Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. MIRACLES DO NOT HAPPEN

Miracles – meaning divine acts which alter/suspend the laws of nature – are impossible. Another way to state this is to say that miracles are actions of creation performed by God that nature cannot do.

It seems humble to say: “We will not be arrogant and say that we know for sure that such events have never happened. We don’t know it all.”

If it is humble to say that then why do miracle believers not practice what they preach? Roman Catholic prelates condemn going to fortune-tellers or mediums saying its all hocus-pocus. Some say that these people get their abilities from demons who are fabricating miracles. If I can’t say miracles don’t happen then what gives these people the right to say that certain kinds of miracles don’t happen? Catholics won't believe in miracle accounts from religions that are contrary to Catholicism.

If I can’t say miracles don’t happen then what give them the right to say miracles do happen? Is it only arrogance when you deny miracles but not when you say they happened? Why assume one and not the other?

Whatever believers in miracles are doing, it is not promoting genuine sincerity and objectivity and humility.

We know we should not believe in miracles. There is no being to do miracles so they do not happen – a strange event like a wafer bleeding for no reason would be different.

Some would object that when you throw a ball you are causing a miracle for you are defying the law of gravity (page 57, A Summary of Christian Doctrine). That is wrong for it is because of gravity that you are able to do that. It is because gravity pulls on the ball as it moves through space that it is able to move and eventually it comes down to the ground.

We don’t have free will when we only think of one thing at a time and cannot know what we are doing the moment we choose to do it. So no magical being would have a reason to appear at Lourdes or to cure a sick person instantly for that would be crazy when all should be blessed with perfect permanent happiness. Showing off would not appeal to a being who can only do it in front of beings that do nothing of their own accord. Why cure one person instead of curing all?

The being would be evil if it did that and was so selective. If an evil miracle being existed it would turn the planet into a Hell that would beat the Hell of the Christians for its cruelty.

If there were a finite being with finite power who could do miracles, that being could enter the timeless state, eternity, in which it could use its power and still have it for there is no change in that state. So, when it uses its power it still has it so it has an infinite supply of power, in effect. It would be as mighty as God. If it is good it would make our lives perfect because we should not be suffering in the absence of free will.

A finite being could enter eternity so that when he uses his power it is still there in eternity where there is no change so it would be potentially infinite so there is no finite god either.

Miracles are disproved by disproving God. God cannot exist for suffering is for nothing because free will is a lie.

The Church errs and/or lies about miracles being signs from God that Christianity is the true faith. There is only one real objection to dismissing miracles as hoaxes and blunders and misunderstandings. The Church says we cannot dismiss miracle reports as mistakes or lies or the meanderings of deranged minds for that would be like saying human testimony is always worthless for if people can’t be relied on in those reports that they can’t be relied on in anything else. And then the Church turns a blind eye to the fact that most miracle reports, for example, alien abductions and ghosts, indicate that miracles are just freak events that happen without a purpose for that denies its dogma that miracles are signs. Reliance on miracles as signs is a sign for only two things: arrogance and deceitfulness. The Church cannot be trusted in verifying miracles. So the Church does not believe the objection herself. Even if miracles happen, we can’t be expected to believe that they happen.

If God was so anxious for us to believe in miracles he would have made sure that a number of witnesses see miracles and all of them miraculously remember what happened exactly. He would make sure that collusion between the witnesses would not be an explanation. God asking us to believe miracles is really just him asking us to trust fallible memories and not miracles.

To believe in a miracle is always irrational for you have to accept all testimony to all miracles and you cannot do that. When you accept say Fatima as a place of visions and miracles you are saying there could have been mistakes but you still believe. What right then would you have to disbelieve in any other miracle report then?

If being disbelieving towards all miracles means you automatically reject all testimony, then what about the vast majority of reported miracles and apparitions that have never been proved to be naturalistic hoaxes in which the vision lied or contradicted itself or others? That implies that there are forces that can trick you to make a false statement. That implies that you could have seen your mother going to the shop this morning and it could have been a false memory inserted miraculously in your mind. Miracles therefore depend on human testimony while at the same time they undermine it drastically and endanger our faith in the senses and in each other. When I have to put myself first I cannot desecrate myself to undermine the knowledge I have for I need that knowledge and need as much faith in it as possible in order to be safe. Miracles, if they happen, are acts of violence and contempt and are aimed at the human mind.

