHEISM

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 01, 2009 8:24am

"...that there is no way for them to agree that the events were spectacular."

Steve, Salem

Probably because we have no evidence that it WAS spectacular. A handful of black and white photos that show clouds and some people standing around. Eyewitness testimony which isn't consistent and ...
not much else.

The Battle Of Los Angeles episode provides an example of how "reliable" eyewitnesses can be, particularly if they're expecting something to happen.

Even if we agreed that anything spectacular did happen (which we don't), it says nothing about the source of the event. As Dan points out, perhaps it was the devil, or aliens. Perhaps it was a dimensional rift ala Stargate or Star Trek. Or perhaps, most likely, euphoria, herd behavior, and meteorology.

Fatima has no effect on atheism, except to give atheists one more "miraculous" event to examine and find without "miraculous" merit.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 01, 2009 8:53am

Near Des Moines
Forget the B/W photographs. Eyewitness testimony always varies, ask any investigator of a car crash or any other event. In fact if the witnesses give same exact replies, it will be viewed as suspicious.
What about the other points made such as the Lisbon reporters and of looking into the sun for several minutes with no harm to the eyes etc.??? Can you give credible responses to them ??
The key number here is 70,000 but even if only 50,000 or so. Bye

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 01, 2009 11:24am

The only way, Steve, that the alleged events at Fatima could DESTROY ATHEISM (as you so subtly put it), was by providing actual concrete repeatable, verifiable and testable evidence. Where might this be, Steve? Anecdote and a couple of photos showing nothing out of the ordinary might be sufficient for someone with a predisposition to accept the miraculous (and a corresponding lack of critical analytical skills), but as a major paradigm shifter? Bzzzzt! Fail.

Why not do what sensible believers do, and not attempt to prove or justify the unprovable and unjustifiable?
Leave it as a matter of faith, and leave the tedious real world to those who those of us who don't need invisible, psychopathic zombie overlords..

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
October 01, 2009 8:03pm

"Eyewitness testimony always varies, ask any investigator of a car crash or any other event."

Steve Leone, Salem

Which is why, to use your illustration, an investigator has to see what statements are corroborated by the other physical evidence, like tire skids, blood spray, car body damage, traffic signal sequence, etc.

But, with Fatima, all we have is the photos you ask me to ignore, and the eyewitness testimony. There is no other physical evidence that ANYTHING unsual happened.

No one even seems to have gotten film footage. All those people went there expecting a #@$%ing miracle and NO ONE, not even the CATHOLIC CHURCH had the resources to bring even one movie camera? The Bell & Howell Standard camera had been in existence since 1911 or 1912.

15 witnesses or 15,000 witnesses doesn't change the anecdotal status of their statements.

The witness statement regarding looking at the sun unharmed also has no value beyond anecdote. It's negative evidence-his only evidence is an absence of something. He either didn't look, didn't look as long as he thought, has superhuman eyes, or a miracle occured. Which seems the most likely? I'm not even suggesting deliberate fraud on his part. I could accept that he simply thought he looked longer than he did.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 01, 2009 8:34pm

The Bible records many signs that are to take place before Jesus comes.

This is the countdown to Revelation.

Simon De Martin, Brasilia, Brazil
October 03, 2009 11:48am

Lewayne
You did not respond to the headline stories of the Lisbon press whose reporters were there to put an end to the children's story for good. Did the journalists lie ? Marius says that it was just print! Can you do a little better than that?
I put much credence in the newspapers of Lisbon at that time since they were anti-clerical. To their credit they reported objectively.
The lack of motion picture cameras at that site indicates nothing. Who knew what to expect in that cloudy rainy day. The last thing would be the sun even just to emerge.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 04, 2009 6:43pm

"You did not respond to the headline stories of the Lisbon press whose reporters were there to put an end to the children's story for good."
Steve Leone, Salem

Probably because the only references I can find to those headlines are pro-miracle websites. I can't even find any refererence to O Seculo as an anti-clerical paper, except on pro-miracle websites. Even wikipedia cites de Marchi in describing the paper.
But, regardless, having read a translation on one of those sites, which I will accept was accurate since I don't read Portuguese, I think it supports my position. You have a ton of people standing around all morning in the rain, waiting for SOMETHING to happen, when the clouds part (somewhere between 12:00 and 3:00), the sun comes out. Huzzah! Water vapor and sunlight. You've just experienced prism physics.

The paper, anti-clerical or not, is still simply another anecdote with no corroborating evidence. Which brings me back to your response regarding the movie camera.
My point there is simply that film stock would have at least provided a testable support for the story. As it is, it remains, as it always has, a bunch of people who say they saw something, with NO CORROBORATING EVIDENCE. Fifty people can tell me they "saw" Bob rob a bank, but if no physical evidence puts him there, there's not much of a case. Fatima works the same way. If all you have is hearsay and some photos of people staring at a sky that looks normal, you don't have much of a case.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 07, 2009 7:50am

Lewayne
Googling Fatima Miracle, I found 2 Wikipedia entries mentioning the 3 Newspapers involved at the site. Quote (O Seculo Portugal's most influential newspaper was pro government in policy and avowedly anti clerical. The Lisbon daily, O Dia had repored the events also and the newspaper Ordem had a doctor write a comment on the event. Other people of noteworthy professions were there. In other words the huge crowd had all kinds of people there, believers and non-believers, cynics, agnostics, fanatics etc. This crowd definetly saw something whatever that was even a sundog or a UFO. A few people saw nothing. Some said that their clothes were all dry after the event. THE NEWSPAPER JOURNALISTS from 3 newspapers saw this event solar or non-solar, and reported it. Eyewitness accounts mention spinning, different color emissions, movement of this silvery disc whatever that may have been.
A comparison to our previous episode of the car crash winesses that varied in details and investigators looked for skid marks etc. BUT the witnesses all HEARD the crash. So in Fatima that rainy day at about 1:00 PM the sun appeared or a UFO or a sundog in a way that did not blind anyone and did something and not nothing. 70,000 is too large a number to rationalize away for nothing occurring. Peasant children are not meterologists. Many many times if not always, a great amount of circumstantial evidence wins a case in American courtrooms. Logic indicates that atheism died at Fatima.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 08, 2009 1:57pm

Steve, if it helps you sleep at night, and maintains the swelling, you believe whatever you want.
Lets face it, you are not about to give this an iota of rational thought.
If you think that atheism died at Fatima, then great. I'm happy for ya. Send some flowers.
The world will continue on its orbit, happily obeying the laws of physics, just as it always has.

Marius, Nullabour Plain, Australia
October 09, 2009 3:11am

Marius
Surprised that you are back. This is not science. Me and Einstein say that there is a God.
Smarter men than you and I say so.
Science has its place, experiments require testing , repeatable verifiable evidence etc. Lets wait maybe this Fatima event will recurr some day in the future to possibly convince you. Meanwhile enjoy your atheistic fantasy.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 09, 2009 7:27am

"A comparison to our previous episode of the car crash winesses (sic) that varied in details and investigators looked for skid marks etc. BUT the witnesses all HEARD the crash."
Steve Leone, Salem

No, a more accurate comparison would be, "Someone said that something might happen here. Look, did you see that crash?!"

The wikipedia entry for Fatima Miracle that refers to O Seculo quotes de Marchi. Which is what I said above. I have yet to find any other reference to any specific attribute of O Seculo that isn't part of a pro-miracle site, which is also what I said. Wikipedia's entire entry on O seculo, merely says
"O Século (lit. The Century) was a Portuguese daily newspaper published in Lisbon from 1880 to 1978.
It was established by the journalist Sebastião de Magalhães Lima, who had studied Law at the University of Coimbra. O Século was a newspaper of record, and a great rival of the Diário de Notícias."

Still doesn't change the fact that it's still a bunch of uncorroborated hearsay.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 09, 2009 11:48am

Enough with the Einstein references, Steve. They are a cheap shot, and entirely inaccurate.

Let him speak for himself;
"
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-Einstein, 1954.

http://tinyurl.com/5arbg3

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
October 09, 2009 2:17pm

Marius > ... the laws of physics ...

The Higgs boson is often referred to as "the God particle".

Robert Boile, Washington
October 09, 2009 3:12pm

"The Higgs boson is often referred to as "the God particle"."
Robert, Washington

Probably because, as wikipedia states, "Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help explain the origin of mass in the universe."

Not because it say anything about the actual existence of any supernatural creator.

There are studies that refer to the "god gene" that prompt humans to need to believe in a god. They don't actually think it's a piece of a literal deity. Neither do physicists that refer to a "god" particle.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 09, 2009 7:02pm

Marius
No cheap shot there. I have found quotes from Einstein that show that he beleived in a God that created the cosmos.
"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I with my limited human mind am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me in support of those views".
There are other statements which I am sure you know about that disconnect him from atheists.
His opinion was the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. But he did not share the crusading spitit of the professional atheist etc.
Einstein was not an atheist. I guess he maybe recognised cause an effect. But he did speak for himself many times.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 10, 2009 2:29pm

I thought it (Higgs Boson) was the "god damn particle", but that wasn't fit to print.

Glen Wolfram, Eugene, Oregon
October 10, 2009 7:42pm

"I have found quotes from Einstein that show that he beleived (sic) in a God that created the cosmos."

Steve Leone, Salem

Oh, goody. Now we get to play "my famous person quote beats your famous person quote." Whether Einstein did, or did not, believe in a god doesn't have anything to do with the reality or fantasy of a god.

It's just an appeal to authority, and has nothing to do with the Fatima "miracle."

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 11, 2009 8:19pm

Actually, private papers and other quotes suggest that Einstein was indeed an atheist. One of my favourite atheist celebrities was a devout christian for much of his life and was studying to be a preacher when the god story unravelled for him. Quotes from the first half of his life would show a personal belief he know recognizes as false.

Also, Einstein and Darwin could be proved as theists and Dawkins come out as a true believer tomorrow and it wouldn't be evidence for anything...

Adrian, Brisbane, Australia
October 12, 2009 1:20am

Every good scientist and every skeptic or agnostic in the world would fall to there knees singing hallelujahs if we had as much evidence for a deity/deities as we have for evolution and cosmology.

But we don't. So we don't.

Unlike the true believer, we have rigorous standards.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia
October 12, 2009 1:55am

On this 92nd Anniversary of the spectacular event at Fatima, I want to restate my sentiments to all.
Three peasant children under pressure maintained thier story for months. On the day fortold to them, an unexpected super event occurred which was witnessed by many thousands and reported by 3 prominent newspapers. Since these children were not meterologists and since thousands cannot simultaneouly hallucinate or be scammed by children or all agreed to conspire, one has to seriously realize that atheism just must have received one good kick in the behind. Documented evidence stands its ground. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY !!!

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 13, 2009 1:53pm

"Documented evidence stands its ground."
Steve Leone, Salem

Sure it does.
But, Fatima hasn't any. It remains hearsay, with no supporting evidence.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 13, 2009 3:14pm

Lewayne,
You say you need supporting evidence. My hunch is that regardless of what "supporting evidence" was presented, whether it was video, audio, whatever, you would dismiss it as some sort of fraud. For me the reporting of agnostic observers, not religious observers, is pretty strong supporting evidence..

petras52, new albany, In.
October 13, 2009 4:03pm

"My hunch is that regardless of what "supporting evidence" was presented, whether it was video, audio, whatever, you would dismiss it as some sort of fraud."
Petras52

No, I wouldn't dismiss it outright, because it would at least give us something to examine. As it stands, all we have is "eyewitness" testimony with no supporting evidence. There may be a lot of people who claim to have witnessed a miracle, but there's nothing to support their statements, but other statements.

Poor evidence stacked on top of poor evidence stacked on top of poor evidence does not not aggregate into good evidence solely by high numbers.

It's like a UFO encounter. It doesn't matter if the entire population of Phoenix "saw" alien ships or strange lights. The evidence is that flares from an A-10 account for their encounter. This is something that can be verified by the air boss, the pilots, the inventory control system, etc. People filmed it, the film can be examined, the encounter can be duplicated to get the same effect as displayed in the film.

Fatima has none of this.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 13, 2009 7:34pm

You write:

"Today we're going to go back in time nearly a century, to the day of one of the Roman Catholic Church's greatest miracles; indeed, an event cited by some religious scholars as not merely our greatest miracle, but perhaps the most important event in history."

Really? The greatest? I've been a Roman Catholic all my life and doubt very much I could find one person, scholar or otherwise, to support that statement. Fatima was important, but the greatest miracles are the resurrection of Christ and the institution of the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our faith.

Carolyn, Pinckney, MI
October 14, 2009 9:57am

"Really? The greatest?"
Carolyn, Pinckney, MI

Actually, many Fatima miracle sites I've looked at do refer to Fatima as the greatest miracle "outside the Resurrection" or "of the 20th century."

My guess is that the Resurrection is sort of taken for granted as miraculous, and goes without saying. With that assumption, calling Fatima the "greatest" isn't that big a stretch.

