by Matthew Archbold
Sunday, March 27, 2011 11:26 PM ....
I’m always amazed what people will believe in order to avoid believing in God.
The Miracle of the Dancing Sun at Fatima which was seen by 70,000 people on October 13th, 1917 has been written about often. But many people continually attempt to explain away the vision of the sun dancing in the sky at a foretold time.
Every year I poke around the internet to see what new explanations have arisen to explain away the miracle. And I’m always astounded that they keep on trying. So here’s the new and updated list of the greatest scientific explanations for Fatima.
By now, secularists have amassed an enormous amount of explanations as to why we should not believe our own eyes. Here are the astounding reasons (some of them brand new and unintentionally hilarious) they’ve amassed so we should believe nothing at all special happened in Portugal that great day.
1. Stratospheric Dust. Steuart Campbell, writing for the 1989 edition of Journal of Meteorology, posited that a cloud of stratospheric dust altered the appearance of the sun making it abnormally easy to look at, and causing it to appear yellow, blue, and violet and to spin. In support of his hypothesis, Mr. Campbell reports that a blue and reddened sun was reported in China as documented in 1983.
Now, the fact that this happened on schedule doesn’t ruffle this theory for them at all I’m sure.
2. Not everyone saw it!. This is the polar opposite of the theory that some in China saw it too but consistency and science have nothing to do with each other when trying to disprove a miracle, I guess. Some astronomers argue that the sun dancing in the sky was not reported all over the world so it probably never happened.
Soooo the dancing sun was a regional event thus disproving it. And it was seen in China thereby disproving it. Hmmmm. Anyway, if it was a regional event shouldn’t that prove that something out of the ordinary happened.
3. Jerusalem Syndrome. This is a new entry. But a goodie. First identified in the 1930s by an Israeli psychiatrist, Jerusalem Syndrome describes psychotic symptoms associated with the Holy Land and to all sorts of delusionary thinking. But it’s posited that one doesn’t have to actually be in Jerusalem to suffer from narcissistic grandiose delusions like the three visionaries did. In fact, guess who else suffered from this. Yup. Adolf Hitler. Yeah, they’re comparing Hitler to Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco.
Now, of course, if the three children suffered from even the worst case of Jerusalem Syndrome ever that doesn’t really explain how 70,000 people caught the syndrome that day. Man, that’s one contagious syndrome. You’d have thought we’d have heard of it before now.
4. ESP! (Always my favorite) Author Lisa Schwebel claims that the event was a supernatural (but non-miraculous) case of ESP. Schwebel notes that the solar phenomenon reported at Fátima is not unique - there have been several reported cases of high pitched religious gatherings culminating in the sudden and mysterious appearance of lights in the sky.
Really? That’ll definitely help with the electric bills at churches. Just keep believing folks and all of a sudden like we’ll get some mysterious lights.
5. Mock-Sun. Didn’t even know this existed but it’s worth a listen. Joe Nickell, a skeptic and investigator of paranormal phenomena, claims that the position of the phenomenon is at the wrong azimuth and elevation to have been the sun. He suggests the cause may have been a sundog. Sometimes referred to as a parhelion or “mock sun”, a sundog is an atmospheric optical phenomenon associated with the reflection/refraction of sunlight by the numerous small ice crystals that make up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. A sundog is, however, a stationary phenomenon, and would not explain the reported appearance of the “dancing sun”. So Nickell further suggests an explanation for this phenomena may lie in temporary retinal distortion, caused by staring at the intense light and/or the effect of darting the eyes to and fro so as to avoid completely fixed gazing (thus combining image, afterimage and movement). So the people shook their heads and thought a mock-sun was dancing? All 70,000?
And doesn’t this fly in the fact of the clever stratospheric dust theory that made the sun easy to look at on that day?
6. The Mass hallucination theory. Come on. You knew it was coming. One author claims that the crowd may have been expecting to see signs in the sun so they what they wanted to see. (Yeah because that happens all the time.) But McClure’s account fails to explain reports of people miles away, who were not even thinking of the event at the time, or the sudden drying of people’s rain-soaked clothes.
