Fatima: Did 70,000 people witness a miracle?

  • Thread starter Ivan Seeking
  • Start date
In summary, 70,000 people including reporters from all the principal daily newspapers in Lisbon, Portugal, saw the sun dance three times. The first time it happened, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic law, and the second and third times it happened, the sun danced. There is a middle position that the sun danced, and a school of thought that natural phenomena such as ball lightning may be able to affect observers psychologically. There is a possibility that this was some kind of hoax; an elaborate magic trick. There is no evidence that mass suggestion is possible, and without knowing more about the personal accounts it is difficult to say for sure.
  • #36
bassplayer142 said:
Interesting story. Not that I believe this, but has anyone thought of the influence of some kind of airborn drug that caused a mixture of suggestion and hallucination. I doubt it, but it is worth thinking about.

Could be... remember that Hieronymus Bosch and his entire village were under the spell of a lysergic acid (LSD) trip because of the rust growing on their rye crops. In fact the spores from the rust could have infiltrated everyone's blood stream even if they didn't eat the bread.

Here's a detail of a painting that is thought to be influenced by the rust (LSD) by Bosch.

Gruen.jpg
 
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  • #37
baywax said:
Hieronymus Bosch and his entire village were under the spell of a lysergic acid (LSD) trip because of the rust growing on their rye crops.

With all due respect, but this sounds like an urban myth. Although ergot poisoning is a well-documented phenomenon, I fail to see how it can take on that kind of apocalyptic proportions.

Do you have any link to any kind of material on this?

As for the OP... and all y'all other true believers... *facepalm*.
 
  • #38
Max Faust said:
With all due respect, but this sounds like an urban myth. Although ergot poisoning is a well-documented phenomenon, I fail to see how it can take on that kind of apocalyptic proportions.

Do you have any link to any kind of material on this?

As for the OP... and all y'all other true believers... *facepalm*.

?

So... in the same post you let us know that you think the miracle was not a miracle at all, that it has some more plausible explanation - and then you outright dismiss an explanation offered?
 
  • #39
Max Faust said:
As for the OP... and all y'all other true believers... *facepalm*.

Are you suggesting that to ask a question and present the relevant information makes me a true believer? If so, technically, your post merits a penalty for making a false claim.
 
  • #40
Only the people there know what they saw, and it is hard for us on the outside, to fully understand what happened no matter how documented a case may be, it is just one of those "you had to be there" kind of things.

No one can believe me when I told them what I felt during a Eucharistic Adoration, but does that make it false because someone else can not explain what happened? No it does not.
 
  • #41
DaveC426913 said:
So... in the same post you let us know that you think the miracle was not a miracle at all, that it has some more plausible explanation - and then you outright dismiss an explanation offered?

Basically, yes.

I am eagerly awaiting a link to some study which shows how ergot poisoning can happen on a mass scale, but in the meantime I am happy with whatever ad hominem critique I may be gathering for my drug-related skepticism. It doesn't matter. I *know* that this is not the way LSD works.
 
  • #42
Max Faust said:
Basically, yes.

I am eagerly awaiting a link to some study which shows how ergot poisoning can happen on a mass scale, but in the meantime I am happy with whatever ad hominem critique I may be gathering for my drug-related skepticism. It doesn't matter. I *know* that this is not the way LSD works.

This is the supposed 1950s LSD "attack" by the CIA on a small french village. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html"

The article is crappy at best, but it is the only one I could find on it. In the end the CIA didn't do it, but it was something wrong with the crops.
 
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  • #43
MotoH said:
In the end the CIA didn't do it

Oh they most definitely did!

I know about that one. It was a part of the MKULTRA program. They did similar things in the US as well, both with troops and with civilians. They probably still do.
 
  • #44
I suppose you wear a tinfoil hat?
 
  • #45
Nope. Tinfoil doesn't look good with my complexion.

