Are The Fatima Children Unprecedented?

Analyzing in detail some underdiscussed Fatima arguments

1 Think of the children?

I was recently listening to Ethan Muse on the Patrick Flynn podcast talk about the Fatima miracle, when tens of thousands of people, including skeptics, claimed to witness the sun dance, be painless to look at, change colors, and turn the surrounding landscape strange colors. Now, I’ve already said what I think, in broad strokes, about Fatima: I don’t think it was a miracle, and the case for it being miraculous seems to crumble the more you look at it.

Ethan thinks Catholicism is confirmed even before you consider the miracle of the sun.

Here’s the basic story: three children, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco, reported repeated visions of the Virgin Mary. Other observers witnessed these interactions, where Lucia would have long conversations, as if there was a person she was speaking to. It is beyond doubt that Lucia and Jacinta acted like there was a woman they were speaking to (Francisco could only see the lady, not hear her). The children predicted that there’d be a miracle done on October 13 “so that all may come to believe.” Then, on that date, huge numbers of people gathered and reported witnessing the miracle of the sun.

Everyone wants to focus on what happened with the sun. But Ethan thinks that non-Catholicism can’t even explain the apparitions to the children! For the apparitions to be false, either the children would have to be lying or mistaken. We know the children weren’t lying, because they were beaten and threatened with torture. As Ethan writes in his post:

Lucia’s own mother publicly humiliated her, beat her, and threatened that there would be dire consequences if she continued to attend the Cova on the appointed days. Clergy emphatically warned the children they would go to Hell if they were lying and didn’t recant. On August 13th, the administrator of Ourem had the children arrested, interrogated them separately, and threatened to kill them unless they complied with his demands. Jacinta and Francisco were terrified to the point of tears, yet refused to comply.

Were they mistaken? If so, they would have had to bizarrely hallucinate. Yet multiple people can’t share one hallucination. So if they were hallucinating, you’d expect their stories to differ in all sorts of ways. Ethan claims they don’t—that their stories are amazingly consistent. Furthermore, he claims there are no known analogues of people repeatedly entering delusive states where they enact complex multi-modal conversations (for example, the children acted like they were being blinded by the brightness of the lady). He also says that observers reported strange phenomenon occurring during the apparitions (like mysteriously appearing clouds of smoke).

Put concisely, Ethan’s view is that Fatima illustrates a triple coincidence:

1. A totally unprecedented psychological state entered by the children + inexplicable natural phenomena.

2. A prediction of a miracle.

3. The miracle of the sun.

To assess the odds of all three, one must multiply the odds of each. When you do this, Ethan claims, non-Catholicism is dead in the water! And my sense is everyone in the Fatima debate so far has ignored most of Ethan’s specific arguments about the children.¹ In this article, I set out to investigate these claims, plus add some more details that weren’t adequately covered in my article about Fatima, and discuss some of Ethan’s other claims. Specifically, the arguments I’ll address here are:

• Claims that the children entered a wholly unprecedented psychological state.

• Claims the children were amazingly consistent in their story.

• Claims that there were bizarre physical anomalies that skeptics can’t explain.

• Claims that the skeptical theory struggles to explain the sun miracle being predicted in advance.

• Claims that skeptics can’t explain the mysterious drying.

I’ll also talk about the evidential problem posed by the people who saw nothing during the miracle of the sun. In the conclusion, I’ll give my overall assessment of the state of the evidence and explain why I don’t think Fatima is miraculous.

Because 63696 words by EA bloggers about Fatima just isn’t enough (yes, I counted).

2 No historical parallels?

Ethan claims that there are no historical parallels for the kinds of psychological states that Lucia and her cousins entered, where psychologically healthy children shared a single common hallucinatory delusion on a schedule. I disagree with this claim.

2.1 Garabandal

One of the closest parallels for the psychological state entered by the children is the alleged Marian apparitions at Garabandal. During these apparent apparitions, the children went into trances similar to the ones at Fatima.

On June 18th, while they were playing, after a flash of light and the sound of “thunder,” the Archangel Michael made the first of his nine appearances that month. The girls described him as about nine years old, dressed in blue with rose-coloured wings, swarthy skinned, dark eyed, with well kept hands and nails. The following month, watched by crowds of people, the girls went into a two hour trance. The next day, during another trance, they saw the Virgin in white and blue, with a crown of stars. She spoke to them about hay-making and everyday things. Sometimes she appeared with the Baby, which the girls were allowed to hold. The trances lasted from a few minutes to nine hours, and while in trance the girls would give the Virgin holy objects—rosaries, medals and crucifixes—to kiss for the pilgrims. A large crowd saw the Host appear on Conchita’s tongue when the Archangel Michael gave her Communion. This “miracle” had been announced in advance.

A scholarly source on the topic noted that the children displayed physical signs as if they really were seeing an apparition:

By the end of July 1961, the apparitions were occurring at least once every day and lasted from ten minutes to several hours. In August, there were changes in their body postures and in their somatic modes of attention (see Csordas 1993) to the (in)visible presences: they knelt down, bent their heads backward forcefully to touch the ground in a clean blow, or they fell one on top of the other, forming capricious figures (Sant Michael’s Garabandal Center 2003; Serré and Caux 2001). They also began to march ecstatically in and around the village, during which time they kept their eyes fixed on the sky but without tripping.

Another elaborates:

Their heads melted back, the pupils of their eyes dilated, their faces beaded with perspiration with striking angelic expression. They remained thus in this position for a few hours, without however showing signs of muscular effort and fatigue. Thus they were insensitive to pin pricks, burns with matches and physical contacts. Even when, at night, during the visions, dazzling spotlights were centered on the faces of the young, her pupils remained motionless and dilated.

Sources arguing that Garabandal is veridical make a lot of points similar to the ones Ethan makes. One writes:

During their ecstasies, the girls demonstrated:

• Complete insensitivity to pain: They remained unmoved when subjected to burns, needle pricks, and bright lights 618

• Supernatural navigation: Walking backward over rocky terrain at high speeds without falling, while their eyes remained fixed upward 615

• Perfect object recognition: Returning religious items to their correct owners among hundreds of objects, despite being in ecstatic states 1521

• Extended endurance: Remaining in uncomfortable positions for hours without fatigue 615

• Simultaneous ecstasies: Falling to their knees in perfect synchronization even when separated 612

These phenomena were investigated by multiple medical commissions and documented extensively, with no natural explanation found for their occurrence 621.