"it’s probably the greatest miracle in Catholic history outside the Resurrection. "
www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/our_lady_of_fatima.php

"Witness the greatest miracle of the 20th Century,"
The 13th Day: The True Story of Fatima DVD description

"And is it not true that the miracle of Fatima was one of the greatest miracles God worked; "
fatima.org

I don't say this to pick a fight, just to point out that some Catholics do, in fact, consider it a "greatest" miracle. So, Mr. Dunning's statement, while a bit of hyperbole, is probably a fair assessment of many Catholics' view of Fatima.

Lewayne, Near Grimes
October 14, 2009 7:07pm

Near Grimes
This is not the Lewayne near Des Moines? Two Lewaynes in Iowa -- what a coincidence, I agree with his view. It is the greatest miracle outside of the biblical era. 1917 is yesterday historically speaking. Some people who witnessed the event may still be alive. The event is immense in that so many thousands of all beliefs were present which is why I have stated with confidence that Fatims sounded the death knell of atheists. Amen

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 17, 2009 7:32am

No, this is Lewayne-Near Des Moines. It was a typing error related to something else I post elsewhere.

My point in the previous post was not that Fatima was even remotely a miracle, because as we've discussed, I don't think it is.
I merely supported Mr. Dunning's statement that many Catholics believe it is a "greatest" miracle.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 18, 2009 5:33pm

Although Brian Dunning has many very weak views as a skeptic on Fatima, he at least does not censor comments compared to others who conduct blogs. These types allow anything that will agree with their views and even when worded in a flipant or sarcastic manner that contributes nothing to the discussion. In general, I would much prefer to converse with a skeptic rather than an atheist

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 27, 2009 9:00am

"I would much rather converse with a skeptic rather than an atheist."
Steve, Salem

What about a skeptical athiest?
8-)

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 27, 2009 6:38pm

Lewayne
You have 2 rathers in your sentence that is supposed to quote me. And you misspelled atheist. I guess you are not your usual self so I will be kind.
Better still to converse with a skeptical theist.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 27, 2009 8:50pm

"I guess you are not your usual self so I will be kind."

Steve, Salem

Actually, I couldn't get the copy-paste function to copy your direct quote. Instead it copied about 500 characters worth of unrelated stuff. So, I copied it, and made a mistake. That can happen. Sort of like re-copying religious texts over and over and over. But, perhaps I simply wasn't given "divine guidance."
Yes, I mispelled "atheist." That happens every now and again, too.

As for the skeptical theists, in my discussions with those who would identify themselves as such, I find them divided loosely into three camps.
1)The ones who are only skeptical of skeptical examinations of their faith.
2)Those who are skeptical only of things they already disbelieve.
3)Those who become atheists when they realize that an objective look at their faith reveals it to be no more reality than any of the other myriad religions that exist or have existed.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 28, 2009 8:29am

Des Moines
I dare to ask: Do any of the other myriad religions have child meterologists and all be it to a lesser extent, a child hydrologist?
Please remember the crowd size and objective journalists at the Fatima event.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 28, 2009 1:55pm

"Do any of the other myriad religions have child meterologists and all be it to a lesser extent, a child hydrologist?
Please remember the crowd size and objective journalists at the Fatima event."
Steve Leone, Salem,

If you're referring to the Fatima children as meteorologists, you clearly have different understanding of the word than the scientific world has.

We've already discussed the crowd size. A mountain of cowpies remain cowpies. And as I've also already said, the only refrences I've found to O Seculo as anti-church come from Fatima miracle sites. I've yet to find anything objective that refers to O Seculo as anything other than newspaper.
For all I can determine, it was the National Enquirer of its age.

Perhaps if God quick dinking around with small populations in out of the way places and just showed up, he'd be more successful at convincing people that he existed.

Stepping out of a firey cloudstorm ala Independence Day, and making himself visible to the entire world at the same time, while performing a universe-altering miracle might convince me.

Otherwise, I have no more reason to believe in your god than I do the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
And I've seen spaghetti fly through the air.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 28, 2009 3:44pm

Close to Des Moines
Yes we have been through all this and O Seculo was not a rag like our National Inquirer. The huge crowd size had all types of people. What is a cowpie anyway? Spaghetti I know.
Your answer confirms why I prefer to deal with true skeptics who may acknowledge that there a strong possibility that skeptical journalists' reports may be objective enough to believe. Who acknowledge that massive crowd fantasies are not very possible. Children could not possibly know that the sun would appear at that time and that they were not cunning enough to deceive all that crowd of various convictions.
Skeptisism is fine as there is hope there.
My God is used all over this country:
In God we trust
So help me God
Endowed by our Creator etc.
God bless America

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 29, 2009 12:59pm

"Yes we have been through all this..."
Steve, Salem
So why keep bringing it up?
There's no actual evidence, merely the equivelent of hearsay. Lots of, but still hearsay.

Cowpie=Pile of cow $#!t

The presence of "God" in your examples also proves nothing more than the prescence of "Allah" in a Muslim country, or Buddha in an Buddhist nation.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 29, 2009 1:45pm

Nearby Des Moines

"while performing a universe-altering miracle MIGHT convince me"
My God it might just convince you? That is the reason that atheists are hard hearted, in denial with no hope. I suspect that if the sun or the moon came and hit you in the head, you would deny that it happened.
Give me a Skeptic any day. Again FATIMA destroyed atheism. Amen.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 29, 2009 4:39pm

See, here's where I think you're missing the meaning of "skeptic."
A skeptical position says, "You're the one claiming the miracle happened. Show me the EVIDENCE." It's why so many skeptics are atheists.

As we've discussed numerous times, the evidence consists of:
1)A lot of eyewitness testimony.
2)Not much else.

It's less convincing than an UFO sighting, which often has film footage and/or physical evidence that can be examined.

So, as a skeptic, I can only take the position that there's no real evidence anything miraculous happened at Fatima.

But, let's assume that you offered actual proof that a spectacular lightshow happened. Then what?
How do you make the leap from lightshow to, "God did it."?

Why couldn't it have been a natural phenomena, or a deliberate hoax ala "Scooby Doo," or aliens, or time travelers, or the devil, or Thor? What makes it proof of YOUR particular magic sky-daddy?

As for the moon or sun falling on me. That would convince me that the moon or sun fell on me. So, no I wouldn't deny that it happened.

Of course, I'd be dead, and so would the rest of the Earth's population, and in the end, it wouldn't have convinced me of the existence of your particular god...

Well, maybe if he wore a "Yahweh" nametag, and I saw him throw the moon or sun at me.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 29, 2009 5:11pm

Des Moines Area
"Why couldn't it have been a natural phenomenon" That is a skepitc's reply. Whatever it was NOTHING DID NOT HAPPEN that day. The newspaper headlines did not bring about any rebuttals from those in the crowd who were non-believers, cynics etc. Surely if nothing occurred they would be the first to deride the entire story. I have not seen any anti-event reports from witnesses, but only from those who were not there like yourself seeking evidence such as 70,000 testimonies or motion picture film which in 1917 those movie cameras were tripod held bulky hand cranked contraptions to lug and film in the rain what they did not know what was to happen?
The American hand held Bell & Howell camera of common usage was much later on especially in Portugal.
Skeptics would say that there is a good possibility that something unsual occurred: UFO, Sundog, ??? etc. Atheists say Hearsay, Anecdotal, Cowpies, Bareheaded fools looking at the sun, children tell wild tales, newspaper reports mean nothing etc.
The 3 sheperd children were right on. NOTHING DID NOT HAPPEN
God Bless

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 30, 2009 3:01pm

"Why couldn't it have been a natural phenomenon" That is a skeitc's (sic)reply."

Steve, Salem

Yes, it is. Because the first thing any skeptic is going to look for is whether the event actually happened.(Bell Witch/Amityville) Whether it hapened as described. (Borely Rectory)
Can it occur naturally and is it repeatable?
The default skeptical position isn't "It must be a miracle."
It's entirely possible something amazing happened that day. So far, I haven't seen any testable evidence for it.
Even, as I said above, if we agreed that something unusual happened, that's still a huge leap to "It was my God."
I know you can't accept that, but there it is.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 30, 2009 3:35pm

Des Moines
We are maybe getting close now. If we can agree that something unusual happened at that foretold time, then I will leave the conclusion to you as to any leap you want to make. To me it supports the children's experiences of those few months prior to the event. My leap is clear. Your leap if any is up to you but please spare us the answer that it was a coincidence.
In God We Trust

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 30, 2009 5:28pm

"If we can agree that something unusual happened at that foretold time, then I will leave the conclusion to you as to any leap you want to make."
Steve, Salem

But, unless you have something better than hearsay, we're not going to agree on even that...

What if my "leap" is aliens? Or the Devil? Or a whatever other stuff I suggested?
What about that event "proves" anything about YOUR particular god?
That's the thing you don't seem to get...
As I've said before, even if we agreed that anything unusual even happened it says nothing directly about god. What if the entity that "spoke" to the children was really a minion of the devil, since he's the master of deceit? Or an alien who wanted to lure a bunch of credulous people to a spot where their brainwaves could be analyzed? Why are these possiblities somehow any weirder than that the big magic sky-daddy sent a message to three kids that he was going to activate the cosmic lightshow and move the sun around while not affecting the rest of the planet.
(For the record I think they're all equally unlikely.)

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 30, 2009 8:24pm

Des Moines
Hearsay has been discredited by virtue of no contrary headlines or testimonies from witnesses. The devil is a fine alternate but then it means that there also exists a counter being: GOD.
Aliens or other stuff OK so that would be the skeptic in you. Since 3 children were involved as they were, my leap would be in line with a God. Your leap if you are leaping is up to you.
Frankly I don't think you want to take any leap. You are in effect stuck on that nothing actually happened that day.
It maybe true that we cannot prove that God exists especially to atheists but it is also true that atheists cannot prove their view. Theists have the better more favorable shot which is another long story for another time.

"Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" etc.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
October 31, 2009 1:47pm

"Frankly I don't think you want to take any leap. You are in effect stuck on that nothing actually happened that day."

No leap because I've seen nothing to convince me otherwise, and I've outlined why... repeatedly.

"It maybe true that we cannot prove that God exists especially to atheists but it is also true that atheists cannot prove their view."

But, the burden of proof would be on the one making the extraordinary claim-the theists. Given that a literally atheist position is simple disbelief, it's not an affirmative postion to "prove." It's no different than not believing in Santa. I don't have to prove he doesn't exist. He may exist, or not, but I'm the one putting presents under the tree.

""Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" etc."

Proves nothing. The number of people who believe in anything has little do with the reality of it.
You may think Newton was a little weird, but if you fall off your roof, you fall to the ground anyway.
I'm pretty sure that the increasing number of nonbelievers wouldn't convince you that they were "right." (Even though they outnumber just about every individual religious category but the Christians and the Muslims worldwide.)

You act as if I was just born an atheist. But, like many atheists, I was raised a believer. Then I finally read the operator's manual and realized it wasn't very useful for life in the 20th, now 21st, century.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
October 31, 2009 9:33pm

Close to Des Moines

Do I have this correct? You agree that something unusual happened but do not have evidence that it came from on high as a sign to those people present.
Or you are saying that nothing happened.
By the way many people still deny that the holocaust occurred!!! Sometimes evidence is not enough.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
November 02, 2009 7:51am

No, you don't have it correct.
As I've said numerous times-I don't see any evidence that anything unexplainable happened that day at Fatima. It rained, the sun came out, and someone said "Oh, look, a miracle."
Huzzah!
My point, when I've said "Even if we assume something unusual happened...", is exactly that- "EVEN IF..."

Nice sideways shot at throwing Nazis into the discussion with the Holocaust denial snark. Always a favorite debate techinque when one runs out of things to say.

The difference between Fatima and the Holocaust is that actual testable EVIDENCE for the Holocaust DOES exist. The Nazis were good at record keeping, memos and messages still remain regarding the camps, some of the camps still remain standing, photographs and film footage still exist that can be reviewed and studied, people still survive with inventory tattoos on their arms.

Fatima has none of this, unless you count a handful of pictures of people looking at the sky.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 02, 2009 8:34am

Des Moines
OK You are saying that something explainable happened. Correct?
Or again are you saying Nothing happened?
The holocaust reference was simply to let you know that evidence cannot sway people who do not want to admit being in error. Nothing more than that. No need to explain the obvious.
The records of the Lisbon newspapers, photos, living witnesses etc. I guess were not as good as those of the Nazis. Fine OK
My best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
November 02, 2009 12:34pm

I'm saying that nothing happened that was unusual enough to be supernatural. For f@#% sake, stop imagining that you're going to "trap" me into saying something damning. My position hasn't changed. The reason for that is because nothing about the evidence has changed. It's still the same tired stuff.

And again with the Nazis. Guess what? They kept documented records, and they kept photos, and they kept film footage, and allied forces kept footage, and documents, and aerial and still photos, the structures still exist, order forms for Zyklon B still exist, the containers of poison physically existed and are documented. Mountains of evidence points to the operation of the Holocaust. People may argue about the motive or intent, but there's no lack of evidence of its execution. Eyewitnesses to the camps may be incorrect or unreliable (see Why People Believe Weird Things) but the event of the Holocaust is documented and evidenced by friend and foe alike.