Look, I am not trying to exchange one crazy idea for another. If you can vapourise LSD in order to distribute it through the air, you can probably intoxicate a large number of people simultaneously, but this would have to be very technical and very deliberate, and the outcome of such an act would be highly unpredictable (although it is fair to assume that the subjects would be greatly incapacitated as soldiers, which is why the CIA was interested in it in the first place, and made it part of their MKULTRA - click it! - program).

But we are going off topic. My point is that a spontaneous event of mass ergot poisoning cannot explain any kind of mass simultaneous experience, and if nothing else than for the simple reason that LSD cannot "induce" anything into your psyche that wasn't already there (which is why all LSD experiments show a subjective and highly variable response pattern to the drug).

So, in conclusion: I don't buy either the "miracle" or the "LSD" idea.
 
  • #46
Max Faust said:
Basically, yes.
OK, I can accept that. Doubting it to be a miracle doesn't automatically mean one must accept the next explanation that comes along.
 
  • #47
DaveC426913 said:
Doubting it to be a miracle

I am uncomfortable with the concept of *miracles* in general. There are certainly a lot of things we don't understand in this world, but resorting to supernatural "explanations" is a bit of an intellectual cop-out, innit?

However that may be, the only hypothesis I can suggest for why 70,000 people experience a simultaneous, similar and very unusual phenomenon is some kind of mass suggestion. (For an in-depth explanation, the right person to ask would probably be David Copperfield.) I'd also tend to think that people will be more suggestible if they already *believe* very strongly in something. The cynical evergreen of Lenin comes to mind: Who benefits from this?
 
  • #48
Max Faust said:
However that may be, the only hypothesis I can suggest for why 70,000 people experience a simultaneous, similar and very unusual phenomenon is some kind of mass suggestion.

Ot maybe they didn't experience anything. We don't have 70,000 written testimonies. We have a considerably smaller number. If 10 people say that there were 70,000 witnesses, that's not 70,000 reports, that's 10 reports.
 
  • #49
-Job- said:
I have a hard time believing in this, despite the fact that 70,000 people witnessed it. When you have that many people sitting around, antecipating something, looking for anything that might seem unusual, someone is bound to come up with something. And then what is everyone else going to say? Everyone wants to have seen it, because those who didn't weren't special enough to receive the "communication". Was there any chance that these people were going to go home without having seen anything?

So your "scientific" argument is that if you didn't see it, then 70,000 witnesses or no, it simply did not occur!
 
  • #50
Tosh said:
I would probably look into the affect it still has on the people. If they seem to be self-policing unusually well on the basis of the Sun incidence proving to them their was an ultimate being out there; then they probably saw it. It would also be important to look into the propaganda techniques used after the occasion to embed the concept.

Why is Mary called Fatima in this region? Is that right?

It seems strange as Fatima is an Arabic name, and it is the name of the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, the final messenger in Islam - after Jesus, Noah, Moses, and Abraham etc.

Fatima is the name of place where it happened, so the story goes in the 12th century a moorish princess named Fatima had been made captive and was given in marriage to the count of Ourem, the place was named after her. After converting to christianity her name was then changed to Oureana in the year 1158 (source http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fátima_(Ourém))
 
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  • #51
To me, this take is among the more interesting:

Stanley L. Jaki, a professor of physics at Seton Hall University, New Jersey, Benedictine priest and author of a number of books dealing with the intersection of science and faith, proposed a unique theory about the supposed miracle.[28] 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.[28]

(From the http://www.answers.com/topic/the-miracle-of-the-sun link)

If the newspapers were accurate about the children's predictions, then even a perfectly natural, explainable phenomenon occurring on the specified date would be...suspiciously coincidental.
 
  • #52
cephron said:
To me, this take is among the more interesting:



(From the http://www.answers.com/topic/the-miracle-of-the-sun link)

If the newspapers were accurate about the children's predictions, then even a perfectly natural, explainable phenomenon occurring on the specified date would be...suspiciously coincidental.

Unless the children were exceptionally accurate meteorologists.
 
