Or here's how another atheist puts it: "It is not easy to explain how 70,000 people could share the same hallucination. But it is even harder to accept that it really happened without the rest of the world, outside Fatima, seeing it too — and not just seeing it, but feeling it as the catastrophic destruction of the solar system, including acceleration forces sufficient to hurl everybody into space. David Hume’s pithy test for a miracle comes irresistibly to mind: “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 endeavours to establish.” It may seem improbable that 70,000 people could simultaneously be deluded, or could simultaneously collude in a mass lie. Or that history is mistaken in recording that 70,000 people claimed to see the sun dance. Or that they all simultaneously saw a mirage (they had been persuaded to stare at the sun, which can’t have done much for their eyesight). But any of those apparent improbabilities is far more probable than the alternative: that the Earth was suddenly yanked sideways in its orbit, and the solar system destroyed, with nobody outside Fatima noticing."
This is typical of the stupid literalistic 'reasoning' of the atheists. Errm, those of us who believe in the miracle of the sun also know that the sun is much bigger than the earth. We also know that if the sun were really spinning that everyone on earth should be able to see it. We also know that if the sun plunged to earth the earth would be toast. Yet we believe in the miracle of the sun.
So we clearly believe that something else happened other than the literal event of the sun being yanked from the sky and plunging to earth. What a shame the smug atheists didn't stop to ask whether we had though these things through or not? Unlike the scientist atheists (who are supposed to examine phenomena objectively) we examine the phenomena objectively. Here we have documentary and eyewitness and photographic evidence that 70,000 people 'saw' the sun spin, felt it was yanked from the sky and that it plunged to earth. Everyone said they saw the same thing. Everyone was so frightened they screamed and ran for their lives. Clearly something happened, what was it?
We can rule out any literal explanation. The sun didn't fall to the earth. But 70,000 people saw it fall to the earth. The miracle therefore occurred somewhere within the process of perception. We see with our eyes, but what do we see? Whatever we see is transferred to the brain and the brain interprets what we see. It is well known that if we do not have the mental capacity to 'see' certain things they are invisible to us. Likewise we may 'see' certain things, and without the capacity or mental vocabulary to process what we have seen they will remain a mystery to us, or we will process what we see in terms of what we know. The mind makes sense of what we see, and tries to interpret it the best it can.
So the miracle of the sun at Fatima was a miracle that occurred within the minds of 70,000 witnesses. Does this mean "It was only in their mind?" or that "They had merely imagined it"? No. They really did see the sun spinning, being yanked from the sky and plunging to earth, but the way they 'saw' it was with some other capability than the usual kind of 'seeing'. They 'saw' something in the same way that the visionaries 'see' the Blessed Virgin who is not there in a normally physical way.
Some skeptics may wish, therefore, to dismiss the miracle and say it was merely some sort of psychic phenomena for which we do not yet have an explanation. Fair enough, but that is what believers usually call a 'miracle.'
Well said, Father. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteFrom Harry Potter:
ReplyDelete“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Trial of St Joan of Arc.
ReplyDeleteJudge: Joan, Joan all of these visions are just part of your imagination.
Joan: Of course. How else would God speak to me?
The miracle of the sun at Fatima would be classed as visio imaginativa – interior visions of supernatural origin which can be seen by the visionary but do not have an objective existence. This is differentiated in Catholic theology by a very rare class of visions known as visio sensibilis -which occupies actual physical space/time and can be perceived through the normal senses. Perhaps the only apparitions of modern times which fall into this class are those of Our Lady in Egypt - Zeitoun from 1968-1971, Assuit in 2000 and Warraq in 2009. All of these events were able to be captured on film. The apparitions at Zeitoun are officially recognised by the Catholic Church, and the later visions are an extension of these same phenomena. See the posts on my blog labelled "Our Lady of Egypt" and "Our Lady of Assuit" for some videos of these apparitions.
ReplyDeleteThose who came to mock, including government officials and secular journalists, also witnessed the miracle as did people up to 12 miles away who had no idea that a miracle had been predicted, it is the testimony of these witnesses that is most persuasive and difficult to explain away. (The phenomenon was also widely reported by those attending the last Papal visit to Fatima.)
ReplyDeleteThe idea that it could be a conspiracy is INCREDIBLY absurd. A conspiracy of 30,000-100,000, maintaining a uniform description of events, over DECADES, with not ONE witness recanting or "admitting the truth"? I just don't buy that. Hardly a government on Earth is able to keep such a secret for so long.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that it could be a typical mass hysteria or convergence disorder affecting 100% of a population of 30,000-100,000 is absolutely unprecedented in medical literature. I don't know what really happened (beyond, "God acted in a very unusual way,") but it wasn't either of those.
Dawkins reasoning runs thus: this event is contra to currently accepted scientific theory, therefore it cannot have happened. Therefore it didn't happen. Which is absurdly flawed reasoning. If we were to dismiss any event that can't be explained by current scientific theory, we'd never change our theories. We'd dismiss Eddington's 1919 observations as impossible according to Newtonian theory, and we'd never have shifted to Einstein's theories. Science deals with anomalous events in a more complex and ad hoc fashion. What kind of a scientist dismisses events that don't fit with theory, just to reassert the primacy of his favoured theory ? And what kind of a scientist would dismiss the evidence of their own senses ?
ReplyDeleteWe don't have to explain Fatima as a miracle that occurred only in the minds of the 70000 witnesses. We're only forced to that explanation if we assert that the sun cannot have fallen. Yes, the sun did not fall outside Fatima. But doesn't mean it can't have fallen inside Fatima. Remember, all things are possible for God ! And He is not bound by human logic. Human logic is a nifty reasoning tool invented by the Greeks, and developed considerably since. But's all it is - a nifty human conceptual tool. It is not a set of contraints that bind the action of God.
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