I recently saw a show on the travel channel which mentions a sighting of UFO’s by millions of people in Mexico City during a solar eclipse. They also mentioned that there were about 17 videos of the object, and one was shown. It would make sense to see lots of reports if a UFO was visible near some prominent event in the sky. On the surface, this sounds like an important sighting and possibly worthy of belief. It actually reminded me a lot of the Miracle of Fatima, which was also seen by many people at once, and which I believe is a convincing miracle.
So I thought I’d look into it a bit further. I was a bit disappointed to discover that the UFO sighting is easily explained and is the result of low quality videotaping of Venus. Certainly it would be nice to believe the little green men are out there. Fortunately, however, I have not heard any particularly convincing debunking of the Fatima Miracle. Here is a brief summary of interesting characteristics of the Fatima event:
- The Sun was seen to dance in the sky, change colors, etc.
- The time of this “sign for unbelievers” was foretold by the visionaries, but they did not reveal what was to happen. People did not know to look toward the sun.
- 70,000 people witnessed the event.
- Atheists who came to heckle the believers were converted on the spot.
- The visionaries also predicted the onset of WWII (there is some slight controversy here, regarding the exact dates)
Friends of mine who don’t believe in God, however, think that the Fatima event should be explained by UFOs. So this story has a nice circular quality.
The interesting point here is that my standards for evidence (the ones that I used when considering Fatima) seemed to apply in another area, and that caused me (for a short time) to reconsider my general belief that aliens have not visited the Earth. I hope some of you out there give similar consideration to the Fatima story.