There is similar claimed convergence across their stories. Friar Valentin, who questioned the girls, “was impressed that the girls, who had no foreknowledge of the questions he would ask, did not contradict each other despite their young age.” And, similarly, the apparitions were pre-announced—with them knowing about an hour before they’d occur. Other surrounding miracle claims cropped up there too, as around the other Marian apparitions. Now, in my view, there are three ways for the Catholic to explain this:

1. Declare it demonic.

2. Admit it’s natural, in which case we have a reasonable naturalistic parallel to Fatima. Some differences, of course, but this would illustrate that these kinds of states are not wholly without natural parallel.

3. Declare the events genuine apparitions of Mary.

Is this demonic? Well, Jesus says you can judge the quality of a prophet by their fruits. It is claimed (though hard to confirm) that the Garabandal apparitions drove a number of conversions and that the people having the visions were faithful Catholics. And the Garabandal messages urged penance, sacrifice, and leading good lives. Interestingly, both Mother Theresa and Padre Pio judged the story authentic. It would also be surprising if the sorts of trances demons gave rise to bore such similarities to the genuine kinds done by Mary.

Is it a genuine apparition of Mary? Here, I think, there’s overwhelming evidence against:

1. The seers made a false prophecy, claiming that there would be four popes, including the reign of John Paul I, until the end of times (she differentiated this from the end of the world, but still, it doesn’t seem like we’ve entered it). But there have been more than four. The apparitions seemingly involved strange end-time prophecies that don’t seem to have been fulfilled.

2. Conchita, one of the seers, described that the eyesight of a fellow called Lomangino would be restored so that he could witness the great miracle. That did not happen prior to his death.

3. Conchita said she’d announce the date of a giant colossal miracle 8 days in advance. Yet she is now 77, so if she was going to announce it, you should expect it to have happened by now with high odds.

Now, one thing to note is that various of the visionaries retracted their claims under threat, and then retracted their retractions. This isn’t like Fatima. But in any case, it seems clear based on the physical evidence that they were in some kind of weird trance, similar to the children at Fatima.

2.2 Medjugorje

Another apparent Marian apparition came at Medjugorje. Once again, we have similar kinds of simultaneous enterings of delusive trances:

During the same one-fifth of a second, there are simultaneous kneeling and the cessation of eye movements. There is no eye movement during the entire apparition, from 3 to 45 minutes. There is also the simultaneous raising of their heads and gazing upwards while remaining fixated on a spot moving upwards when the apparitions is finishing.

Two of the alleged visionaries do not blink at all during the apparition. They eyeball normally dries when there is no regular blinking (15-20 times a minute) to moisten the cornea, but lacrimal secretion does not seem necessary during the apparition. The other alleged visionaries blink about half the normal rate. None of them blinks in response to touching the eye during the apparition (cornea sensitivity to varying pressures is completely absent), although they blink normally at other times.

There is no reaction to pain during the apparition. When touched with an algometer, which causes a cetaneous lesion or skin burn, there was complete absence of sensitivity. The alleged visionaries react normally to pain at other times.

…

Electroencephalographic (EEG) tests confirm that the alleged visionaries’ brain functioning is normal and healthy. EEG tests rule out the possibility of epilepsy or psychotic hallucinations. They alleged visionaries are not asleep or dreaming either. Hysterical neurotic reaction or pathological ecstasy is also ruled out by the EEG testing.

Interestingly, at Medjugorje, it seems like apparent sun miracles are routine. One source noted:

The ‘miracle of the Sun’ is the name given to an astonishing solar apparition that takes place almost daily over the skies of Medjugorje, Bosnia. Most afternoons, the Sun appears to zig-zag and dance around the sky, speed towards the Earth, emit multicolored beams of light, and perform other baffling celestial gymnastics. So strange is this regularly occurring phenomenon, that even atheistic witnesses who leave with their skepticism intact are baffled as to why mainstream science and media hardly mention it.

This seems like further evidence against the Ethan story where, basically, he argues that for each apparent analogue, either it is disanalogous or is genuinely miraculous. This one seems pretty parallel, but surely colossal sky miracles aren’t happening all the time!

Is it demonic? This would be surprising in light of the conversions engendered, with the Vatican going so far as to declare it having genuine spiritual value. Is it a genuine miracle? Unlikely for the following reasons:

1. Medjugorje has been captured on video. Clearly nothing physically anomalous is happening.

2. Peter Kwasniewski argues the Medjugorje apparitions conflicted repeatedly with Catholic teaching. He notes the seers “spoke of God permitting souls to suffer hell because of sins He could not pardon.” Similarly, he writes:

They stated that everyone in hell suffers in the same way, and that those in heaven are present already in their souls and bodies (ibid.). On July 24, 1982, however, this message was received:

“The body, drawn from the earth, decomposes after death. It never comes back to life again. Man receives a transfigured body” (ibid.): this is exactly contrary to the Fourth Lateran Council, which teaches: “They will arise with their bodies which they have now.”

On October 1, 1981, a seer posed the question: “Are all the faiths good? Are all the faiths identical?” The “Gospa” responded: “Before God all the faiths are identical. God governs them like a king in his kingdom” (101).² Another time: “In God’s eyes there are no divisions and there are no religions. You in the world have made the divisions” (293). Perhaps this sort of problem explains why, after a time, messages were “checked thoroughly for adherence to Scripture and church doctrine” (207) before being transmitted to the world. Foley exclaims: “Had the Blessed Virgin Mary become so deficient in scriptural and doctrinal knowledge that her messages now needed to be vetted by Fr Barbaric?” (ibid.).

3. There seem like a number of false statements made by the seers. Among other things, they claimed that they’d only receive the apparitions for 3 more days, but have continued having them for many years, even to this day.

