Just because something is unexplained currently does not give any weight to the idea that it was a miracle.
Millions of people saw David Copperfield vanish the Statue of Liberty as well... But I certainly wouldn't be tempted to pretend he actually made it vanish
The miracle was also seen by sailors on a British ship off the coast of Portugal. Foley recounts an experience in England. He gave a presentation on Fatima at a college in England and was told by one of the teachers that her grandfather saw the miracle from his ship and wrote about it to his wife — “without obviously understanding what it meant or its significance.”
And finally, what most convincingly shows that the miracle was not only in the minds and perception of the witnesses is the fact that the crowd at Fatima felt the heat of the sun as it approached them, and their clothes and the ground — which had been soaked by torrential rain — were dry at the end of the miracle.
How does one claim this is just some optical mirage?
One doesn't. At least not only an optical illusion. There is no consistent set of reports. Given that the reports are all wildly inconsistent and contradictory, and many reported seeing and feeling nothing at all, it's clear the reports can not be be taken at face value.
In addition, the default shouldn't be "therefore miracle".
The default assumption should be "humans are easy to trick".
My claim here, is that if we put our brightest minds on this, they will come back with a terrifically mundane explanation for it. In the same way that weeping statues are always just water from a pipe somewhere.
Thousands of people producing wildly inconsistent stories, including many who reported not seeing anything at all, and a wide range of photographers who all failed to get a picture of the purported "miracle".
Get a bunch of people convinced they'll see a miracle and make them stare at the sun, and sure, you'll be able to get a lot of people saying they've seen a lot of things.
As an example:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/23/india-blasphem...
Just because something is unexplained currently does not give any weight to the idea that it was a miracle.
Millions of people saw David Copperfield vanish the Statue of Liberty as well... But I certainly wouldn't be tempted to pretend he actually made it vanish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823GNH4Rczg
We don't have a single example where the opposite has been true.