Can apparitions of the Virgin Mary be explained away?
I think these two are among the hardest to dispute:
She appeared to three kids in Fatima, Portugal and they announced a miracle would occur to make people believe and just as predicted, the “miracle of the sun” happened.
She appeared over a church in Zeitoun, Egypt. This one was photographed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKmwj29zH_8
(I was raised as a catholic but I’ve been leaning towards atheism lately. This holds me back)
The miracle of the sun wasn’t recorded by any astronomers or seen by anyone not in a religious frenzy.
And as for images of Mary, I’d be more surprised if with the trillions of random images shot every day one didn’t have a defect that was close enough to Mary’s silhouette to make some bible-thumper somewhere squeal.
Going on scriptures, God really doesn’t use apparitions. He does use angels and the Lord Himself. The only time a apparition is mentioned IIRC it was King Saul who consulted a spiritualist (which God cautions against), and the ‘spirit of the prophet Samuel’ was brought up.
So there is nothing that goes against scriptures in apparitions, but the question is of the source of the information, since this is outside the channels God has authorized man to use.
If the people gathered at Fatima saw the sun move unnaturally in the sky, but nobody else in the world noticed it, doesn’t that suggest a mass hallucination or illusion? I mean, it’s the same sun visible from every spot on Earth, isn’t it?
Not at all comparable. The apparition conjured by the witch of Endor was a dead person, but (in Catholic doctrine, at least), Mary never actually died, but was carried bodily into Heaven (this is also the case for a handful of Old Testament figures).
And realistically, how many mothers do you know who don’t end up doing a lot of chores for their kid?
As a Catholic, I would say that if the only thing preventing you from becoming atheist is a series of blurry images in a 40 year old newspaper of uncertain provenance, go with God.
Beyond being flip, I would note that even the RCC tends to downplay such supposed appearances. I’m not sure that sticking with a faith in which you do not believe, on the off chance that an unexplained phenomenon might indicate that something beyond the material world is active and connected to a particular belief, is a good idea for your mental (or spiritual) health.
How can anyone possibly know what she looked like?
Fatima
A bunch of people staring at the sun see weird things? Yeah, that’s what happens when you stare at the sun.
Zeitoun
Have you seen photographs of the lights? It’s just light. One tall light? Virgin Mary. Six separate blobs of light? Those must be spirits. People see what they want to see. You get a bunch of people together and tell them what they’re supposed to see and they’ll see it, regardless of what’s actually there.
The apparitions at Zeitoun took place dozens of times over a period of more than two years and were witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people. These apparitions appeared in the air above a church and moved about waving at the crowds that assembled to see them and were observed at close range by observers in the upper floors of the church. Hundreds of photographs were taken, one such appearance was broadcast on Cairo television, and two separate investigations by the Cairo police and the Coptic church turned up no evidence of fraud. The Cairo police searched buildings for a fifteen mile radius for machinery capable of projecting such an image and found nothing; if the apparitions were a hoax, then the hoaxers had a technology which could project a moving three dimensional image without a screen or special glasses, and they had it in 1968.
Why would she look like an amorphous white blob, something that could be confused with non-supernatural things, as opposed to, say, a giant extremely detailed speaking face in the sky?
It is a scriptural view of the occurrence, not a world view, so yes it’s not directly comparable, but a valid viewpoint of the event.
Too bad no one took a picture of this moving three dimensional image. Also too bad that god is so weak and inefficient that he can’t bother to send a high quality hologram that actually looks like anything but a streetlight seen from far away.
Vader: 1
Yahweh: 0
(shrug) Many people did take pictures. As I’ve pointed out, the image was broadcast on television and observed up close by witnesses who described in detail. At the very least, you need to figure out how somebody developed this new technology, used it to perpetrate a pointless hoax, and why they then disappeared with a new tecnology that had a high potential for profit.
The apparitions weren’t necessarily sent by God, but it doesn’t seem to me that any conventional scientific explanation works very well here.
I was raised as an atheist and am now a Christian who is leaning towards joining the Catholic Church. As such, I am inclined to agree with what others have said, though I’ll be much more polite in saying it. I don’t think you should be a member of the Catholic Church based only on apparitions. You should be a member if you believe that the doctrine is true, or at least closer to true than any rival belief system. Now, if you’d like to discuss the history of the church and the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the doctrine, I’d be happy to point you to some resources that could aid you in your faith journey.
Good point. Same with Jesus. The apparitions might as well be proof that a long-deceased artist is trying to make contact from the afterlife.
The problem isn’t that the lights don’t exist, they do, there’s lots of pictures of them. The problem is people saying it’s the Virgin Mary, or spirits or whatever. We don’t know for certain what the lights are. Period. End of story.
Just about every picture you can find of them look like shapeless blobs of light. There are a few that look like they might be vaguely human shaped, but there are also some that look like they might be vaguely penis shaped. The fact that it’s already well known that people see various things from a certain religion there just makes it more likely that other people will see similar things. These lights are only evidence of humanity’s ignorance.
Or I could at the very least assume that a bunch of sad, messed up people believed what they wanted to and scanned the sky looking for the first thing they couldn’t identify and screamed about how they saw it.
Assuming it is holograms is ludicrous. Stupid, ignorant people are a lot more common than physics defying vacuum tube technology.
As an aside I know that vacuum tubes were in the out by '68. 
UFOs. The saucer people have an entire subclass of UFO sightings associated with BVM phenomena.
My impression is that the Church wants to be rigorous in investigating claimed apparitions and miracles, so as to carefully separate true events from bogus ones. I don’t know any details, but I believe there are professionals dedicated to this sort of investigation. The vast majority of claims are rejected, and only a tiny percentage end of being certified as true events.
To me, it suggests a divine sign or signal intended for those people, and not intended to be viewed by the rest of the world. I have trouble accepting “mass hallucination” as a means to explain away any historical facts that skeptics don’t want to accept. As one expert put it, “the explanation of mass hallucination can be just as paranormal as the phenomenon it’s being used to dismiss.”
It doesn’t take mass halucination. Go outside. Stare at any seemingly motionless object in the sky. The sun is especially good because there are no other objects to use as a point of reference, and it damages your eyes because it’s too bright. See how long it takes before it starts “dancing.” It’s safer to use Venus, especially at its brightest, and it helps if you are standing so your stance is contantly shifting as you retain your balance.
OTOH, if you are sitting or lying down you can actually watch the Moon move against the starfield.