The second seems not even to be a photograph.
This better version, from this believing site, has a caption describing it as having “been drawn by Dr. Labib Shenouda, a doctor at Alexandria. (From his memory after he saw the appearance of the Virgin Mary with other thousands of people.)”
<<The Church has never formally defined whether she died or not, and the integrity of the doctrine of the Assumption would not be impaired if she did not in fact die, but the almost universal consensus is that she did die. Pope Pius XII, in Munificentissimus Deus (1950), defined that Mary, “after the completion of her earthly life” (note the silence regarding her death), “was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven.” >>
http://www.catholic.com/library/Immaculate_Conception_and_Assum.asp
I always heard it as at the moment of her death, so no earthly decomposition would happen.
Tectonic strain (AKA “earthquake lights”) + Pareidolia + credulous rubes = Marian apparitions.
Take a look at the photos on this page. How about the two about a third of the way down, with the caption ‘The above two photos show luminous heavenly beings shaped like doves and flying over the church.’? I most certainly don’t see doves, and that’s only a cross if you want it to be. From what I’ve read, a lot of times the light was indistinct, or dimmer, or like those two photos.
So a church, which has something to gain by all this, and cops in Egypt in the 1970s investigated this. Yeah, I’m thinking it wasn’t the most scientific or thorough investigation ever. There is a huge amount to gain here for the church, so anything that might show what they’re claiming is in it’s favor. That these silent, random, often totally amorphous images is really a divine manifestation is a ridiculously big claim, and requires ridiculously big evidence. A single 30 year old bad photograph isn’t going to do it.
I like how the drawing from bonzer’s link is captioned as a photo on that site.
Oh wait, it’s the same damn website. I guess it transformed from a drawing to a photograph - a true miracle!
Looked like fucking sea monkeys to me.
Did you read the “critical evaluation” of the miracle of the sun at Wikipedia?
It says some people saw nothing at all so it couldn’t have been a UFO or other object in the sky and it says a mass hallucination was unlikely because there were witnesses miles away, not being part of the gathering. I guess what a skeptic can do is doubt that information, but substitute it with what? (admittedly I haven’t researched too extensively)
My view on religion is that our existence was so hard to understand to early civilizations that they had to come up with mythology. It’s also confusing how there can be so many religions since one being true would mean the others aren’t.
But if these miracles are true then Jesus was the Messiah and I’m on track to burn in hell which is discomforting.
The Virgin Mary has been seen:
This proves **beyond any doubt **that:
If hundreds of people who were there didn’t see it, and all the other billions of people in the world who shared the same sun didn’t see it, then that proves there was nothing to see. We know for sure that the sun didn’t move because the earth is still here and because nobody else saw it, nor did any observatory notice any change in the position of the sun. It was not something which occurred as a physical objective phenomenon. The only phenomenon, such as it is, is that a bunch of people stared at the sun until some of them convinced each other it was moving. Well, it didn’t move, so all that has to be expalined is why some people claimed to se it moving. There are plenty of prosaic explanations for that, and Fatima debunking articles are easily Googled.
This conclusion contains several faulty predicates. First of all, apparitions in the sky, or dancing suns, even if they happened would not be proof that “Jesus is the Messiah.” If you’re going to resort to magical explanations than your options are limitless. It could be Isis. It could be aliens. It could be the Matrix.
By the way. I’ve noticed that there sure are a lot of people on the internet claiming to be almost atheists, if only somebody could please debunk Fatima and Zeitoun (I’ve seen requests to debunk exactly those two things like 3 other times). Whenever people oblige this request, the questioner always gradually devolves from feigned curiosity, to increasingly specious apology, to eventually overt preaching. Does this ever work for you guys?
I keep wondering the same thing. Since there are no illustrations of the Virgin Mary which were done while she was alive, I have no way of knowing what she looked like. This means I’m extremely unlikely to say I saw an image of the Virgin Mary or Jesus appearing on my toast, my window, or anyone else because I freely admit that, going on appearance alone, I wouldn’t know them from, well, Adam.
Not sure what you mean… was that me preaching?
I just said that if the miracles are true then christianity would be true because then the children of Fatima would have been right about their prediction of the miracle making their claims more believable. My main point was that my reason to hesitate is that christianity paints such a horrible punishment for those who don’t believe. I think it’s a cheap shot but if it was true, well… it would be hell. heh.
I’ll look into more debunking articles. I just thought a lot of opinions disregard some of the information which made me think the apparitions could be true.
Why must they be the Virgin Mary? How could anyone alive today know what she looked like?
When people want to believe they will see anything they want to see. Some years ago there were reported aparitions in some poor village in southern Spain where the Virgin would appear at night, to a bunch of ignorant yahoos, who were mostly older women. The aparitions were at a distance, faint and strange, over at some trees and it was said that if you got closer the virgin disappeared. Well, an entreprenurial TV team decided to investigate and they got a fairly clear picture of what was going on. So they went along with the believers and some cameras and when the aparition was in full swing the other half of the team which had hidden some floodlights behind the trees turned them on, and light was made and it was discovered and proved that it was a local woman who had an elaborate setup and who ran to her own nearby house when thus exposed.
So what do you think happened with the believers? You would think they would be furious at their neighbor for fooling them like this. (And how come no one noticed she was always missing in the audience?) But no. They were furious at the reporters who had spoiled the miracle. The reporters were chased away and had to flee before things got nastier.
I have no trouble believing people have seen whatever they were being told it was they were seeing. After all the truth is that the Virgin Mary has only appeared to fools. I say she should appear to Randi and claim the million dollars and then give it to charity.
God the creator of heaven and earth gives you lights. You don’t have a higher standard than that,. If god can do anything,these are pretty half assed efforts. It required a blind belief to think this is proof of anything.
Should we have faith, or is he giving us signs?
And if he is giving us signs anyway, why not make them obvious? I guess because we should have faith? But if we have faith, we shouldnt need the signs…
Don’t be ridiculous. God can’t be Catholic.
I mean, he only had one kid…
Dude, it’s the Catholic Church. It’s SUPPOSED to be spooky. That’s why Van Helsing couldn’t be a Dutch Reformed Christian to fight Dracula. He had to be Catholic. The only other type of Christian he could have been was Eastern Orthodox.
I don’t know about the Egyptian apparitions, but did or didn’t the official anti-clerical gov’t newspaper report factually about the Fatima “Miracle of the Sun”
and didn’t the authorities back off from harrassing the children?
Btw, I do not need to believe the sun or Earth actually did anything to believe in either “The Miracle of the Sun” or “Joshua’s Long Day”. I have no problem at all believing that a miracle was done by God just juggling with light, not that any celestial bodies or planets needed to be disrupted at all.
I think we can help you.
I thought that Catholic doctrine wasn’t completely condemning of non-believers if they behave in an ethical manner?