Hello today I wish to discuss one of the bedrocks of my faith the miracle of Fatima.
A brief Summary. It was predicted by a Portuguese girl who claimed that the virgin Mary would cast a great miracle on a specific date. So an estimated 30000-100000 people gathered to see this event for themselfs. At some point the girl shouted (LOOK AT THE SUN!) then a silvery disc emerged from the clouds. now the accounts vary some say the sun danced other that it fell or that it turned into a spinning color wheel. for a more detailed summary check out the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun. So what happened, did tens of thousands of people hallucinate at the same time?, are they all lying? or is there an natural explanation?
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If that is the bedrock of your faith you are standing on quicksand.
You know Instead of insulting me why don't you actually debate me?
Not a person insult. Why don't we conduct a little experiment? Go outside and stare at the sun. Come back and tell us of any optical side effects you may suffer. Attribute those side effects to the god or goddess of your choice. See if anyone is impressed.
Disclaimer : Chimp3 is not responsible for any temporary or permanent harm to your eyes. Conduct this experiment at your own risk.
At the time of this so called solar miracle the Turks were in the middle of a campaign slaughtering one million Armenian Christians. So , we are to believe that the Christian god ignores the Armenians pleas and prayers and instead makes the sun get jiggly in the sky? Ooooh! What an awesome deity!
Well the sun did get a little wobbly, nothing drastic though. Read a bit about the event and decide if it could simply be an optical illusion.
I have read this account more than once. So, did you go outside and stare at the sun yet?
Sorry, I thought you were trolling. Okay, the sun danced because of the angel fatima. Gotcha. Before I too believe your story, I have a few questions. Ready? How come no one else observed it anywhere on earth? Why wasn't this front page news everywhere? Why aren't there scientific papers written about this? Why do only catholics believe this actually happened? What did the scientific observatories say about this ''miracle''? In other words, is there any objective evidence that this ever happened? Hint: The answer as far as I know is there is NO proof and no objective evidence that this ever happened
Well if you want you could read "critical evaluation of the event" on the wiki article I posted.
Cool, so you were an eye witness?
I stated in my previous comment that I did and the sun jiggled a bit but look up of what some of the eyewitnesses have to say. You will find that it is allot more than just a little wobbling.
Do you think that perhaps 1% of the population (about the ratio, whom according to you reported something significant) might exaggerate stuff a little?
Please note that most of the written reports of this event were recorded nearly 30 years later. Plenty of time for exaggeration and plain lying to occur. Also, notice the variation of the accounts of what the sun did. They vary widely. All are different. Did they see the same event? Saying the sun moved is not enough to explain the discrepancies.
perhaps a phew but 10000-100000 makeing the same claim?
10,000/1,000,000 = 0.01 = 1%
/e Oops sorry, you said 100,000 not 1,000,000 so
that would be 10%
No you misunderstood 10 to a 100 thousand people attended the miracle. are you saying they were all simultaneously decieved?
Not at all. People were told there was going to be a miracle at noon. So the credulous gathered at noon and stared into the sun. It is well known that looking at the sun often causes you to see weird stuff. So we have people who are expecting to see a miracle, seeing weird stuff; and you wonder why there are lots of people reporting seeing a miracle?
Can you provide objective evidence that even 10,000 people made this claim?
Well ok then did you read the wiki article I posted. I suggest you go to critical evaluation of the event and tell me what you think.
We have been telling you what we think..
Well alright then. the catholic church takes this event very seriously and called it worthy of belief (guise this is what they do when there not molesting children) do you know of the 3 secrets?
The very last authority I seek information from is the Catholic Church. I left that horrible institution 45 years ago.
Here are my 3 secrets: 1) I once kissed my cousin. 2) I really prefer cats to dogs. 3) I don't like jogging.
Oh for cryin' out loud, what a bunch of horseshit! I don't believe a word of it. Especially that the Pope witnessed the event himself. All we have is the eye witness testimony of 3 highly impressionable and religiously brainwashed children that clearly wanted and GOT attention. No confirmation by a TRUE independent source. The 30,000 to 100,000 people that watched the sun that day is highly dubious as well, as the entire population was less than 10,000 people. If you are basing your whole faith on this singular event, you should be responsible and do exhaustive research about it, not just accept frivolous reports as being true.
Check aout this article for example http://www.livescience.com/29290-fatima-miracle.html
@jacobcorneluis
I read the explanation of the miracle, and the "critical evaluation of the event" section. Do you think that the Sahara dust cloud, or parhelion are plausible naturalistic explanations to what happened at that moment?