Denying testimony to miracles would not mean denying the value of all human testimony but only when it testifies to miracles which are not of nature but we can still believe in natural events no matter how bizarre they are for they can happen and we know it. We can believe the person who says they saw the Virgin Mary but hold that there was a natural but inexplicable cause. Also, the person who believes a strange story but who denies miracles is not being inconsistent or unfair for nature says strange things happen but does not urge us to accept miracles for they could be lies or mistakes.

It sounds reasonable to say that miracles must happen for if they don’t why believe anybody when they testify to anything. But we know by experience that most testimonies to anything are wrong or deceitful or mistaken. We find this out day by day in ordinary conversation. Many of the things we believe on somebody’s testimony are false and we just don’t know it yet and probably never will. The sceptical version of a miracle story is one among several versions that say the miracle was real. In other words, testimonies and evidences that the miracle is false are harder to get than ones that it is true which are very common. This proves that the testimony argument is worthless when it comes to miracles. Nobody is interested in finding out that the Amityville Horror was a hoax. Despite its conclusive refutation, the story is still popular and still appearing everywhere as the truth.

Some say the evidence for miracles is always insufficient for it is more likely that a person has lied or made a mistake than that they have seen a miracle for they are so uncommon. Hume said we could believe in a miracle only if the people lying or being wrong would presuppose a bigger miracle. People who don’t believe in miracles say that it has never been known for it to be more miraculous for people to be lying or mistaken than for them to have experienced what they said they experienced.

Hume argued that belief in miracles is illogical full stop. He said that sensible belief is based on evidence and the evidence says that the laws of nature do not change so we cannot believe that water can turn into blood or that dead men can rise to life so miracles are illogical. That was why he said that the person who reports miracles may be lying or deluded and that people like fantastic stories and to deceive themselves into believing them. Hume said that all religions claim to have been miraculously revealed and that since every religion can’t be right that the miracles all cancel one another. Even if you amend Hume’s observation to the laws of nature changing extremely rarely it still works against belief in miracles. Then you would say that miracles may happen but you have no reason to think that any of the ones you have heard about really happened and were true miracles.

It is said that Hume did not realise that it could be that a natural law might be found by science not to be so rigid after all so miracles are possible. If we modify his view to the idea that you need scientific evidence which will be found in a lab that a miracle has happened or that a law of nature is not so stable after all before it would be right to believe in it that would be the only way you could harmonise nature and miracle in a logical way. Without proof you are accusing nature of being altered when you are not sure that nature has been changed. He ignores the issue for what to think when one sees a miracle for oneself. Again, miracles never happen in the lab so Hume stands vindicated. Even if natural laws were found to be a bit fluid a miracle is something that nature cannot account for. If fluid natural laws could do what are called miracles they are natural and are not miracles at all. The fluidity of natural law has no relevance to attempts to refute Hume’s stance.

Some say we don’t know that miracles are unlikely. Yes we do. People are most likely to be wrong or lying when they say they saw a brick floating in mid-air. They are telling us to believe in every miracle story we can’t debunk and that is dangerous. Even if a miracle never happened in the past that does not mean that one is not likely now. But to us, to our minds, it is unlikely for we don’t know all the facts and cannot be expected to know. Our job is not to know what really is likely but our job is to do our best to learn what is likely and we could be wrong but we have to do our best. They falsely accuse us of saying, “Miracles don’t happen for they are impossible or unlikely and they are impossible or unlikely for they don’t happen”. We are saying, “Miracles might happen but we believe that they do not for the evidence is never good enough.” And what is the harm in ruling miracles out when we have the evidence that there is no God?

