HOAXES
HOW
MIRACLES DISPROVE GOD
MIRACLES, EVIDENCE FOR ALIENS?
Religion claims miracles – magical events such as cancers just vanishing - as evidence for the existence of God for only God can do them. The Roman Catholic Church says that miracles show that it is the only right Church. And so do the Mormons, the Pentecostals and on it goes and there is only confusion. But anyway they say that miracles are not just happenings, they take place to show us something.
The Church says that miracles are not done by God just to show off - that would be beneath him. They are done to deliver a message.
If they verify a message as true, then the message takes on the role of being God's message. If John writes a Back Soon note that he sometimes sticks up on the door, and Brian uses the note it does not follow that the message is John's when Brian uses it. It is Brian's. A human message becomes God's when God verifies it. God delivers the message through verifying it.
A miracle such as an apparition that speaks delivers the message of God.
So it is not the miracle that is important. It is the message. The miracle only exists to deliver the message. If you need to learn that your father is sick how you get the message that he is sick is not important. What counts is the message. If God makes blood come from a statue, what is important is the message that he can do this and any other message it gives.
God shouldn't need miracles then if it is only the message that matters. Miracles then are evidence AGAINST God. If he had given us the intelligence to work out the message on our own in the first place miracles wouldn't be required. If he thinks he needs them then he is either stupid or showing off or both. A stupid being is not a God - he hasn't even the power to put on a better thinking cap.
God could make blood come from a statue to show you that Jesus suffered for you. To be focused on the blood coming from the statue wouldn't be right and would be missing the point. Yet that is what miracle fans run after. They go to shrines where the Mother of God is supposedly appearing because it is the miracle they are fans of. They could savour any alleged message of hers at home. Miracles then are a bad way to get the message out.
The miracle exists not to verify the message but to draw attention to the message. However, God drawing attention to the message is God saying the message is true.
Suppose I have apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
I will only attribute them to God if I believe in God in the first place. Others would say they were tricks done by aliens and others would say they were caused by a burst of rare psychic energy, that is, psychic powers. Even if I fail all psychic tests it does not mean that once or twice in my life I may have had these powers for a while. Hallucinations can happen to fulfil some need that I may not even acknowledge and they can mimic reality and appear for no apparent reason and stop for the same. Psychic hallucinations could do the same. Others would say a mad God is doing the visions. Others would say that the spirits of the dead are doing them or that some being is trying to communicate and does not know that I am receiving the communication wrongly and seeing it as a vision of Jesus. Perhaps I am filtering it and altering it subconsciously. There are thousands of explanations. Though I cannot prove that humans have psychic powers from miracles for I cannot prove that miracles are the products of human supernatural power – for some spirits of the dead might be able to do them as a result of winning the powers after death – it is enough that we might have these abilities. There is no reason to believe in gods or higher beings so it is more plausible to believe that the clue to the mystery of miracles lies in psychic power.
Suppose miracles are signs from God to indicate his presence. It follows then that an apparition or healing can only take place when
the person already believes in God and has based that belief on rational
grounds. So only educated intelligent
believing people would be getting them.
But the pattern is that they nearly always happen to simple and badly
educated people or people who are not versed in the evidences for God. Some say that the miracle will take place
to verify the evidence even if there is no need for the evidence is strong
enough. When the evidence for God is
good enough the apparition should only be believed because of the evidence
for God. So the apparition is not
evidence for God for the evidence for God has to test it but it draws
attention to the evidence for God.
This means that an apparition or healing that fails to stress the
evidences for God and teaches them is really from God. If supernatural at all it is the work of
demons. It seems there would be no
need for the apparition if we have the evidences. True but if there is no other way to get
our attention focused on the evidences the apparition will have to happen to
teach us. But then groups would be
able to force God to send apparitions when they know nothing of the evidences
or where to look for them. If
apparitions were real they would be all over the place or God would tell us
the proofs in dreams leaving us unsure if they were miraculous or not because
the subconscious mind can do things like that. Why do an obvious miracle when you could do
that? Those miracles then are wastes
of power. They are showing off. This disproves God for a perfect God
doesn’t show off.
You can assume whatever you want and then claim that miracles are evidence for your assumption. That is enough to prove your dishonesty and that you have no evidence for not every possible assumption can be supported by the evidence of miracles.