Oh, c'mon... Really? https://youtu.be/CZR2k5c_198
@Jacob ....
There is an old maxim.., " Follow the money" ..... You have considered the events as "facts".... and again as delusions .... then again as an ,as yet , unexplained physical phenomina..... But you don't seem to have considered profit as a reason for the events..
Look at what has happened to the tiny little impoverished town of Fatima since those heady days of 1917.....
" For centuries, most of the villagers kept herds of sheep and depended also on subsistence farming."
see ..."subsistence farming" ...... poverty.
but nowadays........
"The economy of the town relies on religious tourism because the world devotion through Our Lady of Fátima attracts millions of Christian pilgrims. The locals have numerous shops and stalls devoted to the sale of religious articles and souvenirs. In addition, services for tourists, hotels, restaurants and other retail also benefit from the visitors."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1tima,_Portugal
Now I assume you will not willingly accept the idea of a fabrication or at least an exaggeration for such venal motives.....surely if it were that simple then there would be other poor communities running the same scam....?
Well...try this.....
"Since 1981, when six local children claimed they had seen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Medjugorje has become an unapproved destination of Catholic pilgrimage."
and it too seems to be beginning to thrive .....
"The town and its environs boomed economically after the war. Over a thousand hotel and hostel beds are available for pilgrims to the town. With approximately one million visitors annually, the municipality of Medjugorje has the most overnight stays in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medjugorje
See..... children ..... virgin mary ..... shrine ....... pilgrims...... money/wealth
Looks like a pattern to me.....
Addendum......
"Our Lady of Banneux, or Our Lady of the Poor, is the sobriquet given to the apparition of the Virgin Mary to Mariette Beco, an adolescent girl living in Banneux, province of Liège (Belgium). Between January 15 and March 2, 1933, Beco told her family and parish priest of seeing a Lady in white who declared herself to be the "Virgin of the Poor", saying I come to relieve suffering and believe in me and I will believe in you."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Banneux
"Each year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, come, alone or in group, notably during the Triduum of the sick, to confide to Our Lady their poverties, their sufferings, their pains, their wants"
There are more examples of course ...but I shall not burden you with them all... unless you insist ....
My apologies .... most unprofessional way of posting...but I've just chased down something that was niggling away at the back of my mind.... its about an event in 2009 at Knock in Ireland ,(the site of another earlier Marian vision ) but as you will see...this one specifically deals with optical illusions.......
"In October 2009, Knock received national attention when many people reported observing "miraculous" solar phenomena similar to the Miracle of the Sun widely believed[citation needed] to have occurred at the time of the Fatima apparitions. The phenomena had been "prophesied" by self-proclaimed Dublin-based mystic Joe Coleman[11] a few weeks earlier. The reports were met with scepticism. Archbishop Michael Neary said such events were "to be regretted rather than encouraged".[12]
When the pilgrims had left the shrine after this event, the manager had to call in industrial cleaners to remove the rubbish left, including spilt food and drink.[13] He also said that he would review whether gatherings would be allowed, citing health and safety issues as one problem.[13]
In December 2009, an ophthalmologist from University Hospital Galway issued a warning that there had been a significant spike in the number of cases of solar retinopathy "all of them linked to events at Knock", with the observed patients having had "a significant reduction in their vision". The reports of people having observed the sun "dancing in the sky" were characterised as merely "sort of a cheap trick" caused by the extremely bright sunlight: "If you stare at the sun for long enough you're going to get some visual disturbances." The warning about the dangers of staring directly at the sun continued: "Not only will you get reduced vision but also a condition called metamorphopsia"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock_Shrine
plus. verification of the event...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/01/thousands-await-knocks-vir...
I thing it is very likely. The girl's own mother called her "nothing but a fake who's leading half the world astray" another person who knew her well said "she lived in a world of infantile fantasy's" he went much further with his claims and accusing the catholic church of child abuse. he also called fatima "a hoax kept alive by the attention it gets and money it makes"
I am still waiting for a response to my statement about the Armenian genocide. At the time of this solar event one million christians are being slaughtered in Armenia. Are we to be impressed by this sun jiggling in the face of gods passivity during this genocide? This is akin to a juggler saying "Look at me, look at me!" while a child drowns in a swimming pool a few feet away. Why should we be impressed by such a deity?
mysterious ways chimp, mysterious ways. Some people do consider it to be the most important event in history. then there is also the prophecy's which I will cover in a later thread,
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