Fatima has eyewitnesses, a couple papers, (Dewey defeated Truman, you know), and some photos that show a crowd. Huzzah! There's still no testable, reliable evidence.

And your snarky remark about "...not as good as the Nazis..." is cheap BS. But, is in a way correct.

There's no comparison between a supposed "event" one afternoon and an ongoing, documented, evidenced, campaign that lasted for years and killed millions.

Frankly, the fact that we've gone far enough to invoke Nazis is sign that we're done with this.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 02, 2009 7:44pm

Lewayne
Your beating a dead horse with the Nazis Holocaust. I know that evidence was overwhelming, but some people still deny it happened. That type of mind set does exist.
Too bad that there was no movie camera at Fatima. It may still not have done any good for some of that mind set.
Anyway if the sun came out at that foretold hour and did nothing else, it would have been enough for me. I am very easy to please. Too bad we were not there.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
November 03, 2009 1:23pm

"Anyway if the sun came out at that foretold hour and did nothing else, it would have been enough for me. I am very easy to please."

Ok, something special is going to happen tomorrow around 3pm. Maybe an earthquake, maybe a rainbow, but definitely a sign. If you don't see it, you're not looking hard enough. Am I a prophet or what?

Max, Boston, MA
November 03, 2009 4:45pm

"I am very easy to please."

Clearly.

"Your (sic) beating a dead horse with the Nazis Holocaust. I know that evidence was overwhelming, but some people still deny it happened. That type of mind set does exist."

Hey, you started it.
Apparently the point was that people deny stuff despite mountains of evidence, which I'm guessing is supposed to point out that I'm doing the same thing. But, I'm not, and I've stated numerous times why there's no meaningful evidence for a "miracle" at Fatima, let alone mountains of it.
In case we haven't done it enough, here it is for the final time.

1)Big crowd of eyewitnesses. No corroborating evidence.

2)Newspapers. Only descriptions and translations I've found are on miracle websites, most of which rely exclusively on De Marchi for their sources. I'm not wasting the time or money having a copy translated because honestly, I don't have enough invested in this subject to care.
It's still just another anecdote.

3)Photos. Static shots of people looking up. "Hey, over here!" Click. "Thanks. Next."
No context, no substance, no corroboration.

Personally, I'm going to check the papers tomorrow and see what Max's miracle ended up being. I bet it will be at least as spectacular as the cosmic lightshow at Fatima.

Wait, Max, what time zone?

Oh, wait, if something happens at 3 PM we'll know what time zone.

Cheers.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 03, 2009 5:27pm

Max Boston
Your only sensible post was here in Aug 2008 which correctly stated that looking at the sun could burn your retina. It may do more harm than that.
The 3 children were not prophets of course they were simply honest messengers.
We have had enough prophets in the past.
Des Moines
1) Huge crowd with no negative comments from eye witnesses
2) Newspapers much to their chagrin, headlined the event
3) Sorry that no movies exist for that time.

Steve Leone, Salem, NH
November 04, 2009 11:49am

I only posted three posts prior to my "prophecy", and they all concerned eye damage from looking at the sun.

Max, Boston, MA
November 04, 2009 1:08pm

Holy moose!

Max was right, an earthquake occured at 2:52 Universal Time

http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/latest.html

Max, you are an "honest messenger."

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 04, 2009 3:04pm

There are several aspects of this event that corroborate it's authenticity:

1) The exact time and place of the miracle was predicted well in advance.
2) It was observed by about 70,000 people (not just one or two).
3) Many in the crowd were reporters (some working for the government newspaper, which was extremely anti-religion at the time). These reporters then actually published that they had observed the miracle. This is the equivalent of CNN and the New York Times publishing reports from their own reporters about them observing a miracle.
4) The miracle was observed as far as 40 km away (they could not have known about "mass hysteria" in the crowd if it were indeed the cause
5) Pope John Paul was shot on the exact same day (May 13) as the first Fatima episode (but about 60 years later). This was one of the Fatima predictions.
6) The fact that scientific instruments had no indication of the event shows that God was targeting it with supernatural powers to the audience at hand in the local area. This could also explain the lack of photographic evidence.
7) The children were actually threatened with torture (boiling oil) and imprisoned by the government officials, but nonetheless refused to cooperate with the officials.

This body of evidence is extremely difficult to refute. Anyone who thinks this was just some sort of delusional event should perhaps question their assumptions.

Larry G, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
November 15, 2009 6:34am

Simple logic. One individual is a christian and believes in God and salvation, i.e. Heaven. The other individual is an atheist. They are both searching for the truth.

Both can either be right or wrong.

If the atheist is right and there is no God, it's called a push. If he is wrong, he loses salvation through his lack of belief.

If the christian is wrong, it's a push since there is no God. If he's right, he may make it to heaven and his eternal reward. In other words, he wins!

Since you declare you are an atheist, which I already assumed after reading the Fatima article, you lose either way. No chance at salvation and eternal life. The christian, on the other hand has the chance of winning if he is right.

It's a real shame in your case since you mentioned all the positive characteristics you have going for you. You really do not have to change your lifestyle one bit, just your belief in God! If you were leading a different lifestyle, such as drug usuage or other unlawful activity, you would have better logic not to believe in God since that would impact your unlawful lifestyle. Imagine not doing all those bad things because one believed in a false God! They could have really been bad and not have to pay the price if civil law did not catch up with them.

A chance at salvation and eternal life can be there for you with just one simple decision. It's your life and free will. I hope and pray you make the right choice.

Corrected spelling.

James U., Sacramento, CA
November 16, 2009 8:20am

Perhaps Larry G, Ann Arbor, MI, USA,
you might ask your friend in the sky to repeat the experiment, so we might observe it closely.

I particularly like your point 6.
I have never seen a better example of special pleading.
So how about it? Why don't you and your fellow devotees get together and petition the big guy for a re-run.

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
November 16, 2009 12:59pm

James,

I must admire your use of Pascal's wager. No atheist has defeated it yet...

Oh, wait. Try this one on...

Your logical argument is flawed because it assumes a false dichotomy. Either "God" or "No God".

But, it ignores the possiblity of the Hebrew "Hashem" who has not yet sent a savior, and the Muslim "Allah" who sent a nice guy named Jesus, but sent an even more important guy named Mohammed later.

Not to mention Ra, who was around before your god, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster who's a little newer, but still provides a fine counterpoint. Let's not forget the Buddha, who is not strictly a god, but who at least appears to have existed, and Kali, who is female.

So, either your god exists, or any one of the others, or no god exists...

Or more accurately, this wager remains a poor means of arguing "god" logically.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 16, 2009 3:46pm

The argument against Pascal's Wager is this: If God existed then faith in him to simply hedge your bets would not be true faith in him. Therefore you would not truly be devoted to God. In which case when judgement day came you would still not pass the test.
As far as being in to drugs etc..I find it interesting that virtually every born again I have ever spoken to comes from drugs, abuse, alcoholism, prostitution, etc. In other words while these issues were crutch one for getting through life, Jesus simply becomes crutch two. Isn't it odd that a non-believer who doesn't have these issues never seems to get a personal visit from Christ but if you are a complete mess you get one. If you need to think God spoke to you to get off heroin, well I guess if it helps but he didn't.
Thirdly, if you believe that God can intercede in people's lives then when people do die of cancer or end up in wheelchairs or whatever, then he has chosen not to. Makes him a bit of a prick, doesn't it? Odd that God chooses to not play the Good Samaritan.
Why has God never healed an amputee? Because he doesn't heal anyone. Let's face it, if he grew a limb back on someone because of a prayer circle, well that would about wrap it up.

Dave, Ottawa
November 18, 2009 12:25pm

I see that Marius still wants an encore performance and Lewayne wants a movie show. If either of these occur, these two atheists will find something else that needs to be done. The evidence will never be enough for them both.
Peasant children, enormus crowd, newspaper reports, none were left blind, no counter headlines and refutations of those present all mean nothing to our 2 non-skeptics (atheists). Have a nice THANKSGIVING.

Steve, Salem, NH
November 20, 2009 2:30pm

"...Lewayne wants a movie show. If either of these occur, these two atheists will find something else that needs to be done. The evidence will never be enough for them both."

Steve, Salem

Any testable evidence would do. But, there remains nothing but, "I saw..." Great. What else?

I mentioned film because it would have been more useful than static photos. But, you already knew that because we've gone over this several times.
I say there's no evidence. You say there is, and it's only insufficient because I'm an atheist. Rinse and repeat.

1)Peasant children-still not evidence, just anecdote
2)enormus (sic) crowd-still not evidence, just lots more anecdotes
3)newspaper reports-same thing
4)none were left blind-so they stopped looking or didn't actually look, and?
5)no counter headlines-maybe it wasn't important enough for anyone outside the country to care about. Doesn't matter, it's not testable evidence of anything.

"...all mean nothing to our 2 non-(sic)skeptics (atheists)."

It would mean something if there was anything else that supported those eyewitness statements, but there isn't.

"Have a nice THANKSGIVING."

I hope you also enjoy the official kick-off to the season of gluttony, overspending, greed and false goodwill, in celebration of the Victorian Christmas myths of Charles Dickens.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 23, 2009 4:49pm

Clearly anything can be denied if one exposes the event to extreme doubt. As an aetheist, you need to not believe in miracles to re-inforce your non-belief.
It is truly sad.
I have a scientific background and yet believe this event occured as reported.
Why?
I recently saw a similar phenomenon with my own eyes on a trip to Medjugorje. The experience was awesome.

PW Bailey, St. Paul
November 24, 2009 6:08am

"Clearly anything can be denied if one exposes the event to extreme doubt."

There's nothing extreme about asking for evidence for a miraculous claim. The more bizarre the claim, the better the evidence needs to be.

"As an aetheist, (sic) you need to not believe in miracles to re-inforce your non-belief."

As a skeptic I need evidence before believing an extreme claim. That's why I don't believe in a magic superbeing that routinely nullifies the laws of physics. No evidence for it.

"I have a scientific background and yet believe this event occured as reported."

Based on what EVIDENCE?

"I recently saw a similar phenomenon with my own eyes on a trip to Medjugorje."

Oh, well that proves it, then.

The fact that you say you saw the event is no more proof of that event than my co-worker who claims he saw a spaceship hover over the river while he was fishing.

Did you take pictures or shoot footage? Were there any other witnesses, and did they get any pictures or footage? What time of day? Sunny, cloudy, foggy, rainy? Did any meteorological equipment pick up anything unusual? Did shepherd children announce it?

If, as you claim, you have a scientific background, then you know that any event that moves the Earth far enough from orbit to make the sun "dance" in the sky nullifies science and kills the Earth's population.

If the sun only appeared to, but didn't actually, move, then it's an optical or meteorological phenomenon, and not a miracle.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 24, 2009 8:38am

Lewayne
Since you seem to have a low regard for witness testimony, you must also have a low regard for our criminal justice system. Last time I checked witness testimony, though admittedly imperfect at times, is admissible in court..As for what people there saw, I would think that if God does exist, His creating an optical illusion in a limited area would be a piece of cake...

petras, new albany, in.
November 24, 2009 4:38pm

"Since you seem to have a low regard for witness testimony, you must also have a low regard for our criminal justice system. Last time I checked witness testimony, though admittedly imperfect at times, is admissible in court..."

I have a very high regard for the criminal (and civil) justice system. I actually volunteer with the juvenile justice system.
But, the flaw in your attack is that eyewitness testimony, while admissable, can be contradicted by other evidence.
If fifty people say they saw Bob rob a bank, but Bob was in jail at the time, then they didn't see him do it. They thought they saw him, they may have even BELIEVED they saw him, but the testable evidence (jail logs, property logs, security camera footage, booking documents, etc) prove they did not see him rob the bank.
Eyewitness testimony ALONE is insufficent evidence, especially if counter evidence exists. Were this court, the burden would be on the faithful to prove that a miraculous event occured.

"...I would think that if God does exist, His creating an optical illusion in a limited area would be a piece of cake..."

But, if it was just an illusion, is it really that miraculous?
David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Except, he really didn't.
Random dark spots on Mars give the illusion that there's a carved face, but there isn't.
The sun may have appeared to dance in the sky, but is a "miracle" really the most logical assumption?

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 24, 2009 5:39pm

Lewayne
I agree that additional evidence is important but even most of that can be "doctored" by those with the means and agenda. The best available evidence we have in that era and location is the commentary of skeptics who were there to discredit the event. When an eye doctor, a reknown poet 20 miles from the scene, a university professor, a newspaper editor,and other skeptics, all make comments about what they saw, I can't simply dismiss it so lightly..As for the optical illusion, that is my best guess and yes, if God caused it, I would consider it a miracle..ps thanks for you volunteer service..

petras, new albany,in.
November 25, 2009 1:37pm

"I agree that additional evidence is important but even most of that can be "doctored" by those with the means and agenda."