If God exists then why are the best verified miracles the most obscure ones? The evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is really bad and useless. Jesus stated that visions and miracles can deceive and yet his big event was a disappointment - a few people seeing visions of him after his death and he expects the visions to be taken as proof that he rose from the dead! The resurrection of Jesus should be the best miracle in history and it certainly claimed to be the most important - or the one you had to know of if you knew of no others. And yet for lesser miracles such as the levitations of St Joseph of Cupertino and the stigmata of the non-saint Domenica Lazzari and the psychic powers of Leonora Piper there is better evidence. See the scholarly books:
The After Death Experience, Ian
Wilson, Corgi,
The Bleeding Mind,
Ian Wilson, Paladin,
The Physical
Phenomena of Mysticism,
Herbert Thurston SJ, H Regnery Co,
We can doubt the obscure miracles despite the evidence for them because it makes no sense that a God would do them and fail to shout the message over the whole world. They disprove God if they are really supernatural or cannot be explained by reference to our current knowledge of natural law.
We know we can prove that there is no proof for God and piles of proof
against him. If there is a God he
would still prove his existence somehow.
Brian Davies in THE REALITY OF GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL (page 74 to 77) argues that the idea that miracles are interventions by God makes no sense.
Believers in God hold that he creates everything that exists in the universe. Anything that exists only exists because he consents to it. The idea of God creating things and then keeping them in existence is inaccurate. What is happening is that God is creating everything now. He didn't create a dog once off. He is creating that dog every second to keep it in existence.
God can only intervene if he lost control of a situation and had to fix this. Or if he was absent from a situation and had to become present in it. But the doctrine of creation says that God is never absent from anything and is deeply involved. If a miracle means intervention, interference or intrusion then a miracle must be impossible. If a miracle seems to have happened, then it cannot be the work of God. It is the work of a being that is not an all-good creator. So for Davies and for a more consistent belief in God, one must hold that even a miracle of a man being raised from the dead is no different at all from an acorn growing up. One is a wonder as much as the other. This means that there is nothing special then about a man coming back from the dead. In that case, Jesus Christ was a fraud for saying it was special. It is actually blasphemous to focus on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead for that is giving the other miracles, sunrises and birds singing second place.
Whatever meaning you take from miracles, what they imply is that there is no God. If a man rising from the dead is no more a miracle than moonlight then why does the man rise from the dead when everybody else stays dead? Clearly, we are meant to take the event as an intervention and a denial of the existence of God. We can't prove God does any miracle or raises anybody from the dead. We have to go by what the miracle looks like. If it looks like an intervention - and the resurrection of Jesus doctrine looks as if it is - then that is what it must be taken to be. It is an intervention - if you set things up a certain way and then change it even for a moment you are intervening.
Miracles in the sense of Jesus' mother appearing in Lourdes after being dead for centuries and priests turning bread into Jesus are blasphemous whether or not you take them as interventions or God stepping in. It is stupid to regard miracles as evidence that your religion is true for God is doing them to show it off.
There is no evidence that miracles happen even if people do have visions of the Virgin Mary and hosts visibly turn into flesh on some priest’s altars.
What I mean is this. These
“miracles” may be somehow scientifically possible though only aliens or some
kind of universal computer could do them.
They would not be miracles but tricks done by means of a technology
beyond our understanding. This would
be a technology that merely looks as if it alters nature while it does no such
thing for it uses nature to accomplish its feats. Perhaps the alien is able to invisibly come
to the altar and swap the host for flesh and use some kind of invisibility
ray to make the movement undetectable to us.
It makes more sense to attribute “miracles” to aliens than to God for
aliens are not all-powerful and morally perfect and he is and does not act
it.
It is better when you see a miracle to
conclude that nature somehow did it perhaps through some super science than
to assume that supernatural forces that have nothing to do with nature did
it. Occam’s Razor would say that it is simpler to say that the events have
happened within nature so that is what we must believe or assume. You never invoke more forces than you need
to explain anything. So if something
like a miracle happened don’t assume it was supernatural. Assume that it was somehow natural. In other words, don’t take it as a miracle
at all.
Rationally, the events labelled miracles must prove aliens or the
computer and not God or his gospel or they prove that nature is haywire at
times – the list of possibilities is endless.
They are not miracles for they are not supernatural.
To call them miracles would be to sin against Occam’s razor that is, to
find and hold on to the simplest interpretation for something.
Religion is guilty of assuming that what sometimes is inexplicable must
be a miracle. Inexplicable things
happen and religion doesn’t consider each one to be a possible miracle. It is so biased that it is only interested
in declaring the inexplicable to be a miracle when there is something in it
for itself.