7. UFO! It has been argued that the Fatima phenomenon was an alien craft. Of course, either that craft happened to come on the day that the three little children said a miracle would occur or the apparitions were all the works of little green men. This all sounds more real than the Church’s explanation? These are the rationalists?
8. Solar Storm. A gigantic coronal mass ejection (CME) occurred. Every eleven years our sun goes through a period of solar storms and these storms have been with us for centuries of recorded history. Solar flares emit high-speed particles that cause the Aurora Borealis. Well that explains it all right there. Because we all know the Northern Lights look exactly like the Sun dancing. Or not.
9. Peer pressure. And you thought peer pressure was all just about high schoolers making other high schoolers do stupid things. But in this case three little children peer pressured thousands of adults into believing they saw the sun dance. 70,000 people. That’s pretty strong peer pressure especially for the people who saw it 20 miles away. Long distance peer pressure. Impressive.
10. Evolution. This is sadly from Institute of Physics at the Catholic Univeristy of Louvain. Evolution has provided us with the infamous “zoom and loom effect”. It tends to appear when people see an object at an unknown distance. The brain will then consider the possibility that it could come closer so the brain performs an illusory mental zoom, where the apparent size of the object progressively increases. This supposedly results from evolution making humans fear being eaten by an approaching thing with big teeth. So your brain zooms it in to scare the heck out of you.
But when you realize that you’re not in danger your brain sends it back further away. Thus the dancing sun. Amazing. 70,000 people thought the Sun was a predator coming to eat them and when they realized the Sun had no teeth they “zoomed and loomed” it back to where it belonged.
Had none of these people ever seen the sun before? Were they marathon spelunkers just surfacing after years underground? Come on.
Bonus reason
11. Religious people are really stupid. This is a new one from a site called Miracle Skeptic that is so indicative of today’s atheist movement in that it assumes that religious people are all incredibly stupid.
So after listening to these level-headed scientists(?) my faith isn’t really shaken too bad. How about yours?
The Miracle of the Dancing Sun at Fatima which was seen by 70,000 people on October 13th, 1917 has been written about often. But many people continually attempt to explain away the vision of the sun dancing in the sky at a foretold time.
Every year I poke around the internet to see what new explanations have arisen to explain away the miracle. And I’m always astounded that they keep on trying. So here’s the new and updated list of the greatest scientific explanations for Fatima.
By now, secularists have amassed an enormous amount of explanations as to why we should not believe our own eyes. Here are the astounding reasons (some of them brand new and unintentionally hilarious) they’ve amassed so we should believe nothing at all special happened in Portugal that great day.
1. Stratospheric Dust. Steuart Campbell, writing for the 1989 edition of Journal of Meteorology, posited that a cloud of stratospheric dust altered the appearance of the sun making it abnormally easy to look at, and causing it to appear yellow, blue, and violet and to spin. In support of his hypothesis, Mr. Campbell reports that a blue and reddened sun was reported in China as documented in 1983.
Now, the fact that this happened on schedule doesn’t ruffle this theory for them at all I’m sure.
2. Not everyone saw it!. This is the polar opposite of the theory that some in China saw it too but consistency and science have nothing to do with each other when trying to disprove a miracle, I guess. Some astronomers argue that the sun dancing in the sky was not reported all over the world so it probably never happened.
Soooo the dancing sun was a regional event thus disproving it. And it was seen in China thereby disproving it. Hmmmm. Anyway, if it was a regional event shouldn’t that prove that something out of the ordinary happened.
3. Jerusalem Syndrome. This is a new entry. But a goodie. First identified in the 1930s by an Israeli psychiatrist, Jerusalem Syndrome describes psychotic symptoms associated with the Holy Land and to all sorts of delusionary thinking. But it’s posited that one doesn’t have to actually be in Jerusalem to suffer from narcissistic grandiose delusions like the three visionaries did. In fact, guess who else suffered from this. Yup. Adolf Hitler. Yeah, they’re comparing Hitler to Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco.
Now, of course, if the three children suffered from even the worst case of Jerusalem Syndrome ever that doesn’t really explain how 70,000 people caught the syndrome that day. Man, that’s one contagious syndrome. You’d have thought we’d have heard of it before now.