4. A bunch of people have gotten eye damage from looking at the sun at Medjugorje, which would be odd if it was genuinely miraculous.

2.3 Heroldsbach Germany

In Heroldsbach, seven young girls claimed to see appearances of Mary (they even predicted a sun miracle!) These fit a predicted schedule. They didn’t recant despite threatened excommunication. The children were pious and prayed the rosary daily. They entered similar delusive trances.

Why think this wasn’t a genuine appearance of Mary:

1. The Catholic Church’s official investigation denounced that view.

2. The Heroldsbach visions escalated dramatically, eventually surpassing all other analogous apparitions.

3. The apparitions seemed to predict a great famine and misfortune that didn’t arrive. Now, no time scale was described precisely, but still, this is a bit sus.

Doesn’t seem like it was a demon:

2.4 Ezquioga

At Ezquioga, two siblings came to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Their family didn’t believe them, but pretty soon huge numbers of people started reporting crazy apparitions. We have reports like the following:²

That night up to five hundred persons gathered at the site. Thirty of them claimed they had seen the figure, slightly raised above the ground. In addition to children, a doctor, town councillors, and young farmworkers were among the seers. This news was published first in nearby Toledo and then in Madrid.

The reports often do not involve deep trances—one source notes:

As has already been noted, the Virgin never spoke to the first seers. Throughout, the apparitions to the two children maintained that characteristic. The first seers never entered into either ecstasy or trance, but remained as though transfigured. Even amid the din characteristic of the agitated atmosphere of the days that followed — when the seers multiplied, and agitation dominated the meadow — the children maintained the aspect of profound recollection of their own visions. This prayer was what gave rise to the visions of conversion and other phenomena, like an expanding wave that went out from the person of the Bereciartúa seers. The contagious reality of Ezkioga was the mass recitation of the holy rosary which, by its seriousness and fervor, produced spiritual effects that drew people in an inexplicable way. The seers often interrupted the prayer with spontaneous exclamations, which enflamed the devout public.

Other reports are similarly strange:

Suddenly, one of the girls opens her arms out like a cross, throws her head back, arcs her body, and goes stiff, the moonlight bathing her pale face, her eyes, as if dead, staring unblinking into the infinite. Immediately a boy, younger, and another boy fall into a similar cataleptic state, and two women with white coifs hold them. The prayers continue without interruption.

Some involve direct analogues of Ethan’s Fatima claims:

Many aspects impressed Celigueta: the way the children in trance seemed to know names and persons and who was dead and who still alive, the physiological aspects of their states, the artistic beauty and exactness of their floral decorations (these especially impressed Balda when he visited), and their consistency—in spite of frequent and separate questioning they did not seem to contradict themselves or one another.

Some who saw the apparitions were not in a trance:

The only other Dorrao seer was Felisa's brother, José, then twenty years old, but he did not have his visions in a trancelike state, and for Felipe, at least, they carried less authority.

To me, this halfway state seems reminiscent of Fatima:

That there was a variety of vision states at Ezkioga was patent for all to see. At Ezkioga the external differences seemed to fall into groups that occurred in sequence: the distressed conversion by reaction of July 1931; the quiet, passive visions in a second phase in late 1931; and the active, performative trances of 1932. But there were also individual styles that connoisseurs learned to expect and appreciate as they would those of artists.

The seer in vision does not necessarily experience a radical break between the “normal” and the “altered” state. In spite of major variants in terms of insensibility or reflexes, almost all Ezkioga seers were partially conscious and partially rapt, able to communicate and mediate between their inner world and those around them in the outer one. Teresa de Avila would have recognized this state, for she wrote, “Although a few times I lose my senses … normally they are disturbed, and although I can do nothing with myself, I do not cease to understand and hear exterior things, like something far away.”^[106] It is evident from the Ezkioga visions that this halfway state was ideal for mixing the voluntary and the involuntary, for satisfying the needs of others as well as expressing the divine or inner world’s imperatives.

The many Ezkioga visions I have studied were never totally unpredictable. While it is probable that the scribes would have rejected any truly unusual visions, it could be that there was little truly unusual to record. It could be that the visions derived from elements in the seers’ memories.

Like at Fatima, they have conversations with the apparitions that can be followed by outsiders:

During the ecstasy, their eyes are always fixed on something; their retinas are motionless in spite of the sharp glare of a light put before them, and when their bodies are pricked they feel nothing. The first days they appeared to be frightened and wept because the Sorrowing Virgin wept, and later they are seen smiling because she does not weep. You can see them speaking to the Virgin and answering. A person close to them can follow the conversation. Then they say something like, "Virgen Santísima, Save Spain," and after finishing, they say that the Virgin will save Spain.

Similarly, from Wikipedia:

Eventually, hundreds of thousands of mostly Basque devotees came to Ezquioga expecting to witness and perhaps even experience visions, and hundreds did. On the nights of July 12, 16, and 18, and October 16, up to eighty thousand persons turned out. In the first month there were over a hundred alleged seers. Occasional visions continued until the fall of 1933. Seers described blinding light, convulsed, many fell unconscious, and some bled. In 1933, bleeding crucifixes were reported around Ezquioga, seemingly as a retort to negative reports about the visionaries.

There were physical anomalies similar to Fatima:

The young girl’s apparitions were often preceded by unusual flashes of light. Thousands of pilgrims reported seeing these occurrences, and occasionally the hill itself seemed to glow. Points of light appeared, disappeared, or darted about. And some people said that the light seemed to intensify during periods of collective prayer, when the crowd would call out, “¡Viva la Virgen!”

Given the Orthodoxy of many of the apparition’s statements, it doesn’t seem like a demon. And it seems very unlikely that all these people were really seeing apparitions of Mary, and the official Vatican statement on the matter (translated) is:

the said apparitions and revelations are entirely devoid of any supernatural character whatsoever; and that three books which treat of them, namely: [1] A Historical Study presented by Abbé S. Fort: A New Joan of Arc Affair; [2] G.-L. Boué: Marvels and Prodigies of Ezquioga; [3] A Fruit of Ezquioga: Brother Cruz de Lete y Sarasola — are prohibited by the law itself, according to Canon 1399 no. 5.