There is no excuse for it for millions say that miracles are simulated
by alien super-science and they teach that nature should be used to explain
what may be natural.
If God can have strange ways aliens should have stranger ways for there
is more of them and they are not perfect and will have different plans.
There is no need to call miracles supernatural events for science will
be able to replicate them some day. It
is a serious error to attribute all such marvels to God or to any
supernatural power.
A miracle is:
1-
An event against the law of nature.
2-
Or an event that unknown natural laws
perform.
This is simple, a miracle is either against nature or it is not.
The first denies that there is a God.
If God sets up natural law and then changes it then clearly God didn’t
set the laws up properly in the first place.
If God cannot do things properly then he is not a God. He is not supreme.
The second denies that there is any evidence for God when unknown laws
could be doing the miracles.
The two definitions are the only two possible ones. Because religious
leaders and theologians know that nobody rational believes in miracles they
always claim they reject these definitions to cause confusion and to keep the
wool over the eyes of the people. For
example they will say that a miracle is just an act of creation by God that
cannot be explained by nature. That is
actually just 1 reworded. The view
that God has set up laws of nature and miracles are not against these laws at
all but just exceptions is another one of these reworded conjuring
tricks. Exceptions only prove the rule
when there is no other way but to allow an exception. Otherwise they just break the rule. The view implies that God made the laws of
nature and then is forced to change them.
Again we are left with a bumbling God.
David Hume said that God would not make natural laws and then change
them to do a miracle if he is perfect.
This is usually held to be just an assumption on the grounds that it
may not be perfect to let nature alone at times. It is mistaken for an assumption. We have no free will where beliefs are
concerned even if we have free will.
One thought leads to another whether we like it or not and shows that
our actions are programmed. So if God
does miracles he does them for nothing for he can carry out his plan by discreetly
altering our beliefs. Beliefs limit
our options and can cause us to do good all the time despite being free which
makes it impossible that there should be a God for we don’t. If God cannot do arbitrary miracles then
Hume is right. Miracles are an affront
to belief in a God of holiness and perfection for he would not be perfect or
competent if he did them.
Some think that God can do miracles for nothing if he wants to. They say it is rational to throw your ball
into the pond simply because you want to.
God is not like us. It is
rational for us to do arbitrary and pointless things for we want to do them –
so they are not arbitrary or pointless in a real sense - but he does not need
to behave this way. He is love so he
uses his power to serve the interests of love. God cannot perform arbitrary miracles. It is okay for us to do so-called pointless
things to amuse ourselves but God is perfect and happy and so has no need to
amuse himself. We may waste energy
when we have nothing better to do but he always has something to do. In fact we never waste energy for we always
do what we would like to do under the circumstances.
Religious people would answer Hume that God
did not need to make the world and the people in it but he did. A perfect God who is love would not need
anything outside himself. God could
not be considered to be imperfect until he made creatures for he cannot
change. But it is better, worse or as
good as bad to make the universe. If
it is worse then God is not intrinsically perfect and needs to create. If it is worse God is not God for evil is
madness and what is made is just not supreme.
And creation is not neutral because it is better for us to exist as
individuals than for us not to. Life
is valuable regardless of whether it is happy or not. Or whether it is an evil life or a good
one. So the more people the
better. Clearly then, God had to
create to be good. Christianity denies
this so it is an evil religion. For God to be God he would have to be
self-sufficient and need to create nothing.
Belief in God then is evil for it implies that God didn’t have to make
us.
Why bother creating if it is neutral? It would still be neutral if nothing were
made. It makes more sense to take it
easy and do nothing in that case if one is self-sufficient.
So, our existence refutes the existence of God. If it did not then it would be plain that
God would do arbitrary miracles therefore to believe in God would be to
become unable to trust anything. God could
be playing tricks on you all the time.
If he were arbitrary and irrational, rationalism would be a vice.
Jesus said that a man who looks at a woman with lust commits adultery
in his heart and he said that if your eye causes you to sin it is better if
you gouge it out (Matthew 5). He said
this to indicate the abhorrence that he considers to be due to even a
harmless sin of lust. Jesus said we
must hate sin so much that we would rather lose an eye than use it to look
lustfully at a woman (Matthew 5).
Christianity accordingly then teaches that we must love the sinner but
hate the sin. This is impossible for
we do not hate sin for it is not a person and we feel personal about it. Sin is not an act but it shows what a person
is – a bad person. So sin is not about
actions so much as what kind of person is doing the action. Sin reveals the sinner so to hate the sin
is to hate the sinner. To praise Mary’s
poem and not Thomas’ is to say that Mary is better than Thomas – therefore a
more valuable person. It is saying
Thomas is bad or inferior.
