Fatima: Did 70,000 people witness a miracle?

[russ_watters]

It isn't a matter of "want". The scientific method is a way to examine the world and scientists use it bacause it works. No other method (such as religion) has proven to be capable of duplicating that success.

 

[zomgwtf]

[insult deleted by Ivan]... erroneously supposing that science supercedes reason. Indeed it is the other way around; the scientific method, though wonderful, is only one expression of valid reason. Just because the scientific method cannot explain something does not mean that reason also cannot.

Your prejudice against the miraculous is entirely unjustified. You only label those things you don't WANT to be true as hallucinations. You would of course never dare label as a hallucination those observations made by scientists to form the foundation of those physical laws in which you put all of your faith and hope.

Who thinks that science supercedes reason?
You are assuming that the scientific method 'cannot explain things'... not a very good assumption... Doesn't hold water in my opinion AT ALL... Maybe WE can't explain things because we don't have data or can not collect data to USE science but that is far from meaning 'science cannot explain it'.
Prejudice against the miraculous is not entirely unjustified. The fact of the matter is that people don't have to believe in something without proof. And the burden of supplying the proof is on those that BELIEVE. I have never seen a miracle or been shown that miracles do occur other than thru hearsay or 'take my word for it' that's falling way short of making me think they happen.
Another assumption: that people claim all miracles are just 'hallucinations'. What in the world makes you assume that?
Another assumption: that people would never claim a scientist is hallucinating something. What in the world makes you think that?
Another assumption: that scientists put faith and hope into physical laws. Far from true, many scientists accept that physical laws may at some point be shown to be untrue. They just haven't yet.

I guess I kind of DO hope that the physical laws don't 'change' however, it might mean disastrous things for us humans.

 

[Yanick]

Our perceptions are colored by our biases. Any scientist or even half curious undergrad understands that the world as we experience it is not the 'full story,' for lack of a better word. The world is in constant chaos, things are a zooming and zapping and crashing constantly. Our senses do sense this but by the time it reaches our awareness most of the 'fluff' has been filtered out and a nice organized and orderly picture is put together in our brains for us to be able to function. Fairly random vibrations in the air are combined in our brains to give us a beautiful melody, light waves bouncing, reflecting, refracting etc are combined in our brain into the Mona Lisa. Our brains are constantly turning all this chaos into order so that we can actually be functioning organisms.

So with that said, I think this video can shed some light on how established biases can make us perceive some strange things. The whole video is about 13-14 minutes long and is really good but if you are strapped for time, just go to ~8:50 and watch from there. To someone who may not understand neuroscience it would seem like some sort of magic or brainwashing but in reality it is just someone who gives your brain a bit of help in creating order from chaos. Watch the video and you'll know what I'm talking about.

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html

 

[pallidin]

Yes, if part of a religious community, it would seem "normal" for those not experiencing anything to claim that they have... in an secret emotional hope that they will also receive a similar miracle by outwardly agreeing to an experience that they did not witness or a part of.

 

[bassplayer142]

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.

 

[baywax]

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.

 

[Max Faust]

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*.

 

[DaveC426913]

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?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

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.

 

[MotoH]

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.

 

[Max Faust]

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.

 

[MotoH]

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.

 

[Max Faust]

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.

 

[MotoH]

I suppose you wear a tinfoil hat?

 

[Max Faust]

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.

 

[DaveC426913]

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.

 

[Max Faust]

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?

 

[mikelepore]

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.

 

[bjacoby]

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!

 

[chuck654]

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))

 

[cephron]

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.

 

[baywax]

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.

 

[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]

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.

 

[Phrak]

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.

 

[JaredJames]

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.

 

[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_conformity_experiments

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

 

[cephron]

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

 

[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?