But, that doesn't change the facts in THIS case, which are that the only evidence is eyewitness statements. Nothing else.

"The best available evidence we have in that era and location is the commentary of skeptics who were there to discredit the event. When an eye doctor, a reknown poet 20 miles from the scene, a university professor, a newspaper editor,and other skeptics, all make comments about what they saw,"

Which means they saw, or thought they saw, a dancing sun. That's it. That's not exactly miraculous.

"As for the optical illusion, that is my best guess and yes, if God caused it, I would consider it a miracle.."

And my point has always been that, even if we agreed that anyone saw anything unusual, it still provides no direct evidence of a god. As an extreme example, why couldn't it have been aliens? Or the devil? Or Zeus? Why the Catholic's God?

It's too big a jump from, "Oh, look. Funny lights." to "My GOD did it." A natural meteorological occurence combined with the heightened expectation of the crowd (even the skeptics) is a more plausible explanation.

"ps thanks for you volunteer service.."
petras, new albany,in.

Glad to do it. It's a side-effect of being an atheist/humanist. I figure if the only life the abused/neglected kids I've worked with will have is this one, then I'll do what I can to make it a better one.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 25, 2009 4:11pm

Lewayne
In you last post I gather you are at least slighty open to the possibility that what people saw was a non-God created natural meteorological occurence. The much bigger problem for you is trying to explain how this non-God created event happened at preforetold, date, time of day, and place. That would be like me saying "thete will be a miracle taking place at high noon on Dec 23, 2009 at the center of my town..oh, by the way, I, like the peasant children, have no scientific background in atmospheric sciences..what are the odds of that happening? I'd love to have a mathematician weighing in to calculate the odds..

petras, new albany,in.
November 27, 2009 6:55am

Lewayne
I am happy to learn that you are a good Samaritan in the work you are doing for children. So there is some hope that you may become a skeptic rather than remain an atheist. I have ststed before overwhelming circumstantial evidence usually if not always wins out in all cases. I hope that you can step up a notch and become a skeptic. God Bless

Steve, Salem, NH
November 27, 2009 8:31am

"In you last post I gather you are at least slighty (sic) open to the possibility that what people saw was a non-God created natural meteorological occurence."

It's always a possibility, and seems more likely than anything supernatural. If a natural event occured it really doesn't help the "miracle" argument.

"The much bigger problem for you is trying to explain how this non-God created event happened at preforetold, date, time of day, and place."

Not really. If you look farther back in the thread, Max predicted "something special" and "a sign" would happen on Nov 4th around 3 PM. An earthquake occured at 2:52 universal time on the 4th.

"That would be like me saying "thete (sic) will be a miracle taking place at high noon on Dec 23, 2009 at the center of my town.."

But was their prediction that specific? (The bits in all caps are my emphasis.)

"I came to ask you to come here on THE THIRTEENTH DAY FOR SIX MONTHS at the same time, and then I WILL RETURN HERE a seventh time."

After several other messages the lady asked finally for them to resite the Rosary daily before she rose in a cloud of light and glided away into the eastern sky."

From "Fatima prophecies"
http://www.crystalinks.com/fatima.html

Even if you accept that the above is precise enough to be a prediction, most accounts of the "miracle" involve a dancing or spinning sun, not a glowing virgin.

The more time I spend on the subject the less miraculous it seems.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 30, 2009 4:38pm

"I am happy to learn that you are a good Samaritan...So there is some hope that you may become a skeptic rather than remain an atheist."

The above statement is called a non-sequitur, not to mention that it assumes that skeptic and atheist are in some form of opposition. I'm just skeptical of the existance of any god(s). That's what makes me an atheist.

"I have ststed (sic) before overwhelming circumstantial evidence usually if not always wins out in all cases."

This might be the case if a bunch of witnesses saw Bob walk into his ex-wife's house, heard her screaming, Bob walked out with a bloody knife, and Bob wasn't rich enough for a decent attorney.
No one saw Bob commit the actual murder, but there's a dead ex-wife and lot of other things that tie him to it.
Fatima doesn't have the ex-wife or the bloody knife. There's nothing for the CSIs to run through their analyzers. Bob walked into a house, and walked out. Bob's wife may have disappeared, but there's no corpse, no blood, no knife, no prints.

"I hope that you can step up a notch and become a skeptic. God Bless"

If God blessed, I wouldn't be needed as a CASA, because He wouldn't allow parents to beat, neglect, or sexually assault their kids. If God is as powerful as he's described in Sunday school, then He either causes or allows every despicable thing that happens on this Earth.

Were I God, and had to choose between creating a light show or saving children to "prove" myself, I'd go with the kids.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 30, 2009 9:42pm

I realized there's a slight flaw in my analogy below-

"Fatima doesn't have the ex-wife or the bloody knife. There's nothing for the CSIs to run through their analyzers. Bob walked into a house, and walked out. Bob's wife may have disappeared, but there's no corpse, no blood, no knife, no prints."

This bit-
"Bob walked into a house, and walked out." is in error.

We don't even have the fact of an event agreed upon (Bob walked in & out/Sun danced and spun).
So, it should read, "A lot of people SAID THEY SAW Bob walk into a house and walk out."

In the end it doesn't matter how I phrased it, the point remains that all we have are a bunch of people making claims with no testable evidence to support them.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 01, 2009 1:10pm

Lewayne
In your question/reply, "was the prediction that specific?"... from what I have read, yes, it was.. location, date and incredibly, even the time of day...I guess an atheist would have to dismiss this as an incredibly lucky guess made 30 days beforehand..if those kids were making it up, I'll bet they were sweating bullets before the appearance took place..

petras, new albany, in
December 02, 2009 11:19am

Is this deceased equine still being flogged?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
December 02, 2009 7:40pm

"from what I have read, yes, it was.. location, date and incredibly, even the time of day..."

Do you have documentation of the actual prediction? Because all I've found so far is what's in my comment above about coming back every month on the same day and time and the virgin would appear again. She didn't appear, the sun allegedly danced. Those are two very different things.

"...if those kids were making it up, I'll bet they were sweating bullets before the appearance took place.."

It's quite possible they "believed" what they were saying, especially if they'd had six months to go over and over it.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 02, 2009 9:16pm

Lewayne
re documentation, books written by De Marchi and another by Stanley Jaki go into a lot of detail about the event...I don't remember the exact website where I read about the specific prediction but it, along with a lot of other info, was taken out of De Marchi's book..

petras, new albany, in
December 03, 2009 11:11am

What I've seen, so far, indicates that most of what people think they know about Fatima seems to come from De Marchi's book, which then leaves us with essentially a single source.

One of the things I found interesting about this Fatima business is that everyone makes it seem like it was a single event, like the kids walked into town and said, "Mary's showing up tomorrow."
When you dig deeper, you find that the kids were 'visited' by the Virgin every month for six months, with increasing followers every time.
But what I've also read indicates that during each of these visits, no one but the children actually SAW anything.

"Saturday, July 13, 1917:
Some 5,000 people joined the children in the field that day." "Our Lady appeared only to the children but bystanders sensed that something unusual was taking place."

"Monday, August 13, 1917:
A crowd of around 15,000 had gathered in the field ... and then suddenly there was a loud, frightful clap of thunder and a blinding flash of light and then a small, brilliant white cloud descend to where the children met Our Lady in the previous apparitions. The cloud remained for a few minutes and then rose to the heavens."

This site offers a timeline of the events leading up to Oct. 13. http://www.2012warning.com/secrets-of-fatima.htm

The more I read, the less miraculous it seems. Lucia's comment about clouds or "seeing the flash" before the arrival of Mary makes me wonder even more about a localized optical phenomenon.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 03, 2009 6:01pm

Lewayne
The role of the 3 peasant childen is to be taken seriously. They maintained their story in spite of threats from civil authorities. This was not a hoax or a game with them. They did not materially gain anything. Two of them died in the flu epidemic of 1918-19. Lucia, the oldest died a few years ago in her 90s. All this time she was not a celeb, attended no parties or premieres but rather was a cloistered nun saying prayers daily. She only once returned quietly to Fatima. Surely if some hoax, what was the gain. I must repeat that Fatima stands out as the event in which Nothing Did Not Happen. What ever it was one can opine as to the source God or whatever else you wish to call it.
Skeptisism is fine but atheism took a fatal blow there. The innocent children, the huge crowd, reporters, headlines, no refutations from eyewitnesses, no counter headlines. It is too too much to disclaim and ignore. Amen

Steve, Salem, NH
December 04, 2009 1:11pm

"All this time she was not a celeb, attended no parties or premieres but rather was a cloistered nun saying prayers daily. She only once returned quietly to Fatima. Surely if some hoax, what was the gain."

You assume that gain was a conscious decision of children less than 10 years old. Simple religious fervor, boredom, and imagination explain a lot about their behavior. As I mentioned above, during the previous Marian "visits" throughout the summer, none of the witnesses saw anything but the children talking. That sounds like delusion on the part of the children to me.
By the time it got to October, there's been a huge build up, an increasing number of pilgrims each month, and so far no one but the kids has seen anything.
Everyone's on edge, then Lucia calls out that stuff's happening and people "see" stuff.
Not terribly convincing to me.

"The innocent children, the huge crowd, reporters, headlines, no refutations from eyewitnesses, no counter headlines."

Again (and again, and again), this is all ANECDOTE with NO supporting evidence. It's not evidence in itself.
Thousands of people may have been present, but only the ones who "saw" things have been quoted. Given that most info about Fatima comes from de Marchi, this isn't surprising. It's single-source legend-building like Amityville or Bell Witch.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 04, 2009 3:53pm

Near Des Moines
How many in a crowd of Super Bowl size will hear anyone shout "look at the UFO" up there"?
Lucia in that crowd shouting anything will not be heard by most all in that crowd, so do not use that to explain the reaction that the crowd exhibited. Please consider that were not all idiots in that varied mass of hunanity. I forgot to add---nobody went blind. Too bad we were not there. Again a series of circumstanial evidence is convincing enough to become at the very least a skeptic and not a total atheist. Lewayne convert to skeptisism!!!!

Steve, Salem, NH
December 05, 2009 9:20am

So, the Martians didn't invade on October 30, 1938?
A lot of people thought they did, with good reason.
How true was that?

Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabour Plain, Australia.
December 05, 2009 1:22pm

"So, the Martians didn't invade on October 30, 1938? A lot of people thought they did, with good reason.
How true was that?"

Dammit. I was just going to say that.

"Lucia in that crowd shouting anything will not be heard by most all in that crowd..."

She's supposed to be a miracle child, a person that a growing number of people have been following to that spot in the months leading up to 10/13 and no one was paying attention to what she was doing? Really?

"I forgot to add---nobody went blind."

No, I think you've mentioned it before, and I think I've replied to it.

"Again a series of circumstanial evidence is convincing enough to become at the very least a skeptic and not a total atheist. "

At least you can finally admit that it's all circumstantial.
And, I've repeatedly adressed why none of it is really evidence.

"Lewayne convert to skeptisism!!!!"

Already there. Let me know when you catch up.

A skeptic follows the EVIDENCE.

The LACK of meaningful, testable evidence in this case is why I think it's a load of cowpies. Not because I'm an atheist.
Because of the ongoing discussion, I've spent more and more time looking into this event. And, the more time I spend on it, the less "miraculous" it appears.

Lewayne, NEar Des Moines
December 05, 2009 7:03pm

thanks for this post, brian. i appreciate your work.

the condition caused by staring at the sun is called solar retinopathy. symptoms include seeing strange colors/auras and after images of the sun that would appear to dance around wherever you looked. both of these were reported by the witnesses. like you, i think that is obviously what happened.

mark, south carolina
December 06, 2009 12:38pm

"So, the Martians didn't invade on October 30, 1938?"

I've got another one for you-
the Groucho Marx "You Bet Your Life" "I love my cigar, too" bit. Thousands of people believe they actually SAW it. Many can relate what they were doing when they SAW it. Except that they didn't. It never aired on television.
There's no evidence that Groucho even SAID it. Even if he did say it, it would never have been broadcast. Even Robert Dwan, the show's editor, "believes" it's real after enough people have told him about it...even though he was present for every TV episode and has scoured "20 volumes of the original scripts", acetate recordings, tapes, video, 16 mm film and found NOTHING supporting the story.

http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/grouchocigar.asp

The people who believe Groucho said his cigar bit have no personal stake in it, it's not religious, it's no political, it's just a good story that you can tell people you experienced.

How much easier is it to buy into an alleged event when you're already motivated to be part of a "miraculous" experience?

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 06, 2009 8:26pm

Mark
I am not sure if I understand your post. Are you saying that looking directly at the sun for several minutes will not do any damage to the eyes?

Marius That was a terrible analogy. Using a 1938 radio broadcast that was quickly corrected. The newspaper reports received no negating counter reports. Only people not in attendance have made an issue of the event.
Lewayne People do imagine things that they heard or even that they saw but that has nothing to do with the event witnessed and reported with no refutations from the massive and varied crowd at Fatima. Only people not there etc.