The Handbook of Christian Apologetics
states that it is true that we cannot avoid being Pharisees when we go on
about right and wrong and cannot hate sins without hating the sinners (page
127). Strangely, the book conflicts
with Christian teaching in saying that to hate evil is to give in to evil and
become evil and negative. The reason
the Handbook says this is that hating evil can make us hard and cruel
too. But they are not suggesting we
should not care about sin or love it for that would be worse than hating sin
in their opinion. So they do want us
to hate sin as the lesser evil. And
they would say that if you really hate sin, you will hate it because you love
the sinner so no matter how much you hate sin and how harsh and stern you get
you are only doing it because of love and so you cannot be called hard and
cruel at least as far as your intentions go.
The Handbook gives the solution to the problem of how you can
hate sin and love sinner as forgiveness which it sees as a miracle that God
causes us to perform for it is so unnatural and because we CANNOT love the
sinner and hate the sin so we need to be lifted above nature to be able
to. Granted if we really love the
sinner and hate the sin something which is more than just unnatural but
impossible then this is direct experience of a miracle. It would be the most important miracle of
all. Without this miracle nobody can
be a true servant of God or a true believer.
This would mean God couldn’t possibly
use any other miracle as a substitute.
Here are the conclusions.
No other miracle – not even seeing the resurrection of Jesus Christ – would
be as good for loving the sinner and hating the sin would be an internal experience
of a miracle. A miracle happening inside
of you would be stronger evidence than one outside of you. The Church claims it is only historical investigation
that verifies the resurrection of Jesus and not everybody will believe such
evidence. That is what happens with
evidence. It means the external miracles
were not needed as signs so we can safely ignore them.
No miracle can do you any good unless you experience the power to love the
sinner and hate the sin. So no other miracle
is necessary. External miracles then
are not the works of God for whatever is doing them is showing off or working
tricks or they are human hoaxes. They are
too ridiculous to be considered as possible.
No external miracle would have the right to distract the believers from
the miracle within but none of them not even apparitions put any emphasis on
it.
The internal miracle of loving sinners and hating sins would be doing the impossible and makes no sense. It would prove that this miracle is a contradiction and irrational and we have no right to ask rational people to believe in it. It would mean we cannot use external miracles or this one either as signs from a God designed to appeal to our intelligence and our hearts. Murder would be right and wrong at the same time if you can love a sinner and hate the sinner at the one time.
The view that miracles are incredible and striking coincidences has its problems. This view would say that God set it up so that the red sea would be divided naturally when Moses predicted it. But if that is true, then there is no reason for miracles to be rare and uncommon. But they are.
Conclusion
Miracles are evidence against God for they do a better job of leading us away from sense than leading us to him. God gave us sense if he exists. To go away from it is to go away from him.
Further
A Christian Faith
for Today, W Montgomery Watt, Routledge,
Answers to Tough
Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1980
Apparitions,
Healings and Weeping Madonnas, Lisa J Schwebel, Paulist Press,
A Summary of
Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth Trust,
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas,
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press,
Enchiridion Symbolorum Et Definitionum, Heinrich Joseph Denzinger,
Edited by A Schonmetzer,
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books,
Miracles, Rev Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society,
Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd,
Medjugorje, David Baldwin, Catholic Truth Society,
Miraculous Divine Healing, Connie W Adams, Guardian of Truth
Publications, KY, undated
New Catholic Encyclopaedia, The Catholic University of America and the
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Raised From the Dead, Father Albert J Hebert SM, TAN,
Philosophy of Religion for A Level, Anne Jordan, Neil Lockyer and Edwin Tate, Nelson Throne Ltd, Cheltenham, 2004
Science and the
Paranormal, Edited by George O Abell and Barry Singer, Junction Books,
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan, Headline,
The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline,
The Case for
Faith, Lee Strobel, Zondervan,
The Encyclopaedia of Unbelief Volume 1, Gordon Stein, Editor,
Prometheus Books,
The Hidden Power,
Brian Inglis,
The Reality of God
and the Problem of Evil, Brian Davies, Continuum,
The Sceptical
Occultist, Terry White, Century,
The Stigmata and Modern Science, Rev Charles Carty, TAN,
Twenty Questions About Medjugorje, Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D. Pangaeus
Press, Dallas, 1999
Why People Believe
Weird Things, Michael Shermer,