Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, March 10, 2004


ALLELUIA, I'VE SEEN THE LIGHT


THE problem with not believing in God is I cannot change the minds of those who do believe, any more than they can change mine. A pity because were I able to disprove God's existence there would be no more arguments about which set of beliefs was the superior one, and no more wars. instead, we have religious fundamentalists of all creeds playing no small part in the rush towards Armageddon. I hope their Armageddon comes quickly for them and they are soon teleported to eternal paradise, leaving the rest of us in peace. Meantime, should convincing proof of God's existence become available, I would rapidly change my mind. I would be a fool otherwise. I am always on the lookout for a sign, an event unexplained by the cosmic laws, that would remove all my doubts. One possibility has been the "miracle of the sun" at Fatima, Portugal. In October 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to three children in the last of a summer series of apparitions. Maybe she did, maybe not. In no dispute, however, was the weird behaviour of the sun as witnessed by at least 70,000 people that day including cynical journalists who had been sent to Fatima to debunk the Virgin's appearances. The weather had been terrible all morning with torrential rain and a biting wind. After lunch, though, the clouds cleared to reveal a sun that looked like a disc of dull silver, without heat, that people could stare at and not go blind. Suddenly the sun began to tremble, shake and spin rapidly while throwing out rays of rainbow light, which bathed the earth and everyone watching in bright colours. Then, to the anguished cry of the multitude, the sun, by now blood-red, plunged towards them, spinning like a fiery wheel, and hovered above their heads before receding, no doubt to everyone's relief. People in a village 18km away witnessed exactly the same spectacle, so it did not sound to me like a case of mass hypnotism. People who were soaked to the bone in the earlier downpour found their clothes were dry. Accounts of the event appeared in the Lisbon press including in the anti-clerical, secular papers. These were articles of fact, not of faith. So was Fatima the miracle I was looking for? The other day I was reading an article about the English War of the Roses and how on the morning of a crucial battle in 1461, three suns had risen simultaneously. yep, three. Claiming it was an omen from God signifying the Holy Trinity, the Duke of York spurred his men to a famous victory and he went on to become King Henry IV. In fact, it was a trick of the early morning light, a rare illusion called a parhelion, which creates a mock sun, or three in this case, and often radiates the colours of the rainbow. So much for Fatima's miracle of the sun, not a miracle at all but the diffraction of ice crystals after a storm. Bummer. I look forward to one day seeing the photograph of a parhelion in the ABC weather calendar.