The relevant prophecies also failed.

2.5 Conclusion

The things Ethan points to that are remarkable about Fatima visions are:

1. Group appearances.

2. Predictability and conforming to a schedule.

3. Lucia being physically blinded and the children behaving as you’d expect if they were being blinded.

4. Common reports across the children.

We have clear analogues of each of these in non-veridical Marian apparitions. 3. also seems a lot less impressive than some of the physical effects exhibited by the other seers in other cases. In light of the things that can be seen in non-veridical Marian apparitions, where they enter deep trances and are insensitive to pain, that people sometimes avert their gaze as if being blinded doesn’t strike me as impressive.

One other reason I’m not impressed by Ethan’s arguments of the form “no other case displays THESE features,” is the ubiquity of uniquity. Any specific event will have unique features. So long as those features aren’t qualitatively different from other cases, we shouldn’t think they’re special. The non-veridical analogues have two key implications:

1. They raise the odds of a naturalistic explanation. Whatever explains the other non-veridical Marian apparitions probably also explains Fatima, because it isn’t so different.

2. They lower the odds of a supernatural explanation. If Mary was going to do a supernatural miracle, it is unlikely that it would bear suspicious similarities to natural phenomena. This is why Scott’s piece about the sun miracle was so convincing: if Mary was going to do a sun miracle, it would be very surprising indeed if the one she choose to do was extremely similar to natural sungazing phenomena.

Edit 4/16: Ethan claims that an important discrepancy is that in the other cases there was a deep trance, unlike in Fatima, where the children could communicate and hear outsiders. But many of the Ezquioga cases didn’t have deep trances. In addition, while this is some difference, doesn’t seem different categorically.

3 Non-Marian analogues

Are there non-Marian analogues of the Fatima children’s delusive trances?

One potential analogue that I’ve talked about a bit is the Book of Mormon witnesses. Ethan worries that that’s not comparable because there all we have is statements they made later, rather than evidence that at the time they were in convincing trances. I think it’s still reasonably close—my guess is that if they later attested to seeing an angelic figure in groups, probably there was some discrete time when they thought they were seeing it. With the other examples—e.g. groups reporting having seen fairies—it would be a bit weird if this was made up later.

Now, at a high level, I don’t find this that different from what occurs all the time in Pentecostal settings, where large groups in real time claim to be experiencing God and speak in tongues. If people can go into those kinds of deep trances, it doesn’t seem so unlikely that they could go into the kind of trances, in a religious setting, where they imagine having a conversation with a luminous figure. It’s a bit weird that people can enter delusive trance-like states where they think they’re talking to Mary, but it’s also weird that they can enter trances where they display “bodily weakness and falling to the ground; shaking, trembling and convulsive bodily movements; uncontrollable laughter or wailing and inconsolable weeping; apparent drunkenness; animal sounds; and intense physical activity.” The world is just a weird place!

But let’s see if we can find some more specific examples.

3.1 UFOs

In 1994, in Zimbabwe, 62 students said they’d seen an alien craft descend from the sky and land on a field. Some said that aliens dressed in black approached them. Many stick to their story to this day. This seems significantly weirder than whatever was happening at Fatima. In this case, we have multiple people seeing a single strange entity, like at Fatima. But here, they saw it in much greater numbers.

3.2 Salem

Not exactly the same, but Salem seems to indicate similar trance-like states across multiple people:

And the examinations themselves were theater. During Bridget Bishop’s examination, the afflicted girls fell into fits the moment she walked into the room. When she turned her head, they turned their heads. When she bit her lip, they screamed that she was biting them. Magistrate Hathorne asked her a question that reveals everything about the proceedings.

…

During examinations, afflicted girls would be brought to touch the accused. When the girls stopped convulsing, the court recorded it as evidence of guilt.

3.3 Seeing spirits

The Piraha are an indigenous tribe visited by linguist Daniel Everett. They can, in groups, see spirits that are invisible to outsiders. Quoting Peter Wells:

In fact, the Pirahãs see spirits and converse with them. Intriguingly, two or more Pirahãs can see the same spirit at the same time, though the spirits are invisible to foreigners. Here is an account of an appearance of one:

– [various tribe members] Look! There he is, Xigagaí, the spirit … Yes, I can see him. He is threatening us … Everybody, come see Xigagaí. Quickly! He is on the beach!
– [Everett, to Kohoi, his main language teacher] What’s up?
– Don’t you see him over there? Xigagaí, one of the beings that lives above the clouds, is standing on the beach yelling at us, telling us he will kill us if we go to the jungle.
– [Everett] Where? I don’t see him.
– Right there! [Kóhoi snaps, looking intently toward the middle of the apparently empty beach.]
– [Everett] In the jungle behind the beach?
– No! There on the beach. Look!

This seems pretty similar to what the Fatima seers saw. And it also serves to raise the credibility of the other accounts—say, of the Mormons—wherein groups of people perceive some supernatural being “with their spiritual eyes.”

Similarly, in a different indigenous community, Edith Turner, an anthropologist, reports herself being able to see a spirit. She was able to see a “gray spherical ghost—emerging from the patient’s back.” The rest of the community seemed to experience it in tandem as well.

3.4 Conclusion

In sum, then, I think we have a number of reasonable parallels of what the children at Fatima experienced. I’m also a lot less moved than Ethan by pointing to some combination of features and claiming that they are unique. Insofar as the specific features aren’t qualitatively different from other illusions, then I’m not that surprised that no case has exact parallels. If people can mistakenly see spirits, alien crafts full of aliens, and in groups think they’re seeing demonic entities, then I don’t see why it’s that surprising that they think they can see Mary.

The features Ethan points to strike me as less impressive than some other things people have claimed to see. I am way more surprised that the world has groups of people saying they saw fairies, plus people saying witches stole their penis, plus whatever happened in Zimbabwe than about what the Fatima children saw. Obviously what the Fatima children experienced is not an everyday occurrence, and it’s a bit weird, but Marian apparitions are also not everyday occurrences either. And my guess is that if someone did a more detailed look, they could find many more examples.

