since we're rationalizing god...

[snorer]

let me prefix this post by saying I'm not religious. I was raised Catholic but needless to say I haven't been a follower since I was a kid. I've approached god, etc logically since, but the biggest thing that keeps me from being a full-blown atheist is this picture I took around 7 or 8 years ago

a little history:
a distant uncle of mine was diagnosed with cancer, and as it normally happens when a distant relative gets sick, everyone in the family got much closer and really religious. We all took a bus ride up to Flushing Queens, NY, for a rosary prayer vigile they had/have in a field right next to Met's Stadium. Anyway, the big phenomena there was that you could take Polaroid pictures of the immediate sky, and you would see really vibrant lights in your pictures, that of course weren't visible with the naked eye. If I recall correctly they were ONLY visible with Polaroids too (although I could be wrong about that). Streams of dotted lights (as to resemble rosary beads), some of which even made shapes... outlines of the Virgin Mary among other things. An older lady came up to me and asked me if I'd like to take a picture, and I did. Sure enough, crazy shaped bright dotted whitish-yellow lights all throughout the air. People had booklets and photo albums chuck full of these pictures, it really was amazing. Here's a few I found online:









Unfortunately, I don't have a place to host the picture I personally took. No worries though, I only have a digi pic of the Polaroid in a picture frame so it isn't all that visible anywho.
Now, I can say for certain there was no visible equipment or anything like that that could be generating these lights. I don't even know if there is a known technology that is capable of doing that. But for the sake of this discussion let's give me the benefit of the doubt and assume these lights aren't say, artifically broadcast through the sky during these vigiles. If these lights aren't man-made, what kind of rational explanation can we come up for them?

I don't know much about photography, is there a reason why they would only come up in Polaroids? (just to repeat, I'm not positive that's true... but I do think I remember it being the case)

Catholicism is obviously a relatively "new" religion, and any person who looks at it historically can see it's very developed and processed so to speak. I for one am a subscriber to the saying "today's religion is tomorrow's mythology". If these lights are genuinely "spirital", why would the followers of a religion, which has obviously been arbitrarily created by man (ie, very distant from the "core" it's based on), be "blessed" with experiencing this? In other words, if this is a sign from God, why is he picking Catholics of all religious types to see this? Are we to believe Catholics just lucked out with the guessing game of god and somehow got it right? I want the odds on that happening from Sklansky.

Or maybe these are just semi-physical manifestations if you will of imaginative thought, which leads me to why I posted this here in the first place. Images in the heads of people who believe so strongly, they're projecting thsee images out, and instant picture developing cameras are somehow able to capture what our eyes can't. If this is the case, I think it might really lend some credibility to and help us rationalize some controversial psych theories, such as telepathy.

Looking forward to hearing what you guys think