MIRACLES DON’T MAKE GOD ATTRACTIVE

A miracle is what is not naturally possible. It is a supernatural occurrence. It is paranormal.
 
Religion uses miracles as evidence for the truth of its claims.
 
Miracles are events that seem to be against nature or the way natural law usually runs. In other words, they cannot be explained by nature. Examples are the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing to children, the unexplained cure of incurable illness, blood coming out of nowhere on Catholic communion wafers, the sun spinning at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 and most importantly Jesus Christ coming back to life after being dead nearly three days. It is thought that only God can do these things.
 
Miracles force us to make a religion based on our interpretation. No matter how much our religion seems to be about God, it is not. We interpret what we think strange healings say to us. We pick and choose what revelations from angels and gods and saints to listen to. It is all interpretation. The messenger of God can put us off God by being dishonest or by offering us man-made religion. Man-made religion is an idol. The messenger is only a messenger of what he wants God to be - not God.
 
We don’t need belief in God. (If you want to believe in an afterlife, absence of belief in God is not going to stop you!) To say there is no morality without God is saying that there is no morality and we need God to invent it. That is not a very heart-warming reason to have a God! And it is really the morality you want and not him. That would make your worship hypocritical and immoral. Miracles, if from God, definitely imply that we need the goodness of faith in God and to learn about right and wrong from him. Otherwise there is no point in them. So when they are so keen for us to follow the gospel according to men we need to ask if they are really supernatural at all. A religious tyrant finds a God who can invent morality to be the perfect thing with which to further his own agenda when he pretends to speak for that God.
 
If religion is right that miracles are signs of God's love then the following mystery occurs. Why is Johnnie boy cured of deafness in one ear and why is toddler Tanya who is dying of lung cancer overlooked? Obviously religion has to say that God puts himself and his own will first. So they will have to say miracles back up the doctrine that God should be put first by me even if it means I have to endure extreme torment forever to help others. That is a horrendous doctrine. And the excuse could be used by any healer. He could say he had a psychic revelation as to why one child he supposedly cured should be cured and other dismissed. It is insulting to use excuses to justify human suffering.
 
It is a disaster is that miracles cannot prove that God is a desirable belief.
 
Prayer is not about trying to change anything but to unite to God and opening yourself up to being like him.  If miracles emphasised that doctrine they would not have as many fans. A handful would have been there the day the sun spun at Fatima. The attraction about miracles is not God but human craving for idolatrous worship and its love of sectarianism and man-made religion.
 
To be desirable the God belief needs to be needed because if we can live without God we should and be autonomous for that is merely being adult and mature. The message my The Gospel According to Atheism teaches is the logical conclusion of the self-help program of Fr Anthony de Mello and shows that God must be forsaken both in concept and in fact. Miracles fully deserve to be treated as diabolical phenomena or even better as nonsense when they do not focus on this program. The last thing they deserve is to be afforded any right to be classed as evidence for religion and revered. To say they are is to declare war on humanity.
 
We know subconsciously that the de Mello system with a few minor modifications is right and that is the only thing we need and we degrade ourselves by letting miracles and God and religion in the way. God is wasting his time doing miracles except if he wants to deceive us in which case he is not worth worshipping.
 
To believe in miracles as signs is evil and a thoughtless insult against all who live on this planet and any God out there if there is one.
  
Further Reading ~
 
A Christian Faith for Today, W Montgomery Watt, Routledge, London, 2002
Answers to Tough Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1980
Apparitions, Healings and Weeping Madonnas, Lisa J Schwebel, Paulist Press, New York, 2004
A Summary of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth Trust, London, 1971
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Enchiridion Symbolorum Et Definitionum, Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Edited by A Schonmetzer, Barcelona, 1963
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
Miracles, Rev Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1937
Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1969
Lourdes, Antonio Bernardo, A. Doucet Publications, Lourdes, 1987
Medjugorje, David Baldwin, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2002
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, Illinois 1986
Science and the Paranormal, Edited by George O Abell and Barry Singer, Junction Books, London, 1981
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan, Headline, London, 1997
The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996
The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000
The Encyclopaedia of Unbelief Volume 1, Gordon Stein, Editor, Prometheus Books, New York, 1985
The Hidden Power, Brian Inglis, Jonathan Cape, London, 1986
The Sceptical Occultist, Terry White, Century, London, 1994
The Stigmata and Modern Science, Rev Charles Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1974
Twenty Questions About Medjugorje, Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D. Pangaeus Press, Dallas, 1999
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, Freeman, New York, 1997

THE WEB

The Problem of Competing Claims by Richard Carrier
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/4c.html