4 Consistent?

Is Ethan right that the children’s stories are amazingly consistent? To see this, I thought I’d go through a lot of the things Lucia reported and see if the others agreed.

1. Lucia reports (doc 10): “She has a white dress, which comes down to a little below the middle of her leg, and covers her head with a cloak, the same color and the same length as the dress.” Jacinta, however, says “She wears a white dress trimmed in gold, and on her head is a white cloak. Around her waist is a gold ribbon that reaches down to the hem of her dress.” Formigao notes the inconsistency in Doc 11, writing “Jacinta claims that the Lady's dress only reaches her knees. Lúcia and Francisco declare that it reaches nearly to her ankles.” Now, I don’t think this is discrediting on its own—these kinds of details are hard to remember—but it’s at least some evidence against amazing factual consistency.

2. Lucia says the lady wears yellow hoop earrings (doc 10). Jacinta (doc 10) says you can’t see the lady’s ears, so it’s not clear if she wears earrings, because her ears are covered by a cloak. Another witness (doc 3) attests that Jacinta “didn’t see earrings.”

3. Mary held rosary beads in her right hand. Jacinta sort of agrees but also gets a bit confused.

4. Mary recommended that Lucia and her cousins pray the Rosary. All the children agree that this is what happened.

5. Lucia says Mary gave them a secret. Others confirm.

6. Lucia and her cousins were prevented from visiting the cova where Mary appeared. In Doc 4, Lucia explains that if this hadn’t happened, Mary would have brought about peace on Earth, saying “if they hadn’t left with you to Aldeia it would have been the most famous miracle; Saint Joseph would have come with the Baby Jesus to give peace to the world and Our Lord would have come to bless the people, Our Lady of the Rosary would have come with an angel on each side and Our Lady with an arch of flowers around her.” She reiterates this later. Similarly, Jacinta claims Mary “said that if we didn’t leave for Ourém, Saint Joseph and the Child would come to give peace to the world, and Our Lady of the Rosary with two little angels, one on each side.” Isn’t it a bit strange that the one day Mary was planning to bring about peace on Earth if the children showed up, they happen to be kidnapped?

7. In Doc 10, Lucia is asked “Will Our Lady come alone on the thirteenth of October?” She answers “Saint Joseph also comes with the child, and peace will be granted to the world.” Spoiler: peace was not granted to the world. Doc 10 also describes that Mary “declared that on the 13th she will make all the people believe that she really appears.” This is corroborated by an article from O Mundo, describing Lucia saying “On October 13, she [the Virgin] would descend from heaven to earth for the last time to bring peace to the world and end the war.” Similarly, the following dialogue (Doc 18) with Lucia tells a similar story:

On the thirteenth of this month Our Lady said that the war ended that same day? What were the words you used?

She said: “The war ends today; wait here for your soldiers very soon.”

…

She said “Wait here for the soldiers.”

But look, the war is still going on!... The newspapers report that there has been fighting since the thirteenth!... How can this be explained, if Our Lady said that the war ended on that day?

I don’t know. I just know that I heard her say that the war would end on the 13th. I don’t know anything

8. The Rosary pendant and crucifix are both white (doc 11). The others agree about this.

9. Lucia says the veil doesn’t cover the lady’s head (doc 11). Jacinta says it covers her hair, but doesn’t comment on whether it covers her forehead. Lucia also says it covers her hair. This is a decent correspondence, but maybe not that surprising if there would have been a common known image of Mary at the time.

16. Lucia claims in 1916 she saw an apparition with many other children who “looked to me like a person wrapped in a sheet.” He appeared three times (doc 21). Lucia doesn’t think it was Mary. This is a bit strange! Crucially, this seems more strongly predicted if the apparitions were non-veridical and Lucia was prone to see things that weren’t there.

17. Lucia petitioned for people to be healed and converted (doc 22). The other children agree that this happened.

18. The children also all agree that looking upon the lady is often blinding, which is why they avert their eyes.

19. The commands to the crowd on October 13 produce a striking three-way disagreement: Francisco says the lady told Lucia to warn people to look at the sun (Doc 18), Jacinta (Doc 18) says the lady said nothing about it, but Lucia shouted to look at the sun, and Lucia herself doesn't remember doing it (Doc 14)—despite multiple independent witnesses describing her shouting at the crowd.

20. Lucia (Doc. 14, parish priest, Oct 16) describes three distinct successive scenes during the October sun miracle:

    1. St. Joseph to the left of the sun with Baby Jesus on his left arm, making the sign of the cross. Then he disappears.

    2. Adult Jesus from the waist up, with a small beard, to the right of the sun. A lady beside him in white with a blue cloak—Our Lady of Sorrows. Then they disappear.

    3. Another lady to the right of the sun, dressed entirely in red with a blue mantle, hands at waist with fingers intertwined—Our Lady of Mount Carmel. She disappears with St. Joseph.

    Francisco (Doc. 18, Formigão, ~Oct 19) gives a much thinner account:

    • “Did you see Our Lord blessing the people?”—“I didn’t see it. I saw it, but it was Our Lady.”

    • “Did you see Our Lady of Sorrows or Our Lady of Mount Carmel?” — “I didn’t see her. Our Lady looked like the one I saw down here. She was dressed the same way.“

    • “Didn’t you see St. Joseph and the Baby Jesus?”—“Yes.” (And gives positioning details—left side, near the sun).

    So Francisco explicitly denies seeing the second and third tableaux. He only saw St. Joseph, Baby Jesus, and Our Lady looking the same as always. Francisco elsewhere gives an even more barebones description (doc 15): “He saw near the sun—something that looked like the face of a man and a boy.” This is dramatically different from Lúcia’s elaborate three-part vision. Francisco sees vague face-like shapes near the sun. Lúcia sees detailed costumes, colors, gestures, and a theologically ordered sequence of three distinct Marian titles.

    Jacinta provides a similarly stripped-down description (doc 18). She didn’t see any of it.