Steve, Salem, NH
December 07, 2009 7:29pm

"People do imagine things that they heard or even that they saw but that has nothing to do with the event witnessed and reported..."

It has everything to do with it. De Marchi, the primary source for all the Fatima BS didn't do his "research" until 1943. That gives everyone more than 20 years to "remember" what they saw.

"with no refutations from the massive and varied crowd at Fatima."

The newspapers aren't going to search a crowd of 30,000 (the estimate from most sources that aren't promoting a "miracle") for someone who didn't see anything. They're going to report on the people who catch their attention.

Reporter: "What did you see?"
Witness 1: "Nothing."
Reporter: "I see. You, ma'am the woman on her knees in the mud, rending your garment. I bet YOU
Woman: "It was the blessed Virgin."
Reporter scribbles quote.
Witness 2: (seeing reporter) "I saw the sun dance and spin, then fall toward the Earth. But, then God stopped it."
Witness 3: (shoving aside Witness 2) "Oh yeah? Well, I stared at the sun the whole time. And I didn't hurt my eyes."
Witness 4: "Oh yeah? Well, my daughter can spin straw into gold."
Wait, sorry, that one's from a different fairy tale.

A couple papers quoted a couple people caught up in the moment. As time passed, more people "remembered" things.

It's nothing but anecdote, it's never been anything more than anecdote. There is NO TESTABLE EVIDENCE and you continually claiming that a boatload of people say they saw something doesn't change that.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 08, 2009 9:34am

Lewayne, photos like this is "Testable Evidence"?

http://tiny.cc/fatima1917

Sir. Mike De Rubeis, Rome, San Peter - Vatican City
December 09, 2009 2:55pm

"Lewayne, photos like this is "Testable Evidence"?"

Is that a question?
Are they testable evidence? If you want to test them, they fail.
All they show is a crowd of people, sometimes looking at the sky, sometimes not. In some, people are kneeling or praying.
And?
This proves a miracle how?
No one apparently took a picture of the miracle itself, just of the "witnesses."
There's nothing visible in the sky in any of the pictures. Although, in "Fatima - The Miracle of the Sun 8" at your link, it looks like a flaming flying saucer is falling from the sky. Was that the miracle? I guess probably not, since the crowd in looking the other way.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 09, 2009 7:51pm

Lewayne, there is also this complication:

...Well, the day and the hour had been foretold three months earlier by three little shepherds, who claimed that a Lady from heaven was appearing to them. They had got a lot of hassle from friends and neighbours and had asked the Lady to give a sign so that everyone would believe. She promised to give a sign at noon on October 13th, 1917.This was why over 70,000 people, including newspaper reporters, had gathered there on the eventful day...

Sir. Mike De Rubeis, Rome, San Peter - Vatican City
December 10, 2009 3:40am

"...Well, the day and the hour had been foretold three months earlier by three little shepherds, who claimed that a Lady from heaven was appearing to them."

And as I mentioned above, Max predicted a 'sign' as well. I'm not impressed by the "prediction." People primed by six months of advertising ahead of time are more likely to "see" stuff.

Near as I can tell, the children had been making regular pilgrimages each month, with a growing number of followers each time. During none of these other visits did witnesses see anything other than the children, despite the children acting as if they were conversing with the Virgin. Most sources I've found don't indicate that the children asked for a sign, but that the Virgin said during her first visit, six months before, that she would return.

And, as I also mentioned above, most sites that aren't designed to promote "miracles" put the crowd at closer to 30, 000.

Regardless, as I've said repeatedly above, boatloads of anecdote remain mere anecdote. So far, I've still seen no testable evidence. It still remains a bunch of people who claim they saw a miraculous event.

You could save us both some time by reading the growing thread above. So far, your objections have already been addressed if not by me, then by others.

No one thinking even a little critically about this event sees anything "miraculous."

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 10, 2009 8:54am

Lewayne
I am shocked that you have come to the point of belittling the newspaper reporters with that absurd made up interview of the eye witnesses. You are conviently overlooking that the newspaper people were there to discredit the entire story of the children and to put an end to the matter. The DeMarchi story was not the first report. IT WAS THE NEWSPAPERS on the next day that comprises the historical documentation. The newspaper feature is the crux and main issue that you and your cohorts have not been able to digest. Yes more testable evidence would be great, but enough will never be enough for you et al.
Nobody went blind
No counter headlines
No eyewitmess refutations etc.

FDR Dec 8 1941 "We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God"

Steve, Salem, NH
December 10, 2009 12:19pm

"I am shocked ... that absurd made up interview of the eye witnesses."

Shocked? Really? It's not meant to be real, but you already knew that. It's an illustration of how simple it is to pick "news" and a sign of how tired I am of this ridiculous subject.

"You are conviently overlooking that the newspaper people were there to discredit the entire story of the children and to put an end to the matter."

I'm not overlooking anything. So far, about the only sources I've found who agree with your statements are sites promoting miracles. Most recently, I found sites indicating that the "O Milagro de Fatima" piece that all the Fatima sites claim is text from O Seculo may actually be from Ilustração Portugueza, in which case, you lose another piece of "evidence." Since the text, aside from the headline, is impossible to read in any of the images I've found so far, I haven't gotten an accurate translation.

Honestly, it seems like wasted effort, because as I've said many times, it's still NOT evidence.

"The newspaper feature ... not been able to digest."

Because Dewey defeated Truman, the RAAF captured a flying saucer near Roswell, the Titanic was towed in, and an air battle took place over Los Angeles Feb. 1942.

We understand your position fine. It's just not evidence.

"Yes more testable evidence would be great..."

ANY testable evidence would be great.

"...but enough will never be enough..."

Because there isn't any, let alone "enough."

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 10, 2009 4:22pm

Lewayne
How do I get to your most recent sites ???
You found only sources that agree with my statements....this is because, as I have been saying, there are no refutations from the eyewitnesses or the newspapers of that time. Only Johnnys come lately have been making all the fuss etc.

Mark where are you on the question of looking at the sun that I posed to you a few days ago?

Steve, Salem, NH
December 10, 2009 4:39pm

"Only Johnnys come lately have been making all the fuss etc."

Like De Marchi?

How 'bout, since you're the one making the outrageous claim, you supply some of these news articles that support your position. So far, all I've found at the miracle websites is the same single article attributed either to O Seculo or Ilustração Portugueza.

Actually, you know what, never mind. Because it still doesn't change anything. It's all still anecdote.

As for why there aren't headlines refuting the original articles...
It may be something simple, like no one else in the world cared what a bunch of Portuguese shepherds were doing.

As I continued this conversation with you, Steve, it became more an more clear that you cannot look at this event critically. The constant "...but the newspapers." has been addressed more than once, as have your other attempts at "evidence."

It still remains a bunch of anecdotes about what people claim they saw, and nothing else. No objective, concrete, testable evidence exists that anything significant even happened, let alone anything miraculous.

You can keep going on and on and on and on an on about the damn newspapers, but if that's the best "evidence" that you have, it doesn't amount to much...especially in the light of Dewey's defeat of Truman, that flying saucer crashing near (75 miles away from) Roswell, the Titanic being towed in, and that air battle over L.A. in 1942.

Happy Holidays. I'm done wasting time with this.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
December 15, 2009 9:20am

Mark from SC
When the solar eclipse of a few years ago was being announced, the populace was warned NOT to look at the eclipse without filter lenses or to look at a mirror reflection with your back to the eclipse. I would therefore assume that one may well injure their eyes if they looked directly at the sun for several minutes or more.
This is of course related to the Fatima event in which the people in the crowd who described the varied activities of
the sun did not injure their eyes and in fact were surprised that they could look at the sun with no ill effects.

Lewayne's response to this that they did not look at the sun or some other remark.
Lewayne has answers for everything, he even puts the crowd at the low 30,000 when all estimates say 30,000 to 100,000.
Lewayne uses Dewey beats Truman etc as a few newspaper errors to demean the Newspaper documentations of the Fatima event.
He has shown his attitude by the earlier remark " Thanksgiving is the kick-off season for gluttony"
Much more that I won't bother to enumerate other than the article he mentions in Ilustrado Portuguesa
was written 15 days after the event by Dr. Garrett the editor of O Seculo to review the event already reported the day after the solar activity.
What is certain is that NOTHING DID NOT HAPPEN on Oct 13, 1917
Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night

Steve, Salem, NH
December 15, 2009 1:54pm

So, yes i was raised as a practicing catholic. I am 23 years old and live in Atlanta Ga. My grandmother (who I am very close 2) was a little girl in Fatima Portugal at the time the the miracle of the sun took place.She witnessed this w/ her mother by her side. As an open minded American child I would listen to the stories that they both told me as a very young child and still, more recently my grandmother, tells me I need 2 do 5 things in particular in order 2 help our lady. 1, pray the rosary daily. 2, fast on Wed & Fri. 3, read my bible daily. 4, monthly confession. And 5 The holy communion. This woman has been there and seen this with her own eyes and I truely believe her w/ all my heart. I have never even heard my grandmother curse or say anything bad twards anyone. She is a saint and prays the rosary 3 times a day! I know b/c I visit w/ her almost every day. Would you believe your grandmother if she told you the same? I surely hope so. I just thought that I might share some information w/ everyone who may need it. This is real and our lady wants us 2 pray and pray! I used 2 be just another holiday catholic but for some reason lately, I feel as if I need to get things in my life more organized and together. Im only 23, this is not a normal 23 yr olds behavior, yet I feel that there is something more 2 this picture of life after death that I do not understand. Do you sometimes feel the same way???

Luke, Atlanta Ga
December 21, 2009 7:38pm

The author of this article did not do much research. It was raining hard until it STOPPED raining just before the miracle started. And all the people were not expecting a miracle, many were unbelievers like the newspaper reporters who did NOT expect to see a miracle. The atheist reporters were expecting to say "ha ha, no miracle, ha ha" but instead they reported what they saw which was the SAME thing as the people expecting a miracle. What's more, many people in the surrounding villages who did NOT GO to the cova and so were certainly NOT expecting to see a miracle, saw it as well. They rushed and filled all the churches in the villages because they thought it was the end of the world. So the argument presented is worthless stupidity. It has been said that there is never enough evidence to convince people who do not want to believe. I am a Protestant and I believe because I am not a stupid ass.

Mike, Lawton, OK
December 23, 2009 3:06pm

I am a Protestant and I believe because I am not a stupid ass.
----------
Well, that settles it.

You debate about like Steve "What about newspapers?" and Luke "My Granny told me."

Steve I found something about all those newspapers you been talking to Lewayne about. I highlighted some stuff for you.
----------
In fact, only ONE of the many Portugese papers MENTIONED THE EVENT. Avelino de Almeida, a reporter for the secular newspaper O Século (The Century) of Lisbon, who had been dismissive of Fatima in previous articles, claimed to see SOME of the phenomena IN THE ONLY ARTICLE ever published by a secular newspaper. His photographer Judah Ruah SAW NOTHING but shot pictures of the crowd looking up, believing that the people's faith was the focal event.

http://infao5501.ag5.mpi-sb.mpg.de:8080/topx/archive?link=Wikipedia-Lip6-2/248866.xml&style

C. MacLeod, Lots of different places
December 27, 2009 10:52am

You need to believe in magic sky people, you need to believe in magic sky people. It is all nonsense but you will never convince religious people that religion is nonsense. The argument that you can't convince an atheist either is irrelevant because we are not the ones making outrageous claims of miracles and magic people etc. The OT/NT, The Koran.. is the work of superstitious people looking for a control mechanism. When someone tells me they believe in God and Angels and Satan..I simply ask them if they would give the credibility they expect to be given , to someone who believed in Good/Evil wish granting leprechauns. They would want the leprechaun believer treated and medicated. But we are supposed to set a place at the table for their imaginary friend. Ridiculous.

Dave, Ottawa
December 27, 2009 12:20pm

C. MacLeod
Your first error was my debating was not like the two people you referred to.
Your next error was that you implied that only one newspaper (O Seculo)was covering the event. If you read the Steve vs Lewayne comments I had pointed out that there were 3 newspapers present and since then I saw a reference to a fourth newspaper (Primerio de Janiero). One can only wonder why these newspapers did not report that nothing happened or why they were not refuting the crowd reaction. Why only a dancing sun headline?
After you reread all the remarks from this blog (over 200 of them), we can debate any points that you disagree with.
I will not dignify the Dave, Ottawa comment above with a reply at this time.
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas.

Steve, Salem, NH
December 27, 2009 5:57pm

Steve,

Didn't imply it. Simply posted the statement from the site that only one paper mentioned the event.
I've read through most of the Fatima thread, and you come off as a poor debater and sore loser.
I lost count of the number of times that someone explained why newspapers alone aren't evidence, but you apparently can't get it, because you continually fall back on the newspapers, excuse me, newspaper.
Blind faith doesn't mean you're superior or saved, it just means you're blind.