4. ESP! (Always my favorite) Author Lisa Schwebel claims that the event was a supernatural (but non-miraculous) case of ESP. Schwebel notes that the solar phenomenon reported at Fátima is not unique - there have been several reported cases of high pitched religious gatherings culminating in the sudden and mysterious appearance of lights in the sky.
Really? That’ll definitely help with the electric bills at churches. Just keep believing folks and all of a sudden like we’ll get some mysterious lights.
5. Mock-Sun. Didn’t even know this existed but it’s worth a listen. Joe Nickell, a skeptic and investigator of paranormal phenomena, claims that the position of the phenomenon is at the wrong azimuth and elevation to have been the sun. He suggests the cause may have been a sundog. Sometimes referred to as a parhelion or “mock sun”, a sundog is an atmospheric optical phenomenon associated with the reflection/refraction of sunlight by the numerous small ice crystals that make up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds. A sundog is, however, a stationary phenomenon, and would not explain the reported appearance of the “dancing sun”. So Nickell further suggests an explanation for this phenomena may lie in temporary retinal distortion, caused by staring at the intense light and/or the effect of darting the eyes to and fro so as to avoid completely fixed gazing (thus combining image, afterimage and movement). So the people shook their heads and thought a mock-sun was dancing? All 70,000?
And doesn’t this fly in the fact of the clever stratospheric dust theory that made the sun easy to look at on that day?
6. The Mass hallucination theory. Come on. You knew it was coming. One author claims that the crowd may have been expecting to see signs in the sun so they what they wanted to see. (Yeah because that happens all the time.) But McClure’s account fails to explain reports of people miles away, who were not even thinking of the event at the time, or the sudden drying of people’s rain-soaked clothes.
7. UFO! It has been argued that the Fatima phenomenon was an alien craft. Of course, either that craft happened to come on the day that the three little children said a miracle would occur or the apparitions were all the works of little green men. This all sounds more real than the Church’s explanation? These are the rationalists?
8. Solar Storm. A gigantic coronal mass ejection (CME) occurred. Every eleven years our sun goes through a period of solar storms and these storms have been with us for centuries of recorded history. Solar flares emit high-speed particles that cause the Aurora Borealis. Well that explains it all right there. Because we all know the Northern Lights look exactly like the Sun dancing. Or not.
9. Peer pressure. And you thought peer pressure was all just about high schoolers making other high schoolers do stupid things. But in this case three little children peer pressured thousands of adults into believing they saw the sun dance. 70,000 people. That’s pretty strong peer pressure especially for the people who saw it 20 miles away. Long distance peer pressure. Impressive.
10. Evolution. This is sadly from Institute of Physics at the Catholic Univeristy of Louvain. Evolution has provided us with the infamous “zoom and loom effect”. It tends to appear when people see an object at an unknown distance. The brain will then consider the possibility that it could come closer so the brain performs an illusory mental zoom, where the apparent size of the object progressively increases. This supposedly results from evolution making humans fear being eaten by an approaching thing with big teeth. So your brain zooms it in to scare the heck out of you.
But when you realize that you’re not in danger your brain sends it back further away. Thus the dancing sun. Amazing. 70,000 people thought the Sun was a predator coming to eat them and when they realized the Sun had no teeth they “zoomed and loomed” it back to where it belonged.
Had none of these people ever seen the sun before? Were they marathon spelunkers just surfacing after years underground? Come on.
Bonus reason
11. Religious people are really stupid. This is a new one from a site called Miracle Skeptic that is so indicative of today’s atheist movement in that it assumes that religious people are all incredibly stupid.
The role of suggestion and emotionalism and imagination in the miracle cannot be underestimated. Lucia was able to trigger many of the people in their highly charged emotional state to imagine seeing the sun spin.They didn’t know they weren’t wet? Did Lucy recruit the 70,000 stupidest people in the entire world to come to Fatima? They didn’t know they weren’t wet and they were prone to believing their imaginings about the sun dancing?
The people thought their clothes dried miraculously. They must not have realised that they had not been wet or not noticed that they had dried out which shows what kind of mental state many of them were in.
So after listening to these level-headed scientists(?) my faith isn’t really shaken too bad. How about yours?
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/matthew-archbold/ten-greatest-and-hilarious-scientific-explanations-for-miracle-at-fatima#ixzz2fgU2fjwV
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