    • “Did you see Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Mount Carmel?”—“I didn’t see it.“

    • “But on the eleventh of this month you told me they were supposed to appear.”—“He said. Lucia was the one who saw another Lady, not me.“

    • “Did you see Saint Joseph?”—“I saw. Lucia said that Saint Joseph was giving peace.”

    Jacinta (doc 15, Lacerda, Oct 19): “Only the last time did they see the Baby Jesus, Saint Joseph, and Our Lady in the sun. But Lucia saw better.”

Ethan claims “Their accounts cohered not only in broad outline, but also in fine detail. None of them ever intimated that their impressions were vaporous, eccentric, or turbulent.” To me, the details described seem often inconsistent and strange—certainly not the kind of amazing, miraculous coincidence that requires a divine explanation. In fact, the more I look into their testimony, the more skeptical I become, as I feel they have a habit of saying bizarre and implausible things. And given how deferential the others are to Lucia, repeatedly saying that Lucia saw things better, I’m not that surprised that their accounts cohere.

5 Atheist explanations up in smoke?

In addition to the apparitions and the solar phenomenon, some witnesses reported secondary effects—columns of smoke, colored clouds, and mysterious sounds. About 8% of the crowd, during the apparitions, attested to seeing an appearance of smoke. Many others claimed to hear a mysterious bang. In doc 10, Goncalves testifies that during the apparitions:

Those present saw these signs. A cloud descended on the holm oak. In July, the same thing was noticed. There was no dust in the area. The cloud powdered the air, which seemed misty.

In the sky, close to the sun, you can see white clouds that successively turn bright red (blood red), pink, and yellow. The people turn this last color. The sunlight diminishes considerably in intensity.

A number of other witnesses attest to these things, especially the smoke. Jose Maria de Proenca de Almeida Garrett testifies:

Where the children were, a thin, tenuous, bluish column of smoke rose straight up to perhaps two meters above their heads, only to vanish at that point. This phenomenon, clearly visible to the naked eye, lasted for a few seconds… The smoke suddenly dissipated, and after a while, the phenomenon repeated itself a second and a third time. All three times, and especially the last, the slender stems stood out clearly against the gray atmosphere. I turned my binoculars toward it. I could see nothing but the columns of smoke, but I was convinced they were produced by some unshaken censer in which incense was burning. Later, trustworthy people assured me that it was customary for the event to occur on the 13th of the previous five months and that on those days, like this one, nothing had ever been burned...

Lucia was asked about these other signs and seems to deny their existence:

Did you see the signs that other people say they saw, like a star, roses coming off the Lady’s dress, etc.?

I didn’t see the star or any other extraordinary signs.

Did you hear any noise, thunder or earthquake?

I’ve never heard of it.

However, Lucia says that she doesn’t hear the shouts of the people, she’s so focused. So maybe Lucia just gets really absorbed in the apparitions and doesn’t notice the surrounding events.

My big objection to this is that it seems there are a lot of other people who didn’t see any of these things. In the words of a book called the whole truth about Fatima that Ethan cited extensively:

The best proof that the immense capacity for autosuggestion attributed to them is a pure invention, is found in the fact that on September 13, Ti Marto himself or his spouse Olimpia, Maria Rosa or Carlos Mendes, Father Formigao or Father da Silva, etc, declared that they saw nothing, while the enthusiastic crowd around them described what it had seen  !

Reporting on the account of Manuel Pedro Marto (doc 80):

On September 13th, he also went to Cova da Iria. He was a little away from the children. He saw nothing, nor heard anything, but he heard that some people had seen extraordinary things in the atmosphere.

Reporting on the statements of Jose Alvez (doc 80):

Almost every month, José Alves went there on the thirteenth day after May and saw nothing; he only heard others say they saw things in the sky. He didn’t hear the roar in August. He often heard that a little smoke appeared.

From the testimony of Dr. Luís António Vieira de Magalhães e Vasconcelos (doc 28):

Speaking with some people who had been there on September 13th, some told me they had seen nothing, others that they had seen a star, and others gave fantastic descriptions. There was so little uniformity in their statements that I became convinced it was a “joke” without the slightest foundation.

So overall, it seems like what happened was that there wasn’t much to be seen—maybe a bit of fog. An excitable crowd transformed this into something more, which is why many people, without social priming, didn’t see it. I don’t find this much evidence because I would have expected a crowd of people anticipating a miracle to report seeing something.

6 Drying?

Another of Ethan’s arguments concerns the miraculous drying (though for reasons I’ll describe, I think this argument backfires completely). He thinks that there was naturally-inexplicable rapid drying, evidenced in three ways:

1. Eyewitnesses report this.

2. Photos show that the people were not sopping wet.

3. Ethan claims that there are wet-dry contrast patterns in a way that’s naturally inexplicable. If there was a miraculous drying ray, then the areas that would remain wet would be the areas that were covered up. He claims photos, like the one shown below, display this.

Area S, Ethan claims, is dry in a way that’s hard to explain unless you think it was blocked from the heat ray by the boy’s jacket.

Ethan had some back and forth with Mark Grant about this. I think maybe this is a small point in favor of Ethan’s hypothesis, but it’s far from conclusive. First of all, in that picture the boy’s jacket is pretty high, so it wouldn’t have blocked the wet area. It’s also hard to see why the bit along the seam would be wet (Mark apparently tried this at home by putting his knee into his bathtub and couldn’t replicate it). More importantly, there just seem like a lot of weird light-dark contrast patterns in the photos that are hard to explain. Mark helpfully sent me this photo with some examples:

Another case Mark cites is the photo below, where it seems hard to explain the water going up the leg. Mark apparently tested this at home and wasn’t able to replicate anything similar:

Also, perhaps I’m just naive, but I really don’t trust my ability to figure out what was going on in hundred year old photos with ambiguous light-dark patterns. This seems like a very weird way to vindicate a miracle.

What of Ethan’s claim about the photos showing that people were not soaking wet? I’m not that impressed by this; it’s not clear exactly how hard it was raining, it’s not actually clear that the people were dry, and they had umbrellas.

