Fatima: Did 70,000 people witness a miracle?

baywax

Unless the children were exceptionally accurate meteorologists.

Chronos

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.

baywax

Puny earthlings... look, I can make your sun dance, in 3D... mmmuahahahahahah.

Phrak

Vanity. I'm surprised by this assumption-- or hypothetical assumption, no matter how carefully it is conditioned.

JaredJames

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.

alt

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.

Jack21222

I think this has some similarity to the Asch conformity experiments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_co...ty_experiments

People will disregard their own senses just to agree with others.

cephron

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

nismaratwork

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.

So again, how is it that this is somehow a unique or interesting event, except that it occurred in a time of greater communications?

JaredJames

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.

nismaratwork

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!

JaredJames

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!".

nismaratwork

Great show, and great point.

cephron

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.

JaredJames

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.

Evo

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.

JaredJames

Bingo!