  • #53
I agree with Evo, mass hysteria seems a viable hypothesis. Why would God be so vain? If a God craves this sort of self aggrandizing attention, it is not the sort of God I consider worthy of worship.
 
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  • #54
Chronos said:
I agree with Evo, mass hysteria seems a viable hypothesis. Why would God be so vain? If a God craves this sort of self aggrandizing attention, it is not the sort of God I consider worthy of worship.

Puny earthlings... look, I can make your sun dance, in 3D... mmmuahahahahahah.
 
  • #55
Chronos said:
I agree with Evo, mass hysteria seems a viable hypothesis. Why would God be so vain? If a God craves this sort of self aggrandizing attention, it is not the sort of God I consider worthy of worship.

Vanity. I'm surprised by this assumption-- or hypothetical assumption, no matter how carefully it is conditioned.
 
  • #56
Alfrez said:
But then we know that in billions of galaxies. Only Earth may have life, hence no UFOs can't exist too.

A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Anything that is in the sky that we cannot recognise is one. UFO's certainly exist.

It is the alien contingent that cannot be commented on / cannot exist.

This isn't an attack at you, just a clarification as people are confusing the two quite a lot.
 
  • #57
Just saw an interesting example on TV news, of what could be considered mass hysteria .. or near as.

A large group of people in Egypt (the current conflict) - perhaps a thousand. Someone said he got some info, a text or something, that Mubarek had just been deposed, left the country, etc. The news spread like wildfire. Within seconds, eveybody was jumping around in jubilation, rejoicing, kissing, hugging each other, believing that to be a fact. Their reality, at that moment, and for some time after, was that Mubarek was gone.
 
  • #59
baywax said:
Unless the children were exceptionally accurate meteorologists.

Lol, they would have to be exceptional...the article claims they predicted it (an extremely unusual meteorological event, to my untrained eyes, at least) months before, and it took place on the predicted day.

Now, I haven't done any research beyond the links in this thread. But if the above is correct - it seems we now have an additional way that this event could have been miraculous.

1) Supernaturally caused event -> miracle (by def)
2) Meterologically caused event -> probably miracle? (prediction vs. unlikely coincidence)
3) No event, but auto/mass hysteria/illusion/ etc. -> not miracle
 
  • #60
I must be cracked... to me this is neither surprising nor remarkable. "Miracles" gain credibility with time if they're not debunked, which really tells you everything you need to know about them.

People truly believe jesus christ shows up in food, and people come to see it and explain over these miracles. How is this different, except that you had a ton of people who already believed that THIS grilled cheese would have the virgin mary on it? All of this occurred in the midst of a secular-religious debate, and oh look, the people saw the magic sun and won the argument.

Hey, anyone want to get together and claim to have witness spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking?... If enough of us say it, we'll literally create a following... see "MMR" study. :rolleyes:

So again, how is it that this is somehow a unique or interesting event, except that it occurred in a time of greater communications?
 
  • #61
Get everyone to predict the landing site of a meteor, what are the odds someone comes up trumps? Surprisingly high.

I'd be interested to see how many other predictions are made and fail to occur. We humans have a thing with only remembering the good stuff and ignoring everything else. These kids could have been predicting things wrongly all their lives, they finally get one right and wow, it's a miracle.
 
  • #62
jarednjames said:
Get everyone to predict the landing site of a meteor, what are the odds someone comes up trumps? Surprisingly high.

I'd be interested to see how many other predictions are made and fail to occur. We humans have a thing with only remembering the good stuff and ignoring everything else. These kids could have been predicting things wrongly all their lives, they finally get one right and wow, it's a miracle.

Hey, get that prediction, give it a decade, and not only will everyone have SEEN the meteor... they'll have a piece to sell or show you... honest!
 
  • #63
nismaratwork said:
Hey, get that prediction, give it a decade, and not only will everyone have SEEN the meteor... they'll have a piece to sell or show you... honest!