What of the witnesses to the drying? Here, I think, Ethan’s point is an own goal: testimony counts against the miraculous drying. I had Claude make a table of the contemporary witnesses. Much more common is for people to mention being wet after the miracle, with just a few contemporary sources reporting miraculous drying. Why did so many people mention being wet if there was miraculous drying?

Edit 4/15: Claude botched the Carlos Silva testimony—he did mention rapid drying.

7 Predicted in advance?

Ethan claims repeatedly that it’s very surprising that the miracle was predicted in advance. This multiplies coincidences—first you need the coincidence of whatever happened with the children. Then you need the coincidence of whatever happened with the sun. They’re independent, so you multiply them.

I don’t find this a very impressive argument. A bunch of the obviously fake sun miracles in Scott’s post were predicted in advance. Remember, the naturalistic story of the miracle is something like: when people look at the sun in suggestible conditions, they sometimes see weird stuff like what people saw at Fatima. But generally a predicted miracle is one of the more common causes of people looking at the sun and expecting a miracle. So conditional on this being the naturalistic story, I don’t find it that surprising that the apparent miracles were predicted in advance.

8 Those who saw nothing

One other bit of evidence against Ethan’s story is the people who saw nothing. Ethan says the sun was spinning to Earth, changing the colors of the landscape, and looking like it would crash. If that was happening, it is a marvel that anyone reported not seeing it. But we have a number of accounts like this (though most people reported seeing the miracle). I’ll give the first few from Scott’s article:

Izabel Brandao de Mela:

This is what was said by those around me, and what thousands of people affirm that they saw. As for myself, I saw nothing ! I could indeed look at the sun and I was terribly agitated to hear everybody shouting that there were extraordinary signs in the sky. I believe that I was not found worthy by Our Lord to see these phenomena, but in my soul I had no need to see them to believe in the apparition of the Holy Virgin to the children.

Leonor das Dores Salema Manoel:

At that solemn moment that I saw nothing of what the others saw! I saw nothing in the sun, nothing there that justified everything I saw around me. But that spectacle and everything I had been seeing since 10 o’clock in the morning were enough for me to continue believing.

Maria Jose de Lemos Quiera:

We are also not surprised that among thousands of people, some appear like our coachman, to whom, having stood next to the car, at the top of the valley, I asked: – So, Mr. Manuel, did you like it and did you see the sun? It seems that at that time he was feeding the horses! A great materialist (and a very good person, in fact). No wonder.

Do you think you wouldn’t notice the sun spinning to Earth and turning the landscape a bunch of colors?? Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, though attesting to many people having seen it, said:

No one in the more educated classes told me they had seen the celestial apparition, but it is certain that everyone, educated and not, expressed their faith...I did not return from Fátima with the complete conviction that Our Lady had appeared to the children, although nothing prevented me from believing it. Nothing is impossible for God

Similarly:

Father Martindale also mentions individuals who failed to see the miracle. He mentions that he knew two English women and two Portuguese women that reportedly saw nothing, perhaps due to their location within the crowd or maybe due to being distracted.

Now, most people saw it. But I think the story on which this is veridical has a really hard time explaining the people who were in attendance but for some reason didn’t notice the obvious colossal miracle.

9 Two suns?

One of Scott Alexander’s objections was that on Ethan’s story, there would have been two suns—the real one and the localized emitter God made by miracle—but people didn’t report this. Ethan replies that people actually did report this, and cites two witness statements:

Actually, several witnesses implied there were two suns. Raio de Luz reported “Suddenly, a luminous disk the size of a large host, but which everyone could gaze upon as one gazes upon the moon, appeared, as if it had detached itself from the sun (or rather, placed itself before it)…” Maria Campos reported “We saw a silvery veil, rounded in shape, as if it were a full moon… Cries were heard from all sides as it emerged from the sun like a white, shining, snow-like shape… coming toward us, returning to the sun again, and finally hiding for the third time among the clouds.”

Okay, sure maybe two people reported this, but in general people didn’t report this. That is very strange. On my story, where people were seeing a sunlike thing and looking at the sun, I’m not that surprised that two people thought they saw two things rather than one from all the witnesses. We should expect some anomalous reports. But it seems much more surprising on Ethan’s story that basically everyone thought they were seeing the sun, and conspicuously missed the presence of two celestial bodies. Similarly, I share Scott’s concern that this is a weird kind of deception, where God tricked the world into thinking he did a sun miracle, only for it not being a sun miracle to be revealed in 2021 by Dalleur!

Dalleur also cites the presence of two shadows as evidence of two light sources. But if there were two shadows, so the light sources were both powerful enough to exert clear shadows, then a lot of people should have noticed the presence of two suns.

10 At a high-level why I don’t buy Fatima

I’ve spent a lot of time going through the nitty-gritty details. Why, at a high level, am I not that impressed by the evidence for Fatima being miraculous?

1. As I argued here, Lucia and Jacinta indicated that the war would end right after the sun miracle. That didn’t happen. So the prediction was falsified. Ethan tries to argue that this was a conditional prophecy—so that Mary thought the war would end only if penance was done. I think that the attempt to make it conditional is a pretty clear later retconning. It also seems bizarre to make the end of World War I conditional on some people in Portugal doing enough penance.

2. As discussed, it seems a bit suspicious that the one day Mary was planning to bring about peace on Earth if the children showed up, they happen to be kidnapped. It would be strange if Mary was planning to bring peace on Earth on any specific date, only to change her mind in response to some children in Portugal being kidnapped.

3. I think there are clearly non-veridical analogues of both what happened to the children (heretical Marian appearances e.g. at Garabandal) and with the sun. It would be weird if Mary did two different miracles that both bore suspicious resemblance to a bunch of natural phenomena.

4. The Russia stuff is suspicious on several counts (relevant context: Lucia revealed at latest by 1930 that Mary had given her some secrets, including one according to which Russia would provoke another war worse than World War I, but this could be stopped by the Pope consecrating Russia):

1. It wasn’t mentioned until after Russia was a big deal—which is evidence that it was made up later (it would be really weird if Lucia had told of Russia being a big deal when she was a child). Why do we first hear of Russia more than a decade later?