C. MacLeod, Lots of different places
December 27, 2009 7:04pm

Steve,

There is nothing you can say to argue it that makes the slightest bit of sense or is moderatley convincing. I have argued with religious people for ages and they spout nonsense until they get frustrated by reason..then they cover their ears..then they start swearing. I have had a Minister say he hated me. It is hilarious. Unfortunately, we as a society are forced to dignify your fantasies.
Since the age of video cameras, not a miracle. Nothing. Interesting isn't it. Claims of miraculous healings that at best are unexplainable, at worst..unsubstantiated. Yet, never a healing of an amputee or anything else indisputable. The biggest sign that Fatima is nonsense is because it backs up the Christian fairytale, which is very convenient.
People have gone to their graves insisting all kinds of nonsense. This is the same. There was an issue where I work where someone insisted an employee punched a manager. I walked the employee out of the building and he never came within 50ft of the manager.Yet..the rumour spread and it was Gospel to many.
Somebody once said to me..a president may say he believes in God and that God speaks to him but would the people that really control things let someone who really believed that run a country?

Dave, Ottawa
December 27, 2009 7:42pm

C MacLeod
Sorry that if I am a poor debater but I am not a sore loser since I am neither sore nor a loser.
I fully understsand the testable evidence that Lewayne et al need. but I would like to know what you think about all the other circumtantial evidence that I have repeatedly mentioned in this theard. Need I go over them again for you?

Steve, Salem, NH
December 28, 2009 8:04am

Steve,

Were this thread an actual debate, you would have lost, and lost badly. You fail to address many legitimate points others posters have made, and rely primarily on "Yeah, well you're an atheist." and "What about the papers?"
If you fully understand the testable evidence that skeptics need, then why do you keep banging on about newspapers?
I don't need you to go over your circumstantial evidence because I've read the thread. About the only thing that didn't come from De Marchi's investigation DECADES LATER was the newspaper, and others have already pointed out why that amounts to little more than, "This guy told me he saw..."
Lewayne about beat that subject to death well after I would have given up trying to get you to understand it.
At least one witness who was at Cova expressly to observe AND record the event (O Seculo's photographer) didn't see ANYTHING except a bunch of people in the midst of reigious rapture, and that's all that anyone looking at this objectively sees.
I'd go on, but I'd clearly be wasting my "breath."

C. MacLeod, Lots of different places
December 28, 2009 11:32am

C. MacLeod
Your first paragraph is not my quotes, you remind me of another paraphraser who also censors or ignores any challenging questions in his blog.
Well I see you have found one witness, the photographer, who was so busy that he did not look at what others were looking at in their rapture but only photographed them. Hate to tell you that there were a half dozen people who reported seeing nothing.
What I have been saying is that many thousands saw an unusual
episode. What I ask is "What was this rapture all about?" We were not there all we have is the unrefuted reports by the newspapers. Did this crowd all simultaneously hallucinate? Conspire? Did the children pull off a major hoax? Were the children weathermen? Did anyone damage their eyes? Do newspapers make up stories that then manage to go unchallenged?
What personal thoughts do you have about these questions.?
That's it for now.

Steve, Salem, NH
December 28, 2009 2:22pm

http://www.miraclesceptic.com/solarmiracle.html

Dave, Ottawa
December 28, 2009 7:26pm

Steve,

Have you even read this thread? All your questions have already been addressed, often more than once.

Nothing you've ever brought up in your posts is EVIDENCE.

It's a collection of anecdote, most of which wasn't recorded until decades after the event.

Many thousands CLAIM to have seen something, which is different from something actually happening. As someone before mentioned, lots of people claim to see aliens, but it turns out they really didn't.

What was this rapture all about?
I think any rational viewer would say straight forward religious mania, fed by months of increasing advertisement by the children, combined with sunlight reflected off moisture in the air after a shower. Any atheists who saw miracles were clearly caught up in the same mania.

You can keep banging on about papers and the child meteorologists, but it doesn't change the fact that there's NO EVIDENCE that anything miraculous happened.

The fact that you are unwilling or unable to grasp that is evidence that you cannot look at this case objectively. As such, continued discussion of it with you is pointless.

C. MacLeod, Lots of different places
December 29, 2009 11:30am

Hello
I have made 2 attempts to respond but they have not appeared.
Hope this shows up so I can feel that all is OK in the future.

Steve, Salem, NH
December 30, 2009 11:40am

C. MacLeod
I am fully aware that there is no testable evidence for the Fatima episode. However I am trying to examine the various explanations about the entire event. On balance it would appear that reasonable people would select the points made by the on the scene reporters rather than the many absurd statements such as those in Dave Ottawa's link above.
Yours with the sun reflection and the children as ad men are just as bad as mass mania mass illusion, mass conspiracy etc.
Satan did it is much more plausible. By the way anecdotes are not necessarily fairy tales.
Remember we were not there. You sounded like Lewayne at first. Have a Happy New Year.

Steve, Salem, NH
December 30, 2009 4:53pm

Yes, SATAN did it. That is much more plausible. Wow! Really? So you not only believe in the Almighty Wizard but in his evil counterpart, the little pitchfork guy? If Free Will did not exist until Adam and Eve then how did an angel rebel? God is a pretty rotten creator and a pretty badboss if even his Angel wants out.

Dave, Ottawa
January 02, 2010 12:16pm

OK Dave I changed my mind, foget satan. The 3 children had advanced computers at their disposal. This is much better.

Steve, Salem, NH
January 02, 2010 6:43pm

Those who are more comfortable not believing will always find their 'facts.'Their 'proof.'

Sister Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco are all the truth I need.

Good Catholics all. Does anyone think any one of them would stand before almighty God with lies on their lips?

I don't think so.

ayasha, Portland, Maine
January 02, 2010 9:01pm

The three children were all threatened by death by the government, but still refused to budge.

Lucia's mother did believe and support her daughter, by the time of the Miracle.

Lucia's third secret, written down and she wanted revealed in 1960, was the prediction that Pope would be shot. Pope John Paul II was shot point blank on May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition.

Eyewitness that were about 15 miles away and knew nothing of the events before that day, reported the same observation. Also, eyewitnesses reported that after the miracle, their rain-soaked clothes dried and smelled clean as if just laundered.

Daniel, Minnesota
January 07, 2010 6:31pm

Kevin McClure has stated that he has never seen such a collection of contradictory accounts.
This is a very normal occurrence for witnesses of an event. I can atest to this from personal experience.
A group of people were on a deep sea fishing party and the captain of the vessel would kill any dogfish caught and throw them overboard. After a while a huge fish cams along side and ate up these discarded trash fish. We were all stunned by this and then we could not agree on the size of the fish nor its color even though we all saw the same thing.
This behaviour is well known to any investigator of events. In fact if all witnesses exactly agree, it is suspected as collusion. Bye for now.

Steve, Salem, NH
January 21, 2010 2:05pm

Daniel,

that's quite an impressive collection of statements. Can you prove any of them?

Safe-Keeper, Norway
January 25, 2010 10:25am

Maybe you are right and that the three children were only lucky with their prediction: For no reason only, the rain stopped, and the clouds parted at the right moment. And for some reason every newspaperman and all the other sceptics who had previously ridiculed the predictions, all had a revelation and became catholics on their journey to Fatima.

Well... yes! That is probably what happened...

Cecilia, Oslo, Norway
January 29, 2010 7:02pm

Frank J. Tipler is a full professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University in New Orleans, pioneer in global methods in general relativity. In his book "The Physics of Christianity" he debunks the Fatima Miracle with the info that there was a layer of cloud over the sun which allowed longer viewing time and that it is a known fact that staring at the sun will bring on a "spinning effect". Not one Observatory anywhere saw anything unusual, meaning it didn't dipsy-doodle or any of that nonsense.
He does try to go on and explain that it was a miracle for other reasons. One because it was an announced miracle(which is odd because the miracle never happened, even according to him). Two, because it resulted in a resurgence of Christianity in Portugal. Okay. Lame but OK.
In another part of the book he goes on to equate healings by prayer with healings by placebo. That is what we have with Fatima in another way. People saw what they needed to see. Most likely, even the atheist folk desired faith enough to believe they saw something. No miracles folks. Sorry.
Thing is Tipler is devoutly Christian and his book is about how physics proves God. Not just God but the Christian God specifically. It doesn't but he is devout and denies Fatima.
Both he and Dr. Francis Collins, author of The Language of God(also a lead scientist on the mapping of the human DNA) admit our evolving from apes is just undeniable. Science does not allow them to deny the link. It is fact.

Dave, Ottawa
January 30, 2010 10:01am

Dave, Ottawa
Prof Tipler is another example of those not present who just somehow knew that the cloud layer was present and thus one could look at the sun (of course with NO ill effects to the eyes?). He was correct in that the miracle was in that-- an unusual event was foretold to these 3 children.
The rest of Europe of course did not notice the sun doing anything unusual since this event was meant ONLY for those in attendence at the cova.
The only lame idea was that nothing happened at that hour.

Steve, Salem, NH
February 01, 2010 5:42pm

The point is that this guy is a devout Christian and sees the Fatima miracle, in the sense that anything out of the ordinary occurred in regards to the Sun, as ridiculous. People wanted to see something and so they saw it. They saw what was pointed out to them not what they saw first on their own. I think that one of the children could have pointed to a rock and said it was dancing and everyone who wanted to see that would have seen it.
How come nobody ever has a religious vision outside of a religion they are knowledgeable about? The kids were Catholics they saw Mary, they weren't visited by a blue elephant. I am pretty sure any Hindu who claims a spiritual vision gets multi-armed women and blue elephants and not Mary or Jesus.
You are like every other non-thinking, deluded, might as well believe in leprechauns religious person Steve. You want to believe so bad that reason is lost on you.

Dave, Ottawa
February 02, 2010 9:40am

Dave
You are absurdly wrong about what I think and believe in. Just stick to the statements made.
We were not there
Some 70,000 people saw something
Their eyes were not damaged
Children are not subtle enough to
fool that many adults.
What other religions have reported as visionaries is not pertinent to the Fatima event.
Newspapers do not report fiction
No counter reports at that time were made by the witnesses there
People who lived in all these years after Fatima have not denied the event. Some may still be alive.
NOTHING DID NOT HAPPEN IN FATIMA

Steve, Salem, NH
February 02, 2010 11:13am

Anyone who believes the fiction of the major religions is the absurd one.
70,00 people may have shown up but we already know they ALL didn't see something and many saw different things. Most saw the sun spinning, which is a natural when you look at it.
Nobody went blind but who says no damage was done? I doubt the common folk, or many of the folk at all, in 1917 Portugal were making regular trips to the Opthamologist. Plus you would avert your eyes naturally.
Children have fooled adults and kept up ongoing lies in many child abuse cases. The false belief that children don't lie is ridiculous. They are among the biggest storytellers.
It is very relevant what other people see in visions. It proves that you conjure up what you are aware of, are indoctrinated in. Therefore, you are making it up because you are not being introduced to anything you don't already know or believe on some level.
It was a news story, for sure. The reporter could have been caught up in it, whatever. Doesn't make it fact. Alot, of half-truths and lies end up in papers.
Some did report not seeing it and I bet that they talked to a handful of people for the papers.
I am sure the devoutly religious people that are still alive believe they saw it. Who doesn't want to think they were a part of that if they are Christians.
I have had many people tell me things that THEY saw themselves that never happened. They swear it is true, it happened. They saw it.
Sorry Steve.

Dave, Ottawa
February 04, 2010 11:02am

Dave
Wow that was some cogent comment. You should reread all this blog material especially about the 3 peasant children who somehow remained steadfast for months under pressure. They are along with the 4 newspapers the part that stymies all the later nay-sayers who have a bunch of ideas on opthamoligists, people living a fantasy all those years with no death-bed denials ever. All were deluded by children, all imagined the same event, nobody was rational enough to negate the event, all in that varied crowd must have been idiots or fanatical believers etc.
Yours and others who seem to have all the answers decades later were all there and know exactly what really happened !!!!
Dave Keep on rationalizing if it helps you.

Steve, Salem, NH
February 05, 2010 8:53am

Have you watched Jesus Camp Steve? The indoctrination of children with this mystical nonsense is frightening. These kids were raised in that same atmosphere. I believe Lucia's mother even told her to pray to become a saint. And it happened, pretty convenient huh? You really believe that an Angel gave them communion? Well, only Lucia because she was the only one that had received communion. And Mary told them to do their Rosary everyday? Catholic church doctinal nonsense. Pretty convenient again. This experience was in keeping with not just Christianity but with their Catholicism. Pretty convenient yet again. Smacks of made up nonsense.
You keeping saying ALL saw it. Not the case. Some admitted seeing nothing. Some believers admitted seeing nothing. What's up there Steve? Again, who spoke to all 70,000 people? Oh right, nobody. Some saw different things. Explain. In one picture a person is not even looking up. People are seeing a miracle from God and one guy can't be bothered to look. None of the photos show shocked or in awe faces, just people looking up.In one, many are shading their eyes, not staring directly. The photos of the sun are weak pics and it is doing nothing. People were looking where they were directed to look, that is all.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all folktales and fairy stories, so kids saying Mary appeared to them is the same as a kid saying Pinocchio appeared to him. You can't have miracles performed by fictional characters

Dave, Ottawa
February 06, 2010 9:22am

Dave
You must be a child psycologist!!

