Why would you expect to see testimony from people who didn’t see anything?
You also haven’t produced any evidence that “thousands” of people did see anything.
Why didn’t the rest of the world notice anything? Why wasn’t the earth thrown out of its orbit? If the sun had “danced,” there would be more substantial evidence than the subjective testimony of a handful of religious fanatics.
Inquisitor, I understand your frustration. But to be fair you are not talking about a random cross-section, you are talking about people who showed expecting to see something, who would also be under peer pressure to not speak out.
Sorry, no cite, but I saw a show on PBS (Nova?) where people were placed in a darkend room at told to focus on a light on the ajacent wall. Then they were told to trace the path of the light on paper if it moved. Yep, everyone saw the light ‘dance’.
It’s not just the sun but any light source will appear to move.
Try it, have your own miracle at home!
We’ve discussed this in other threads (no problem though).
Miracle at Fatima, Considering the Sun Dance.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=60938&highlight=fatima
Even better:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=136544&highlight=Fatima
Apparently a photographer declined to take a picture of the sun, as he didn’t see anything worth taking a picture of. He did, however, see a lot of people kneeling and carrying on, so he photographed that. Or so some poster claimed. Updated link (See bottom.)
Inquisitor, tomorrow, at 1:41pm, step outside your home and stare at the sun. Within just a few moments, you will witness the sun dancing around in the sky. This dancing will persist for as long as you have the strength to look.
Of course, if the sky is overcast, you’ll just have to trust me that it’s dancing behind the clouds.
I hope that you’ll realize the miraculous nature of my prediction, it being so precise with regards to time and place.
Was it actually specifically predicted that the sun would dance or was it just predicted that the crowd would see something “miracululous?”
From what I can tell of the various websites, the kids predicted that the Lady would visit them again. She did, but only the kids could see her; the crowds had to settle for the solar apparitions.
Perhaps Hampshire could give us the cite relating to the specific prediction he had in mind.
From your own cite:
So that means that there were some that didn’t.
I looked up in the sky a few days ago and saw nothing. It now occurs to me that a hundred years from now this testimony of mine might prove useful. Unfortunately I neglected to take a photograph of this non-event to help bolster my claims. Which newspaper should I call to report that I saw nothing in the sky a few days ago?
If you were a devout believer, standing in a huge crowd of other devout believers, and everyone around you seemed to be saying that they saw the Sun doing all sorts of marvelous things, and you hadn’t seen anything unusual… would you go to the papers? Would you even tell the people around you?
ianzin has already established that, whatever happened at Fatima, it must have been a case of people’s eyes “playing tricks” on them. Since the phenomenon was not witnessed anywhere else the sun was visible that day, it clearly had nothing to do with the sun itself moving in an unusual fashion. There was obviously no physical reality behind whatever was seen at Fatima.
Now, you may chose to believe that some supernatural entity caused people’s eyes to play tricks on them; or you may chose to believe a more mundane explanation. But it is clear that the phenomenon was entirely subjective and psychological, with no connection to physical reality.
That’s incredible, because the same thing happened to me - at pretty much the same time, I think.
I’m afraid you are induging in something akin geocentracism. Obviously the sun didn’t move. It never does. And the fact that no-one else saw it move pretty much confirms this. But something was moving. So we have a number of possibilities;
[list=a]
[li]The Sun[/li][li]The Earth[/li][li]The ground beneath the feet of the crowd in Fatima.[/li][li]The crowd in Fatima[/li][li]Individuals in the crowd in Fatima[/li][li]The heads of the individuals of the crowd in Fatima[/li][li]The eyes in the heads in the … [/li][/list]
Which do you believe is most likely?
Any attempts to locate an eye-witness in the crowd at Fatima who didn’t see anything is likely to be fruitless. since we have a self-defining sample and circular argument. Anyone who didn’t see anything can be described as not being part of the crowd in Fatima who were the only ones to see anything. Therefore those who didn’t see anything were not part of the crowd in Fatima, because only the crowd saw anything.