2. The description of ww2 as being Russia spreading her errors to the world doesn’t seem right—but like how you might expect a conservative Catholic in Lucia’s context to describe it. The more the apparition shares parochial prejudices of the surrounding time period and location, the less you should trust that a miracle occurred.

3. Similarly, directing the blame for ww2 as being all on Russia makes more sense coming from Lucia than Mary. Lucia was a conservative Catholic—but surely Mary would have blamed the axis powers too!

4. Lucia said that when Russia was consecrated, there would be peace and mass conversions. Yet there have been repeated attempted consecrations (4 in total) without peace and mass conversions in Russia.

5. Lucia’s memoirs just seem bizarre on a number of counts:

1. Lucia mentions a series of visions of Mary that occurred in 1916, before the 1917 visions. which she never mentioned until her memoirs written in the 1940s. In fact, this means that she lied about the number of apparitions, and lied when she described the 1917 apparition as “The First Apparition.”

2. The secrets contained a terrifying vision of hell as a real, physical place of torture. It seems very unlikely that hell really would be this way, and much more like the kind of thing that a superstitious child would make up.

3. Mary supposedly approved of the children tying ropes around themselves that make them bleed, which is very strange behavior.

Of the points that I am equipped to evaluate when it comes to Fatima, they seem to point strongly against it being a miracle. Because I can’t evaluate the other considerations (e.g. the Dalleur analysis) they don’t move me very much. Basically everyone who has analyzed this other than Ethan and Dalleur doesn’t think these considerations are very compelling (a physicist friend who I emailed said that this is the kind of sketchy too clever by half analysis that works in Sherlock Holmes stories but not in real life). The more I’ve looked into Fatima, the more it seems like the case has collapsed, and the less impressed I’ve gotten.

Remember the case at the beginning. The original claim sounded so impressive: tens of thousands of people saw the sun dance and not hurt their eyes in a way that’s physically impossible, in a way predicted in advance by children entering wholly unprecedented visionary states, where a second light source was confirmed by photographs, where miraculous drying was confirmed by witnesses, photographs, and wet-dry contrast patterns, where their stories held together to an amazing degree, and where distant witnesses report seeing the miracle. But each of these claims falls apart upon investigation: there are other similar events, the children’s mental state wasn’t unprecedented, there being a few distant people who later thought they’d remembered seeing something isn’t that surprising, and so on.

Let’s just compare, at a high-level, the stories. Here’s the Catholic story: God decided to do a miracle, in Portugal, prefaced with the claim that it would be done so that all would come to believe. The way he did this was by having Mary produce scheduled apparitions to three Portuguese children that bear suspicious resemblances to all sorts of non-veridical Marian apparitions. As part of this, he included prophecies of major world events that were (with one debatable exception) only revealed after the events had occurred. He also included a vision of hell that resembled some horrifying and weirdly physical nightmare, of a kind much more reminiscent of “giant pit of fire where the devil tortures you,” than “separation from God.”

Then he decided to do the giant sun miracle, and bizarrely choose to do it in a way so that many of the most surprising features of the miracle were shared by comparable natural events. He concluded this by telling the children that the war would end if they did penance, yet they misheard or something, so they thought the war would end unconditionally. However, the people in Portugal didn’t do enough penance, so the war didn’t end. He was also planning to bring about peace on Earth if a local administrator hadn’t captured the children temporarily. And the really decisive evidence he left for this miracle wasn’t noticed until 100 years later by Dalleur, and requires a level of technical expertise that most people lack.

During the miracle he made a light source in the sky, bearing no special relation to Mary—it didn’t even feature Mary’s colors or bear any other special connection to Mary. Despite there being two suns, this fact was only picked up by two people. Everyone else thought it was a miracle of the sun, only for a philosopher analyzing light from the photos to figure out how the miracle was done a hundred years later. And for some strange reason, some people saw nothing when the miracle happened.

Oh and he also described ww2 in a way that suspiciously resembles how it might be described by conservative Portuguese Catholics—as being about Russia spreading her errors to the world. Similarly, if Russia was consecrated, peace and conversions would be brought about, yet this hasn’t happened, despite repeated attempted consecrations, because the popes kept botching the wording in subtle ways. Then, despite the miraculous heat ray sent at Fatima that dried people’s clothes, many people reported being soaking wet at the end of the miracle. And, in addition, there was an earlier set of apparitions that Lucia didn’t mention until her late memoirs, meaning that many of her statements made at the time were strictly false.

What about the natural explanation? Here it is, in a nutshell: some children, in a religious setting, were able to convince themselves they were seeing the Virgin Mary, just as many other children have historically, even ones who clearly weren’t. The main ringleader, Lucia, was able to get her cousins to think they were seeing it too, and in a charged religious environment like this, they confused delusion and reality (similar to what happens in settings where people wrongly think they’re seeing Mary).

Because the others didn’t talk very much and they discussed with Lucia, their stories were pretty consistent. During the apparent apparitions, an excitable crowd anticipating clear signs thought they heard some. Then, they predicted a big miracle, a bunch of people showed up in a charged religious environment, and stared at the sun. They saw weird stuff that isn’t very different from what people see in other contexts when they stare at the sun in charged religious settings.

A few other people from neighboring towns misremembered having seen something too, just as people sometimes misremember having seen plane crashes that never happened. The photos taken of the events also have some confusing light and dark spots that are probably just some sort of photographic anomaly. Similarly, with the light source, *gestures vaguely in the direction of Mark Grant’s responses to Dalleur*.

Now, maybe my heart has just been darkened by sin, so that I can’t see the plain overwhelming force of the evidence. But I don’t think that’s right. AI models, whose hearts haven’t been darkened by sin, have provided similar assessments of the debate. Similarly, when Ethan first presented the case, I found it really compelling prima facie—it was only when I investigated it more that I felt like it fell apart.

The natural explanation seems more plausible, and it isn’t particularly close.

1. Evan Harkness Murphy discusses it a bit, but he ignores a lot of Ethan’s specific points.

2. This one didn’t occur at Ezquioga but instead in a surrounding area called Guadamur inspired by the Ezquioga apparitions.