Collective hallucinations and the Fatima miracle

C.S. Lewis

In two previous posts in this blog I have mentioned the miracle of Fatima: What does science say about miracles and Abduction and the no-miracles argument. In the first post I proposed a trilemma (similar to that by C.S. Lewis) that can be applied, in general, to all miracles, considered as historical facts:

1. Either that fact actually happened, i.e. the witnesses told the truth.

2. Or the fact did not occur, and the witnesses deliberately lied.

3. Or the fact did not occur, but the witnesses did not lie, they were simply wrong, or had been the prey of a collective hallucination, or some equivalent explanation.

What does science say about miracles?

Victor Hugo

In his work Quatrevingt-Treize, a title usually translated as “Ninety-three” (it refers to 1793, the year of the Reign of Terror and the Vendée), Victor Hugo introduces a character named Cimourdain, a former priest who has lost his faith because of science:

Science had demolished his faith; the dogma had vanished in him... He knew everything about science and he knew nothing about life.

Apart from the fact that the second sentence is quite debatable (no one can know everything about science), the first raises the confrontation between science and faith, which began with the Enlightenment and reached its maximum philosophical effect in the nineteenth century, Victor Hugo‘s time. He is probably projecting his prejudices into a historical anachronism.

The dilemma determinism versus freedom

In one of my mystery novels (El Zahir de Quetzalcoatl) the protagonist must solve three riddles, as in the classic fairy tales. The third puzzle consists of three statements that cannot all be true or false. This enigma is what you might call a trilemma.

C.S.Lewis

A famous trilemma (usually called the 3-L) was formulated by C.S.Lewis to justify the divinity of Christ. Assuming that Christ affirmed his own divinity, Lewis posed the following alternatives: either Christ was a Lunatic, or a Liar, or he was the Lord. Of these three statements, only one can be true, as each one excludes the other two.

On the question of human freedom, whose reality is denied by deterministic philosophy, Brigitte Falkenburg proposes another trilemma, a little different, because in this case any two of the three alternatives can be true, but then the third must be false. This is her trilemma: