The Virgin Of Fatima

[suzie]

Hey everyone :-)

I was just an an atheist group on facebook, where a theist had posted the story of the virgin of Fatima... Anyway it sounded kinda convincing which freaked me out :-( I'm still at the stage where reading something like this could turn me back to christianity... So i was wondering if any ex-c's know anything about this and whether its been proved wrong?

Thabks,

Suzie :-)

[florduh]

Here's one discussion on it:

 

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/forum/forum_comments/3496

[Guest Valk0010]

To believe in the Virgin Mary appearance to me is a bit like, believing in aliens, wouldn't know unless I experienced it myself. More logically, don't think its a little weird, that Virgin Mary seems to pop up in really odd places, yet there obvious things that are more valuable to humanity, that aren't done.

[suzie]

Here's one discussion on it:

 

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/forum/forum_comments/3496

 

This just scared me more... I think i tend to focus on the things i don't want to, rather than focusing on the things that seem most logical... If that makes sens

[suzie]

To believe in the Virgin Mary appearance to me is a bit like, believing in aliens, wouldn't know unless I experienced it myself. More logically, don't think its a little weird, that Virgin Mary seems to pop up in really odd places, yet there obvious things that are more valuable to humanity, that aren't done.

 

Thanks :-) i've NEVER experienced any kinds of religious visions or anything, just kinda freaks me out that 70000 people in,the same,place at the same time all claimed to have seen it.

[Guest Valk0010]

To believe in the Virgin Mary appearance to me is a bit like, believing in aliens, wouldn't know unless I experienced it myself. More logically, don't think its a little weird, that Virgin Mary seems to pop up in really odd places, yet there obvious things that are more valuable to humanity, that aren't done.

 

Thanks :-) i've NEVER experienced any kinds of religious visions or anything, just kinda freaks me out that 70000 people in,the same,place at the same time all claimed to have seen it.

It does make a good argument, if your talking to evangelical apologists, to bring things like this up and they are trying to convince you that the resurrection is a historical fact.

[florduh]

...70000 people in,the same,place at the same time all claimed to have seen it.

Is there any evidence for that statement being true?

[suzie]

...70000 people in,the same,place at the same time all claimed to have seen it.

Is there any evidence for that statement being true?

 

Just the various articles on the net that i've read...

[suzie]

To believe in the Virgin Mary appearance to me is a bit like, believing in aliens, wouldn't know unless I experienced it myself. More logically, don't think its a little weird, that Virgin Mary seems to pop up in really odd places, yet there obvious things that are more valuable to humanity, that aren't done.

 

Thanks :-) i've NEVER experienced any kinds of religious visions or anything, just kinda freaks me out that 70000 people in,the same,place at the same time all claimed to have seen it.

It does make a good argument, if your talking to evangelical apologists, to bring things like this up and they are trying to convince you that the resurrection is a historical fact.

Gah! It makes too good an argument lol! I need a better counter-argument haha!

[blackpudd1n]

Hey everyone :-)

I was just an an atheist group on facebook, where a theist had posted the story of the virgin of Fatima... Anyway it sounded kinda convincing which freaked me out :-( I'm still at the stage where reading something like this could turn me back to christianity... So i was wondering if any ex-c's know anything about this and whether its been proved wrong?

Thabks,

Suzie :-)

 

Hey Suzie, grab The God Delusion, and in the index, you should be able to find the virgin of fatima. Dawkins does discuss this in the book

[suzie]

Hey everyone :-)

I was just an an atheist group on facebook, where a theist had posted the story of the virgin of Fatima... Anyway it sounded kinda convincing which freaked me out :-( I'm still at the stage where reading something like this could turn me back to christianity... So i was wondering if any ex-c's know anything about this and whether its been proved wrong?

Thabks,

Suzie :-)

 

Hey Suzie, grab The God Delusion, and in the index, you should be able to find the virgin of fatima. Dawkins does discuss this in the book

Thanks pudd :-) just about to pick jake up from the mechanic then I'll look at it as soon as I get home :-)

[blackpudd1n]

Hey everyone :-)

I was just an an atheist group on facebook, where a theist had posted the story of the virgin of Fatima... Anyway it sounded kinda convincing which freaked me out :-( I'm still at the stage where reading something like this could turn me back to christianity... So i was wondering if any ex-c's know anything about this and whether its been proved wrong?

Thabks,

Suzie :-)

 

Hey Suzie, grab The God Delusion, and in the index, you should be able to find the virgin of fatima. Dawkins does discuss this in the book

Thanks pudd :-) just about to pick jake up from the mechanic then I'll look at it as soon as I get home :-)

 

No worries, Suzie I remember reading that section well, because I'd never heard of that "miracle" happening before. From what I remember, they were all staring at the sun... Which will mess with your eyes and perception. I'm pretty sure Dawkins talks about what would have happened to the rest of the world if it had actually happened.

