"Christian Science repudiates the evidences of the senses and rests upon the supremacy of God. Christian healing . . . places no faith in hygiene or drugs; it reposes all faith in mind, in spiritual power divinely directed." [Mary Baker Eddy, on Christian Science "healing"]
The miracle of a belief in miracles is how often what was considered a miracle to one generation is considered to be an act of nature by another generation; even when both generations are equally Christian in their perspective of the same event. And like Dorothy figuring out the truth of the Wizard of Oz, it is the hand of science that pulls back the curtain of priestly robes who threaten fire and brimstone for failing to believe what they claim is the former, to reveal it to always be the latter.
Plenty of phenomena that were once considered miraculous or unexplainable have since been understood through scientific investigation. For example, eclipses, the movements of celestial bodies, certain medical recoveries, and the behavior of certain natural phenomena were once considered miraculous but have since been explained by scientific principles. Science continues to expand our understanding of the world around us and often provides explanations for phenomena that were previously considered miraculous.
Plenty of Christians who are well aware of this fact nevertheless continue to insist that miracles are messages from their brand of God. The question is why? Why do Christians who accept that what previous generations of Christians thought of as miracles were not actually miracles, nevertheless insist that what they think of as a "miracle from God" is most definitely a miracle from their brand (and only their brand) of God, and can be nothing else?
Of course, if humanity had always simply accepted that its own mind was intended to NEVER seek to understand anything as being anything BUT a miracle, and that the human brain was designed to ONLY see everything it fails to understand as evidence that God wants us to only ever pray more and more to God, then each denomination of religion would be compelled to see what it may alone define as miracles as requiring them to war with those other denominations that differ in their interpretation of what is and is not a "miracle," for fear that if they did not, they would be punished for all eternity for failing to defend what they were required by their own brand of God to "believe" was a miracle.
In truth, the only reason such people all claim to have been given the power to know what is and what is not a true blue miracle from their own brand of God, whether that miracle is the transforming of bread and wine into flesh and blood every Sunday or seeing Mary descending from the clouds or a person being healed from some terminal disease, is because such an interpretation makes the person interpreting such an event feel as if they are special. Indeed, it makes such people feel they are so special in God's eyes from everyone else on the planet, that God decided to show them - even if he kept it hidden from almost everyone else on the planet! - such a "miracle."
Now imagine trying to have an intelligent conversation with this same person - someone who is convinced of just how "special" they are in their "infallible" ability to know when their own particular brand of "God" shows them a miracle, which not only means they are "right" about that interpretation and therefore every other interpretation concerning God, it also indicates eternal heaven and hell are therefore also real, and that their ability to see God's miracles is evidence they are morally superior and destined for heaven and your own inability to see it as such a miracle is evidence you are morally flawed and destined for hell - about literally anything!
The miracle of the denial in faith in miracles is how trying to actually talk about miracles with people who believe in miracles is that they become convinced that either you are insane for doubting their infallible ability to determine what is a miracle from God, or worse, you are a pawn of the devil in trying to get them to doubt their infallible ability to know what they perceive to be a miracle is in fact a miracle and can be nothing else.
Welcome to the house I grew up in.
Comments
Post a Comment