The Church admits that it cannot conclusively prove every miracle reported of Jesus in the Bible or outside of it when you consider every miracle by itself. The Church for example has only the word of the gospel of John that Jesus turned water into wine at Cana. The gospels say that Jesus even concealed some of his miracles like when he warned nobody to tell that he raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead. If Jesus does ten miracles and you can verify them all but the last then you can’t believe in the last one. You must consider him a liar if he asks you to believe in it and of course he does for in the John gospel he tells skeptics to believe in his works if they can’t believe in him. If a man commits ten murders and you can only prove he committed nine of them you are not permitted to believe he committed the odd one out. You need better evidence for miracles than murders for miracles are stranger and more unusual. To claim a miracle happened is such a serious claim that naturally the evidence has to be very serious as in strong and good and convincing and every individual miracle requires it. You can’t say the resurrection of Jesus is provable so the other miracles of Jesus must have happened as well for Jesus rose to prove his teachings and claims and miracles to be real. Bearing in mind that we need very strong evidence the stranger or more unlikely a claim is this is unacceptable. Every miracle is so serious so it has to be checked out on its own. Christians know that miracles are very serious for they as good as suspend or change natural law and you need near if not actually impossible evidence to believe in them. Imagine the evidence you would need to justify believing in the tooth fairy – a miraculous being. A miracle that doesn’t have extraordinary evidence backing it up isn’t worth talking about. The more extraordinary the claim the more evidence you need before you can justly expect anybody to believe in it. The failure of the Christians to prove every individual miracle in the gospel accounts and Jesus failure to prove the miracles reported by God in the Old Testament prove that the miracles never truly happened. It is blasphemy against God and reason to say that they did. A God who does miracles should be able to preserve the proof for them. If Jesus does ten miracles to prove he is from God and you can only prove nine of them then the one that can’t be proved proves that whatever did the miracles it was not God so we can dismiss Jesus from our minds with a clear conscience. One failed proof proves that the resurrection even if supernatural was not a miracle from God.

It is thought that those who disbelieve miracle reports and say that extraordinary evidence is needed for extraordinary claims are really saying, “An extraordinary claim like a miracle is one that we are already convinced isn’t true or cannot be true”. Not all of us are really saying that. What we are saying is, “If religion cannot provide extraordinary evidence for miracles, we will not say the miracle is false. It could still have been a real miracle. What we believe is that without the evidence we are not entitled or obligated to believe the miracle happened. But extraordinary claims do need to be justified by extraordinary evidence.” We might have other reasons for holding that miracles are impossible but we cannot use the reasoning they attribute to us to declare them impossible.

It is thought that those who disbelieve miracle reports and say that extraordinary evidence is needed for extraordinary claims are also really saying, “Extraordinary evidence is evidence we know you cannot produce.” The correct attitude is that, “If you can produce extraordinary evidence then I will believe in the miracle it proves.” And, “You may have extraordinary evidence and that entitles you to believe but it doesn’t obligate me to believe unless I see it too.”

None of these corrections affect the correctness of saying that extraordinary claims must be backed up by extraordinary evidence.”

The believers in God say that miracles are from God for they show he creates – that is he makes things out of nothing. For example, at Lourdes in 1858 he made Mary appear in a place where she didn’t exist in prior to her appearance. He makes diseases vanish – he creates health in place of the disease. But then if he creates the world and creates miracles then what does he need to create miracles for? He doesn’t need them as signs to convert us with if he created all things for the creation would be a sufficient sign. God gives everybody light anyway so he could make us all see that creation is his work that he made from nothing. To say he does miracles is to insult him and to infer that he doesn’t know what he is doing.

Miracles are creation acts of God – bringing out of nothing. If God does miracles then he will only do them among people who believe in creation, that is making out of nothing. But the Jews didn’t believe in it as an official doctrine and the Old Testament says that miracles happened among the Jews and reports bigger ones than any reported in the time of Jesus Christ. Now nobody can prove that God really created in any miracle. He might just use the existing forces of nature to do the wonders. For example, he might use our proneness to illusion and error to make us think that a miracle happened or that somebody healthy had cancer that was thought to have disappeared inexplicably. To put down a miracle as a creation act of God is to guess. If we have to guess then miracles are no good. If we have to guess that miracles are the work of God then why not simply guess that there is a God? You are still guessing anyway. It would be better to simply guess that there is a God than to guess that there is a God and he does miracles for better one guess than two. Remember, it is decency and rationality to keep things simple. To cite miracles as evidence for God or creator or a religion is the same as citing the sawing of a woman in half and putting her together again as proof of a magician’s healing powers.

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.

Conclusion

Miracles defined as creative acts of God that cannot be attributed to natural causes are totally impossible and beneath the dignity of God. If we define miracles as magic and not necessarily the works of God then we still have no reason to believe in them. Miracles then if anything have led the Church into self-deception and bigotry and lying about the evidence for its claims. It is uttermost blasphemy to call miracles the work of God.