 

Not only that, but when people are in a state of mass hysteria, it's easy to convince them of something. I think they all wanted something to happen bad enough to be persuaded by others in the group.

[Guest Valk0010]

To believe in the Virgin Mary appearance to me is a bit like, believing in aliens, wouldn't know unless I experienced it myself. More logically, don't think its a little weird, that Virgin Mary seems to pop up in really odd places, yet there obvious things that are more valuable to humanity, that aren't done.

 

Thanks :-) i've NEVER experienced any kinds of religious visions or anything, just kinda freaks me out that 70000 people in,the same,place at the same time all claimed to have seen it.

It does make a good argument, if your talking to evangelical apologists, to bring things like this up and they are trying to convince you that the resurrection is a historical fact.

Gah! It makes too good an argument lol! I need a better counter-argument haha!

Well mostly because protestant apologists, don't believe in mary being what catholics think of her is my point. It puts them on the spot.

[suzie]

Hey everyone :-)

I was just an an atheist group on facebook, where a theist had posted the story of the virgin of Fatima... Anyway it sounded kinda convincing which freaked me out :-( I'm still at the stage where reading something like this could turn me back to christianity... So i was wondering if any ex-c's know anything about this and whether its been proved wrong?

Thabks,

Suzie :-)

 

Hey Suzie, grab The God Delusion, and in the index, you should be able to find the virgin of fatima. Dawkins does discuss this in the book

Thanks pudd :-) just about to pick jake up from the mechanic then I'll look at it as soon as I get home :-)

 

No worries, Suzie I remember reading that section well, because I'd never heard of that "miracle" happening before. From what I remember, they were all staring at the sun... Which will mess with your eyes and perception. I'm pretty sure Dawkins talks about what would have happened to the rest of the world if it had actually happened.

 

Not only that, but when people are in a state of mass hysteria, it's easy to convince them of something. I think they all wanted something to happen bad enough to be persuaded by others in the group.

Think I found it- he basically said all the stuff you said he wrote, then at the end says something about people who have had religious experiences like that that its unreasonable to expect ithers to believe them, especially if they know anything about how powerful the human brain is.

So that kinda put me at ease, but i'm still freaking out a bit :-(

[blackpudd1n]

Think I found it- he basically said all the stuff you said he wrote, then at the end says something about people who have had religious experiences like that that its unreasonable to expect ithers to believe them, especially if they know anything about how powerful the human brain is.

So that kinda put me at ease, but i'm still freaking out a bit :-(

 

Here's an article that might help give you some peace, Suzie: http://www.examiner.com/article/skeptics-looking-at-the-sun-fatima-and-faith

 

And here is an article explaining collective hallucination: http://www.skepdic.com/collective.html

 

I will also work on getting you some more information

[Guest Valk0010]

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature... There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior

 

“...no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”

Philisopher David Hume

 

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/45726.David_Hume

 

http://www.todayinsci.com/H/Hume_David/HumeDavid-Quotations.htm

[SilentLoner]

I don't find that story believable at all.

[Guest Valk0010]

I don't find that story believable at all.

And isn't it true your a former catholic? I bring that up to ease suzie's mind.

[Akheia]

Confession time: quite a few of my relatives are Catholic priests and nuns. One is way way into Fatima. I'd say more to establish cred but don't want to compromise that relative's privacy. The whole Fatima story is crazy pants. Its total lack of evidence is only the beginning of its issues. Even as a Catholic prone to mysticism I couldn't buy it. It's just a modern Nostradamus thing. Don't let it scare you.

[bornagainathiest]

Dear Suzie,

 

As an amateur astronomer, please let me reassure you that the so-called miracle of Fatima is just an example of mass hallucination, induced by religious fervor.

 

I can say this with total confidence and certainty because the Sun has been carefully monitored and watched on a day-to-day basis since the the early 1800's, decades before this 1917 event. If you go here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot ...you'll see that astronomers have been measuring and recording the daily number and movement of sunspots for a very long time. Now, please look closely at this diagram.

 

http://en.wikipedia....erfly_graph.gif

 

You'll see that daily records of the Sun's activity have been kept since about 1870.

To make this kind of accurate measurement astronomers use large telescopes that track the Sun across the sky as the Earth rotates. (No! They don't look thru the 'scopes - that would mean instant blindness! Instead, special instruments do all the recording.) Now for the big question.

 

So why is it that no observatory reported the Sun moving crazily on that day in 1917?

 

The reason is that it didn't.

 

Crazy movements and weird changes of color and brightness would have been clearly recorded in dozens of observatories across the sunlight side of the world at that time. There's no record of such things happening. There's no mention of the Sun behaving oddly to be found in any scientific journals for that year, nor in the meticulously kept records of each observatory. Also, please consider this.

It's not difficult to fool a person about what they think they're seeing, but it's impossible to fool a camera about what it records.

