What do you think about the catholic 'miracles' of fatima, the prophecies, the apparitions of the virgin Mary, miracle of the sun and whatnot, do you think that there's any authenticity to it?
No.
And we know that they're not.
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Take note here that they wanted to punish someone for finding truth. They wanted to worship a lie without the intrusion of the truth. They weren't disappointed that it wasn't true, they were angry at the person who figured out that it wasn't. They didn't want to know, they wanted to believe. This is what "faith" means.
If the sun had "danced" in the sky at Fátima, it would have been visible at more than one specific location to only a minority of people of Earth, who were true believers and told contradictory stories anyway.
Worshipers at Fátima believed that the Virgin Mary spoke to three children and that they all saw the sun "dancing in the sky." The more like
Prophecies are fantastically easy to fulfil. Particularly when they're vague, unverifiable, or the events predicted are inevitable, such as wars, diseases or the political rise of good and bad leaders. Here's an example all three:
An Italian woman who claims to regularly experience supernatural visions said Mary told her in September 2019 that a new disease would soon
If you make enough predictions, some are statistically going to land, or may even be self-fulfilling (the act of predicting it encourages people to make it happen).
From Super Bowl winners to Trump's presidency, the long-running animated series has an uncanny knack for foretelling events.
It's Nostradamus' entire schtick. If we're keeping score Nostradamus is ahead of Xianity. Especially since Xianity's most important prophecy - the return of Jesus - has already been falsified.
Mark 9:1
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
Matthew 16:28
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
They never account for their history of "misses," yet still expect to be treated as reliable.
Importantly, and hopefully obviously, we don't have to be able to explain these events otherwise in order to reject them as "miracles." It's not up to us to disprove what has not been proven. "You can't explain it, therefore god" is not just an argument from ignorance, it's a contradiction: "you can't explain it, therefore it's explained" is self-refuting. The only thing you can say about an unexplained thing is that it's unexplained. And it's useless to claim that people who weren't there and had no access to the events can't explain a thing.
We can insert anything into that gap. For example, it's no less justified to assert that the Miracle of the Sun was the evil lord Xenu deploying mind-control programming to those at Fátima to be his guards in the afterlife. Prove that this isn't true.
They must be able to make the case that the only, or most likely, explanation is the the laws of the physical universe were violated, specifically by their preferred god. And to do that, they must be able to justify why other more mundane explanations - or simply "we don't know" - are either false or less likely. And most of the faithful couldn't even name a single other explanation - and won't accept the intellectually honest "we don't know."
One of the biggest reasons of all to remain skeptical of human claims of miracles and prophecies isn't what we don't know about those miracles, gods and virgin mothers, but what we do know about humans themselves.
We're pattern-seeking creatures, and meaning-making organisms. It's been an advantage in our evolution, but it also makes us unreliable, as we're prone to finding meaning or making connections that aren't there.
This is not an elephant. This is not Mother Teresa.
Apophenia is the perception of patterns or connections where none exist. Most psychologists agree that this condition exists in everyone to
So the question becomes, what's more likely: an unverified woman who supposedly became divinely pregnant without having sex, giving birth to a man who was killed, came back to life and flew up into the sky is communicating through a vague outline of herself on a wall under a freeway, or humans see what they're motivated to see among millions of stains of various types and causes?
A steady stream of the faithful and the curious have flocked to an expressway underpass for a view of a yellow and white stain on a concrete
Isn't it odd that we never hear about the millions of stains that aren't in the shape of the Virgin Mary if you squint and know what to look for? If this stain had appeared on a wall in South America or Japan 1000 years ago, who would they have interpreted it as? Would they have even given it a second glance? If you have to already know about Mary to see Mary in it, how is it a "miracle"?
It's really unfortunate that the lord of all creation, who made everything, who got the physics of the universe, the functioning of human bodies, the position of the Earth in the solar system just so, who spoke directly to people and made bargains, covenants and plans directly with humans - yet somehow thought the Earth was flat, stars are tiny lights, didn't know about the Americas or Australia, or how rain works - is now relegated to faint whispering through vague smears on walls, dripping toilet water through human statues, appearing on toast and dog's butt's, and giving out predictions through crazy people and liars.
How the mighty have fallen.