Always reminds me of Blackadder (UK TV comedy) where one actor has a "bone from the finger of Christ" and paid a lot of money for it. After he's finished explaining about it, another character turns around, looking shocked and says "I thought they only came in packs of ten!".
 
  • #64
jarednjames said:
Always reminds me of Blackadder (UK TV comedy) where one actor has a "bone from the finger of Christ" and paid a lot of money for it. After he's finished explaining about it, another character turns around, looking shocked and says "I thought they only came in packs of ten!".

:smile: Great show, and great point.
 
  • #65
jarednjames said:
Get everyone to predict the landing site of a meteor, what are the odds someone comes up trumps? Surprisingly high.

I'd be interested to see how many other predictions are made and fail to occur. We humans have a thing with only remembering the good stuff and ignoring everything else. These kids could have been predicting things wrongly all their lives, they finally get one right and wow, it's a miracle.

Can't rule it out.

But how many times did the newspapers publish the "miracle" prediction and get 10,000+ people to gather at the supposed site at the supposed time? It could have happened a handful of times, yes. But for an extraordinary meteorogical event to occur, localized to the specified time and place (within the day; within ~50 km,?), on one of those rare occasions when a huge number people were gathered to witness a supposed miracle that was predicted months before...those odds don't seem to stack up very favorably?

I'm not claiming that it was in fact a miracle, I just don't think it can be debunked effectively by proving it was some sort of weather phenomenon.
 
  • #66
cephron said:
Can't rule it out.

But how many times did the newspapers publish the "miracle" prediction and get 10,000+ people to gather at the supposed site at the supposed time? It could have happened a handful of times, yes. But for an extraordinary meteorogical event to occur, localized to the specified time and place (within the day; within ~50 km,?), on one of those rare occasions when a huge number people were gathered to witness a supposed miracle that was predicted months before...those odds don't seem to stack up very favorably?

I'm not claiming that it was in fact a miracle, I just don't think it can be debunked effectively by proving it was some sort of weather phenomenon.

And what is the standing population of the area it occurred in? How many of those people gathered and weren't "simply there" and suddenly became "part of the gathered group"?

There are millions and millions of prediction made everyday all over the world, the odds of one, or even a few coming true are quite favourable - assuming this really occurred.

Now, that aside, I'm not old enough to know of other news reports from the time, but it would be interesting to know exactly how many predictions were made.
 
  • #67
The people that went there were mostly devoutly religious expecting to see something, then someone says, "There!" and starts describing it, and others wanting to also witness it convince themselves of it, and the mass hysteria starts.
 
  • #68
Evo said:
The people that went there were mostly devoutly religious expecting to see something, then someone says, "There!" and starts describing it, and others wanting to also witness it convince themselves of it, and the mass hysteria starts.

Bingo!
 
  • #69
Evo said:
The people that went there were mostly devoutly religious expecting to see something, then someone says, "There!" and starts describing it, and others wanting to also witness it convince themselves of it, and the mass hysteria starts.

...AND it was in the context of an ongoing argument with a secular portion of society. How fortuitous that there was a miracle... probably nothing more impressive than a cloud-break.
 
  • #70
Ivan Seeking said:
This may not be the best source but it tells the basic story.


http://fatima.ie/

If in fact some large percentage of the 70,000 actual observed what they say, and if the reports are fairly consistent, then there is only one explanation that would be consistent with science and the reported facts: What they saw was not the sun.

Russ, thanks for mentioning it. It is ironic that as an ex-Catholic, it never occurred to me to start a thread about this.

What do you mean by miracle? To me, it can mean one of two things:

(1) A true miracle: Something positive that happens which completely defies the laws of physics; a scientific impossibility.

(2) A lesser miracle: An extremely unlikely positive occurence, like getting all six numbers right in the Power Ball lottery.

According the great psychologist Carl Jung, UFO's occur in three ways: in dreams, in paintings and as rumors. This is a case where UFO's occur as a rumor.
 

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