I know that a half dozen people claim to have seen nothing unusual. Wow I guess that ends it??

You can draw conclusions from still B/W photos ???

Dave you are too much for me to take. I need to rest up for more challenging atheistic explanations.

Steve, Salem, NH
February 06, 2010 7:45pm

As usual you avoid all the real questions. Typical religious behaviour. I know people that insist Jesus speaks to them. They would insist they saw the sun plunge towards the earth if it made them feel special too.
Religion is very geographic. The majority of people who are Muslim are from certain parts of the world, Hindus from another, Christians from another. All equally devout. All experiencing things in keeping with their religious indoctrination or beliefs. Steve, if you were raised in an Islamic country you would be a fanatical Muslim and believe all their claptrap. In India, you would be going on about multi-armed women and blue elephants. If you were raised in the Southern U.S you would be some psychotic Evangelical or Baptist insisting people speak in tongues when a rational person knows they are just babbling. Insist that Creation trump evolution in science classes.
Nothing proves this. If you were among 70,000 devoutly religious(for the most part) who came to see a miracle then you are psychologically pre-disposed to seeing something, anything. Especially when others are claiming they saw it. If the sun plunged towards the earth a few times I doubt you would miss it or claim it never happened, no matter who you were. Let alone a believer. 70,000 people did not claim to see it and 6 didn't. Who was really spoken to? .001% of the people there, tops, and not all saw it. You believe in a wizard in the sky that grants wishes. Scary Steve.

Dave, Ottawa
February 07, 2010 8:59am

Dave You should write a novel. You have a very broad view of all types of people. It will be a best seller for sure. Again I will await some other atheists explanations for something they did not witness.

Steve, Salem, NH
February 08, 2010 1:27pm

You weren't there either Steve and you seem to have no problem believing it happened. Why can't someone who wasn't there pick it apart and tell you why it is not believable? The evidence you are using to believe it is the same evidence I am using, plus the rationality you lack, to dismiss it.

Dave, Ottawa
February 09, 2010 9:36pm

You have no evidence at all. If you consider any possible evidence it would be the reports from the antagonistic newspaper media of that country at that time. They are the only documented historical evidence that we have.
All the picking apart from skeptics and atheists decades later cannot compare to the reported event. On balance, I would prefer to believe and so state again that
NOTHING DID NOT HAPPEN AT FATIMA

Steve, Salem, NH
February 11, 2010 9:01am

Certainly there is evidence and none of it really supports the apparitions. Since Lucia revealed two prophecies after the fact..they are pretty suspect. The third, that supposedly had to do with the shooting of Pope John Paul II is extremely vague and certainly has nothing to do with the Pope being shot that day in St.Peter's. The fact that the third prophecy that Lucia was apparently ordered to write down in 1944 contains nothing as detailed Pius XI being Pope during the WWII(which of course was written when he was already Pope)shows that she was never really given anything prophetic. Therefore, she is already shown as a liar. Now, if she lied about the prophecies and kept that going for her lifetime there is no reason to believe she didn't make up the apparitions.
As for the actual Fatima event of 1917, we covered that.
To recap, a woman who claimed to have a direct line to God fabricates two, after the fact, prophecies that are only showing any accuracy because they are AFTER THE FACT. Then writes one extremely vague prophecy that clearly had nothing to do with JP II.
Yet, people of faith believe the first two still qualify as prophecies( which is kind of like me writing when Reagan was going to get shot right now) and a clearly inaccurate one is still believed to be accurate.
Faith will allow people to believe in the most blatant BS. The prophecies are BS and the diving sun blah blah blah nonsense at Fatima is BS. But hey, Faith does not require thought.

Dave, Ottawa
February 21, 2010 3:21pm

Dave, Ottawa
Calling Lucia a liar as a child and into her adulthood is blantedly ABSURD. The prophecies are not the defining factors of Fatima in any case.
You keep referring at least to me as just having faith with no thought. Then I suggest you reread the above comments.
Your statement "We covered that" is escapism on your part. Divertionary tactics such as using the prophecies does not convince me or others who know about the event of Oct 13, 1917 which was reported by the press and uncontested by eye witnesses in all these past decades.
The Johnny come latelies have all the answers since they are stuck in their atheistic beliefs.
Yes this entire universe is one big accident, peasant children lied for months under pressure, Mass hallucination is commonplace, adults at Fatima were all idiots or duped believers, newspapers headline fiction, thousands of Portugese people saw nothing unusual during all that time, that the sun came out just at that hour following some rain is a normal thing. All of this is just one huge coincidence.
Dave unless you or others have something more convincing to relate I am through here.

Steve, Salem, NH
February 22, 2010 12:23pm

That we have covered it already is not a diversionary tactic. We have. You just choose to ignore the dissection of that supposed rock hard evidence. I won't go through it all again because like all conversations with people of Faith it will be like banging my head against the wall.
I call Lucia a liar because she clearly was. She divulges "prophecies" after the fact. Very accurate ones. Why not before? Because they would have been very vague ones like the third one. Why is the third one vague? Because she was pressured in to divulging it and really had to come up with something fast. She couldn't come up with anything as accurate as actually naming a reigning future Pope(as she did previously) because she had to make it BEFORE it happened this time. I believe she was even as vague as to say "she believed he was the Pope". She would not even commit to that. Odd isn't it? And the event the Third prophecy is aligned to is clearly not in line with the prophecy. So, the evidence spells out liar, BIG TIME. Add in the fact that the visions at Fatima completely aligned with characters that pertain to her religious brainwashing and voila!
The clearest evidence she is a phoney is that she clearly lied about being given information from the Virgin and frankly, who really speaks to the Mother of the Son of God and then makes stuff up. Lies. Lucia was an attention hog as a child and that continued on to adulthood. Millions of people will swear an old lady read their tea leaves.

Dave, Ottawa
February 22, 2010 5:58pm

Dave
I suggest you look up at the sun and maybe you will see the light.
Please don't. You are not at Fatima like all those who looked at the sun and had no damage to their eyes. Or was this just another coincidence that we can add to the others???
Amen.

Steve, Salem, NH
February 23, 2010 7:23pm

What would be more worthwhile would be to find someone who had NO OPINION before researching an event and then coming to a conclusion. The article and the comments of Dave (above) are so typical I could have written them myself. For those self-identified sceptics, I wish you wold find something else to do with your lives...instead of trying to destroy what others believe, why not try and find something TO BELIEVE IN yourself. I will put my education and life experiences up against anyone.....and I believe.

Eric, San Antonio, Texas
March 12, 2010 10:21am

Oh well, if Eric believes it then who am I to argue? With his life experiences and all. Give me a break. We argue bcause you present God, Jesus and Mary as fact. Your religious beliefs as based on fact. That nonsense like this, with no real solid evidence to back it and easily refuted weak evidence are indisputable truths that back up your religious beliefs. Quit saying Jesus speaks to you and you know that Christianity is the TRUTH when it clearly can't be backed up by an ounce of empirical evidence and maybe skeptics wouldn't have to come in and pull your little magic carpet out from underneath you. I agree that we probably should find something else to do since we are banging our heads against a wall and this is like trying to explain to a 5 year old that their imaginary friend isn't real. Religions have never been big on letting people believe what they want to believe. They actually spend a fair amount of time trying to convert people and plenty of dollars on network time so they can bombard the ignorant non-thinkers with their message.When you stop bothering people then we will. Religion is a mental illness.

Dave, Ottawa
March 18, 2010 9:05pm

I am a religious person and I can say that Mr. Dunning puts forth some very good questions and makes some interesting points well worth considering. It is not wrong to question authority or religion. I believe the mind is something that is meant to be expanded or we will feel restless and not reach our full potentials. Although we can feel our faith being shaken by the claims of skeptics, this need not be a cause for fear but actually a useful discussion on our mutual road to learning and discovering the truth, whatever that is. If God's grace is real, and if He loves like a father, He can handle our search may it take us on a detour.
As far as the Miracle of Fatima, there is more information here that needs to be researched before its validity can be confirmed or rejected. Such information includes the detailed accounts of the eye witnesses, and the reasons why the Church has accepted this as a miracle in the above article by Mr. Dunning have not sufficiently been explored. I read and heard from Catholic sources that the followers did not know what miracle to expect, and that the children were threatened with serious punishments, including death, for telling these stories. No child would continue making these claims if they were lies. It's just not possible. Intense insanity of this type (delusions of religious nature beyond innocent play) are usually encountered among teenagers and adults, not children. Can anyone recommend more sources? Thanks in advance.

Rebecca, Georgia
March 27, 2010 10:42am

""I am a religious person and I can say that Mr. Dunning puts forth some very good questions and makes some interesting points well worth considering. It is not wrong to question authority or religion. I believe the mind is something that is meant to be expanded or we will feel restless and not reach our full potentials. Although we can feel our faith being shaken by the claims of skeptics, this need not be a cause for fear but actually a useful discussion on our mutual road to learning and discovering the truth, whatever that is. If God's grace is real, and if He loves like a father, He can handle our search may it take us on a detour. ""

Very well written. Thank you:).

Øyvind, Norway
April 02, 2010 10:28am

"The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamor was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible." - Dr. Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University - Fatima October 13, 1917

Robert de Simone, New York
April 03, 2010 3:21pm

So, I'm not very religious at all; however, my mother is, and I usually have a lot of fun trying to devise rational explanations for her religious beliefs, in an attempt to make her more open-minded than she is. In fact, that's how I found myself reading this article. She showed me some pictures of the event, and I wanted to find a scientific explanation for the "miracle".
Having said that, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach, having read the comment about religion being a mental illness. Close-minded and full of blind faith she may be, but my mother certainly functions with the same mental capacity as everyone else I know.
I think religion is more a form of escapism (and on that is perhaps more healthy than certain other destructive behaviours one might be involved in to give themselves a sense of purpose). Some people believe in miraculous theories, and some try to debunk those theories.
You have a right to your opinion, but please, let's not be so insulting to those who have faith in something, which, to them, is wonderful.
So, I came here to to explain away my mother's beliefs, but having seen how vicious some people like to be, I think I'll just keep this to myself. After all, she believes in something which gives her joy, and I, having no faith, struggle to be happy. I don't need to bring her down to my level.

Liz, Toronto
April 09, 2010 12:42am

hi! i'm just 16 years old but never the less, i want to ask you people some questions. why does everything for you have to be so complex? can't you just believe that God exists and loves you so much that He is willing to take bold steps to save OUR souls (an example is the miracle of the dancing sun); yet you still turn away. it's a very painful slap on His face you know, being refused by the children he created. .

EVERYTHING DOES NOT NEED TO HAVE EXPLANATIONS OR PROOFS. . because sometimes, things are just beyond human comprehension. . yes, your human and you may have great money, or business or what ever... but so what? it will all waste away when u die. Your probably worrying rite now how to keep yourself wealthy.. we who choose to believe in Christ's truth on the other
hand have something to look forward to. and thats spending ETERNITY with him. .
_____
one day, we will all meet together .. and you'll tremble with fear because then you'll see that you were wrong. boy, would that day be a day of regrets for those who refused to see what was REALLY layed out in front of them. .

Euphoria, Dumaguete City
April 14, 2010 10:59pm

""why does everything for you have to be so complex? can't you just believe that God exists..."

The same reason you dismiss many wonderful things proposed by others: not enough evidence.

""it's a very painful slap on His face you know, being refused by the children he created.""

If you presuppose He exists, then yes, not wanting to hurt His feelings probably make sense. If you do not believe, however, it just makes no sense.

""yes, your human and you may have great money, or business or what ever... but so what? it will all waste away when u die.""

That's the way life works as I understand it, yes. When I die, my body and everything I have ever done or created or said will be gone or taken over by others.

'From my rotting corpse there will grow flowers and I am in them and that is eternity' -- Munch.

Øyvind, Norway
April 19, 2010 2:11pm

No one seems to mention that the children had predicted a miracle days before it happened. They knew the exact time , date and place for the miracle of the sun. Now can someone explain that. Also, before the miracle of the appeared, there was a greyish, blue cloud above the children that gradually ascended into the sky. Then the miracle of sun happened.

Mary, Englewood, Colorado
April 22, 2010 9:40pm

"No one seems to mention that the children had predicted a miracle days before it happened."

Er, yes, we are. Listen to the podcast one more time.

"Also, before the miracle of the appeared, there was a greyish, blue cloud above the children that gradually ascended into the sky. Then the miracle of sun happened."

Do you have any evidence of this?

Øyvind, Norway
April 23, 2010 5:48am

Qyvind
Try reading some earlier posts so you can judge what the comments have been. Basically a series of coincidences(?) and circumstantial evidence from people that were present.

Steve, Salem, NH
April 24, 2010 11:57am

Øyvind > Do you have any evidence of this?