That's why CCTV footage will always trump a person's sworn testimony in a court of law. People can lie or be mistaken about something. A camera cannot. It simply records whatever's in it's field of view.

 

On that day, dozens of telescopes and cameras in many different countries would have been trained upon the Sun. They saw nothing unusual. Therefore, since cameras cannot lie or be mistaken, what the people in Portugal saw back in 1917 cannot have been anything real. Most likely it was a mass hallucination.

 

Another point to consider is this.

All the planets, the asteroids, the comets and clouds of interplanetary dust in our solar system orbit the most massive object that sits in the center... the Sun. The Sun's immense gravity keeps all of these orbits constrained and in good order. If the Sun had suddenly zipped around from it's proper place, wouldn't the orbits of the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Venus and every other planet, etc. been totally disrupted? Human history should have finished in 1917, with the total destruction of our solar system, caused by the Sun's erratic dance across the sky. But it didn't, did it? Nor is there any record from any astronomical observatory in the world of any gravitational disruption to the planets, the asteroids, the comets or anything else in our solar system. I find that v-e-r-y significant.

 

So was there something else in the sky that could have fooled everyone there? This article seems to suggest the possibility.

 

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

 

Also, if you go to Google Images and put in these words...

 

Parry Arc

Sundog

Lowitz Arc

 

...you'll see the wide variety of atmospheric displays that ice crystals in the upper air can create. All of these can be keenly observed with the human eye for long periods, without any harm - unlike directly looking at the Sun. Isn't that what some of the Fatima witnesses said? They watched a dimmed Sun without hurting their eyes?

 

Finally, there's the story of Constantine the Great http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I who was the first Roman Emporer to convert to Christianity. This link... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_hoc_signo_vinces ...describes how he (supposedly) saw a miraculous sign above the Sun. He went on to conquer and found a Christian Roman empire. Does that therefore mean it was a sign from God? Unlikely. What is more likely is that he saw an ice crystal display that he interpreted as meaningful and then this version of the events was the one written down for posterity. If a camera had been pointed up to where Constantine was looking, would it have recorded the sign of the cross and those words? Sadly, we'll never know.

 

However Suzie, my point is this. People have been seeing miraculous signs associated with the Sun for centuries. Only since the invention of the camera have we had any independent, unbiased way of verifying what they think they've seen. Strange, don't you think, that cameras NEVER record these religious messages? That tells me it's all in people's heads.

 

So please get the notion that there's anything significant about Fatima out of your head. Unscrupulous, immoral people are trying to put these toxic ideas into your imagination for their own selfish ends. Please pay attention only to the hard facts, the data and the evidence. If you do that, your mind will be at rest and you'll be at peace.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[♦ ficino ♦]

I'm sure I speak for most of us here in saying I appreciate how you share your knowledge in these domains, BAA. Thanks!

 

Could the religionist reply that the miracle consisted precisely in God's intervention in the minds of the onlookers? I.e. that God produced the same hallucination in many at once, in order to stimulate faith? My guess is that such an apologetical move would be another of the many unfalsifiable hypotheses that apologists put out there. So it would help believers justify their belief to themselves but would not help establish the mass hallucination as evidence of anything about a god or a virgin mother of god.

[suzie]

I don't find that story believable at all.

And isn't it true your a former catholic? I bring that up to ease suzie's mind.

 

I was raised a Catholic too, but i'd never even heard of this before now... it just decided to pop up right as i started to feel happy again after months of immense fear and guilt... need to go back to being a happy agnostic

[suzie]

Confession time: quite a few of my relatives are Catholic priests and nuns. One is way way into Fatima. I'd say more to establish cred but don't want to compromise that relative's privacy. The whole Fatima story is crazy pants. Its total lack of evidence is only the beginning of its issues. Even as a Catholic prone to mysticism I couldn't buy it. It's just a modern Nostradamus thing. Don't let it scare you.

can you fill me in on the lack of evidence??? I did notice that when i googled "pictures of miracle of the sun" the only pictures were of the people watching the "miracle" not of the actual miracle itself...

[florduh]

can you fill me in on the lack of evidence???

Since neither you nor anyone else has (or can) provide any evidence, then there is a lack of evidence.

 

Jesus appeared on a taco and Mary appeared on an office building window. Can you prove those events are not genuine miracles?

 

Logic, critical thinking, evidence, burden of proof...........

[freeasabird]

Sightings and bleeding statues to prove yourself as a god? Jesus fucking christ that's the stupidest thing I've ever fucking heard. If I were a god worth two shits and I wanted to prove myself I'd contact the media to have their cameras ready and then drop a million fucking tons of food out of the sky onto Africa. Then EVERYONE in the whole world would worship me. I mean that would really be my ultimate goal right? To have as many of my creation worship me. Fuck, this is the kind of religious shit that drives me up a wall, and is going to be grating my last nerve all day.