Video evidence:

http://tiny.cc/fatimavideo

Robert Smith, London
April 25, 2010 3:04pm

There are stadiums full of people who believe they saw Benny Hinn perform miracles too. They would argue it to their graves. Or Peter Popoff. Or whomever. These MIRACLES didn't happen either. For that matter, if stadiums full of people insist Benny Hinn is performing miracles when he isn't... why wouldn't an equally deluded yet smaller group of people believe Jesus was performing miracles when he wasn't?

Dave, Ottawa
April 29, 2010 10:49am

Dave
You ought to know you were there right?
Who is this Benny Hinn ???

Steve, Salem, NH
May 05, 2010 12:46pm

You weren't there either yet you defend it like you were. So, apparently being there is irrelevant to this discussion. There is no talking to people who believe what the Bible says. It is fantastic fairytales written by people who thought epilepsy was a case of demonic possession. That one should not sit on a chair for seven days that a woman has sat on when she had her period because it is unclean. We created God, he didn't create us. Walk away from your magic sky wizard and in to the 21st Century. I can't believe that so much of the world's population still lives in the dark ages!!

Dave, Ottawa
May 07, 2010 11:53am

Dave Dave Dave
We both were not there as has been said before BUT people who were there and the Newspaper reporters ALL saw the unusual event. I understand that in 1960 a reunion was held in Fatima for those still living who witnessed the event in 1917. NONE changed their mind about what they saw or did not see. Some may still be alive to reconfirm this!!!!
You and all the other "Johnny Come Latelies" can continue to propose other absurd possibilities such as mass hysteria, mass hallucination, massive deceit, mass conspiracy etc etc I am all done with this unless something
challenging is mentioned. Bye All
Happy MOTHERS day.

Steve, Salem, NH
May 07, 2010 5:13pm

And like I said..stadiums full of people go to see Benny Hinn(a preacher/con man)and he makes people walk, cures deafness etc..and people believe it. Will swear they have seen miracles performed. Fatima is a bunch of people who wanted a miracle. A heavily Roman Catholic area that got a Roman Catholic miracle. Unfortunately, since the Bible is clearly a fantastically fictional document the appearance of Mary has the credibilty of an appearance of Mickey Mouse. Since an appearance by characters in a Christian fairytale is the catalyst for this miaculous non-miracle it is unbelievable from the start. They saw what they needed to see. But something that never happened. It is like stating that Humpty Dumpty appeared and spoke to three kids, nobody could see him but the kids and a bunch of idiots lock-stepped along because they needed Humpty Dumpty's miracle to happen.

Dave, Ottawa
May 11, 2010 7:09am

Dave
As I have said, I am awaiting for something challenging from anyone who was not there to comment about that event. Bye

Steve, Salem, NH
May 11, 2010 7:25am

You would not respond to anything because you just go back to the fact that I wasn't there. That has been your defence all along. That if people say they saw it, it is real. Well, that is not the case. It has all been laid out in front of you but you are someone of faith, which means that nothing gets in. You believe in magic wizards and insist that you are "in the know" , how does anyone speak to that? Unfortunately we live in a world where the majority of the population live in this fantasy world. That believe in Adam and Eve and all the rest of the fairytales. It is not that arguments aren't there because I have argued with many of faith and they just go back to their being enlightened and knowing the truth.
I will agree that a large group of people appear to have witnessed something but that doesn't make it fact. When one throws in religion, all kinds of delusion is possible. Even the atheist claim that it happened is suspect because if he was someone just looking for an excuse to believe, this mass hysteria would be enough to tip him. If a hundred people believe they saw Bigfoot, one could agree that they believe they saw Bigfoot but did they really? Without photos and empirical evidence you have nothing but belief. Fatima has no evidence. The supposed revelations are BS so why wouldn't the rest of the childrens nonsense be BS? Mary came to earth to give weak prophecies to a child? If you want evidence there it is. Lucia is clearly a liar.

Dave, Ottawa
May 11, 2010 2:43pm

Gee Dave
I guess I believe in the 4 Newspapers whose reporters were there primarily to discredit the event since nothing unusual surely was going to happen????. The most prominent estimate of the crowd size is 70,000 people. Even if only HALF that number how can so many people imagine what they all saw and all from different angles. If you and others want BS then simply reread your above comments.
I have patience so I will continue to await some challenging comments from anybody.

Steve, Salem, NH
May 12, 2010 5:01pm

I tried to make the same point about the reporters yesterday but it didn't post.

The argument that there really weren't a lot of people there also is founded on a baseless assumption.

The bottom line is, the skeptics just make a bunch of almost certainly wrong assumptions, like "everyone there was expecting a miracle, so they all hallucinated it". Then everyone's supposed to agree with it or you're not being rational.

Maybe it'll take this post.

Gary, Fredericksburg, VA
May 13, 2010 9:02am

I feel that this miracle is definetly somthing that did in fact happen. For one wether it was hundreds, thousands, or thousands of thousands, you must understand that not all those witnessing were religious Catholics many were sceptics and athiests who also report seeing the miracle. Also these young children who had a limited knowledge and education had said things about church teachings that they would not have known. The things that they said about what our Lady and the angel said to them is so articulate and theological that these young shepherd children could not have made up let alone remember. The childrens stories were consistent even after they were threatened with death of themself and each other. Also the outword change in the children was a miracle as well they began praying and saying the rosery daily, sacrifices, attending church regularly if not daily. Not something a few lying kids would go threw with the rest of their life. These children would not have been able to make this up, if they were delirious because of the flu their stories would not have matched church teachings nore made sence. Hallucinations differ from one person to the next not consitent even when questioned seperatly.

"Oh my Jesus forgive us our sins save us from the fires of hell lead all souls to heaven especially those in most need of thy mercy"

The words of our Lady said to the children. Not something they could have made up themselves..

Our Lady Pray For Us!

unbornhumanrights, http://youtube.com/user/unbornhuman
May 21, 2010 9:44pm

Here was this experiment about subjects asked to tell which if 3 lines matched in length a fourth line. The first four subjects to answer were accomplices of the experimenter and were giving wrong answers on purpose. The fifth and last subject was a real subject and most of them would give the same answer as the group.
At first they would hesitate to give the wrong answer, and after 5 trials they would just go with it.

A few subjects tried giving the correct answer on the first trial, resulting in the other subjects (the accomplices) staring at them as if they had said something stupid.
On the next trials, these "rebellious" subjects would then give the same (wrong) answer as the other subjects/accomplices.

At the end of the experiment, real subjects were told about the trick and asked why they gave answers they knew were wrong.
The subjects gave different reasons the main ones being fear of going against the group and "they are the majority.

I can't remember the name of the experiment, perhaps someone here may mention it. There are videos of this experiment on youtube by the way.

So just to say that even skeptics can be convinced to fight their common sense.

V, Earth
June 08, 2010 8:34am

I once saw a UFO -- a glowing orange object floating around in the sky. Other people saw it with me. It lasted for about 20 minutes then it drifted away. The next morning it was reported in the local paper as well.

Now I don't know what it was. I just know that I saw it and others did too. I was an amateur astronomer and I knew it wasn't a planet or a satellite or a meteor or a cloud or a plane or anything ordinary.

There's not much I can do with that observation. Some skeptics have tried to convince me that I didn't see anything strange or that I shouldn't draw any conclusions about it until I contacted the appropriate scientists to get an authoritative opinion.

But what's the point? People see weird things in the sky on a regular basis. A fair number of those don't have explanations either.

Brian asks reasonable questions and provides a reasonable scenario for the Miracle of the Sun. Maybe he's got it right.

From my standpoint the Miracle could have been another UFO event without a scientific or religious explanation.

A hundred years later I don't see how the issue can be settled.

V: you are describing the Asch conformity experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments .

jack, San Francisco
June 09, 2010 12:13pm

An interesting thing about that O'Seculo article - nowhere does the reporter actually state that he saw anything himself. The article is merely a factual account of the crowd's behaviour on the day, none of which is particularly at odds with the sceptical position above (as far as I can see). I don't think that it's correct to say that this "secular" newspaper actually supports the notion that the sun danced, only that they reported on people's reactions and anecdotes before, during and after the event.

Kevin, Canberra, Australia
June 17, 2010 8:30pm

There are quite a lot of inaccuracies and in this post.

-Yes, the children returned from the Cova da Iria on May 13, 1917 with a fantastic story. This is why they were dismissed by their families and ostracized by their friends when they insisted that their claims were true. Lucia dos Santos' mother, in particular, ruthlessly beat and ridiculed her daughter and attempted countless times to coerce a "confession." The children were even arrested and threatened by authorities, but they still maintained the truth of their claims. It cannot be exaggerated how remarkable it is that these children, ages 7-10, went through so much persecution and didn't budge even a little on their story.

-Yes, Maria Rosa, Lucia dos Santos' mother, disbelieved her daughter. This is hardly surprising given the aforementioned ruthless treatment of Lucia; Dunning is intentionally not providing this context to support his skepticism.

-lol, c'mon. It should be telling that Dunning must resort to conjecture, hypothetical experiments, and question-begging to avoid using the multitude of evidence that we do have. I thought skeptics followed the evidence.

-Dunning will have to do more than say de Marchi is a Catholic priest to question his objectivity.

-The link to the abstract of McClure's book does not work. I have seen his "investigation" alluded to by other skeptics, but never provided examples of the alleged contradictions.

-The photograph is static and may not have been taken at the right time.

Brian, Ventura
June 28, 2010 7:25pm

Brian from Ventura, what evidence? What is this 'multitude of evidence'? All we have for data are some stories that are not backed up by any observatories and a picture which doesn't back up the stories.

I'll go with reasonable conjecture over crazy 'sun dancing but only in this one field and only for the devote Catholics' stories any day of the year. Even leap years.

Brandon, Falconer
June 29, 2010 8:04am

Again I ask, is there any actual evidence that the cops arrested and threatened little children for coming up with an outlandish story? Not only does it sound ludicrous, but so far everyone who has stated that the girls were threatened by authorities have failed to provide proof this "persecution" actually happened.

Øyvind, Bergen, Norway
July 30, 2010 7:52pm

I'm guessing that we're dealing with a massive case of "Emperor's New Clothes".

Mick, New Jersey
August 06, 2010 8:18pm

I don`t want to reveal my name because of skeptics. I am a Catholic and have been having personal problems for several years, to me, a "heavy cross" to bear. I am of stable mind and body and have all of my senses. I had been praying daily to Jesus and the Blessed Mother to help me with my problems, as well as to Our God, the Father, for several months and months, to no avail. I thought of suicide. Don`t have the guts. There was so much on my plate I really didn`t know where to begin. I am a male, and not used to crying jags, but I was having them. It all seemed hopeless. Then a strange thing happened. For peace and tranquility, I would often drive up to the large cemetery on the hill, where my father and sister are buried, for peace. It was about 3PM , June 13, 2010..as I sat there I completley broke down sobbing, resting my head on the steering wheel and cried out loud " God, Why have you abandoned me" !."Why are you not listening to my prayers" !."Please, if you are here, show me a sign, show me a sign that you are listening to me" !.something told me to get out of my car and look at the sun..it was a clear day, blues skies, no clouds, I took my sunglasses off and laid them on the car roof.and there it was..I was staring at the sun without hurting my eyes...it looked like a pale disc spinning, then I saw halos of purple and orange, this lasted 7-10 min. I`d look down at the trees to see if I saw spots..nope.look back at the sun.I got the sign, and my life is not the same.

Anonymous, Midwest
August 19, 2010 12:06pm

Anonymous, I'm glad that your life has changed for the better because of your experience. However, what you describe (crying and suicidal thoughts, with or without action) are text book symptoms of depression. Those of us with mental illnesses tend to deny their existence on the basis that we are of sound mind. Hallucinating is not uncommon, especially during times of extreme stress. I urge you to speak to your doctor if any of these things happen again. I am not denying that you saw what you did, but I urge you to look at your experience objectively.

Some people are mentioning the imprisonment and interrogation of the children. I was shown that movie too, in catholic middle school.

Soulvei, CA
August 19, 2010 5:18pm

Make a comment about this episode of Skeptoid (please try to keep it brief & to the point). Anyone can post:

You can also discuss this episode in the Skeptoid Forum, hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Join the Skeptalk email discussion list.

What's the most important thing about Skeptoid?

Your Name:
City/Location:
Comment:	characters left. Discuss the issues - personal attacks, posts containing advertisements or links to commercial services, nonsense, and other useless posts will be deleted.
Answer 9 + 9 =

#1 -	How to Debate a Young Earth Creationist Read \| Listen

#2 -	The Real Philadelphia Experiment Read \| Listen

#3 -	Medical Myths in Movies and Culture Read \| Listen

#4 -	MonaVie and Other "Superfruit" Juices Read \| Listen

#5 -	Religion as a Moral Center Read \| Listen

#6 -	HAARP Myths Read \| Listen

#7 -	Apocalypse 2012 Read \| Listen

#8 -	The Detoxification Myth Read \| Listen

Illuminating the Fatima "Miracle of the Sun"

References & Further Reading

Discuss!

Recent Comments...