MIRACLES AND THE NOTION THAT EVIL IS A NEGATION

Religion says God does miracles. These are supernatural deeds that God does as signs. They are taken as evidence that God is communicating with us.

Religion says God does not make evil. He makes only good and any evil that happens is a falling short of good. In order to believe in God and get comfort, religious people water down evil and the horrors of depression etc.

If evil is merely abused good then it is a sin to see it as seriously bad. How could it be if it is made of good that is just in the wrong context? In fact, seeing it as vile and seriously bad would be the nearest you can get to turning evil into a power and an abomination. So if nothing is that bad then why do you encourage faith in miracles and why do you commit yourself to supernatural notions and religions based on them? People who do that invariably are motivated by the thought that evil and good supernatural powers are in combat. The miracle from God encourages them and invites them to participate in the battle against evil spirits. A battle is a battle and it is hardly a nice thing to think you are at war with magical forces that may not even exist!

The notion of evil being the lack of good destroys the value of miracles as evidence for the existence of God. Why? Because the notion is evil so if God does miracles to promote belief in his existence it is part of the deal. Therefore he is evil. And if evil is a real power and not a mere lack of good God must have made evil and so we cannot trust him. We cannot trust what he tries to say through miracles. At least the notion of evil being watered down to appear as a lack is not all bad then! It leaves us with no evidence that God exists for miracles do not count. It makes atheists of us in the sense that we cannot be believers in God when there is no evidence.

If evil is just good that is in the wrong place and time it is easy to become blind and see only the good. It is easy to mistake evil for good. Telling a real miracle from God and one that is a trick or from Satan should then be impossible in many cases and near-impossible in the rest.

Why not define a miracle as the absence of the natural? Why not define the natural as the absence of the supernatural? This cannot be done for God is said to be the one that keeps all things in existence meaning everything is supernatural. The natural only looks non-supernatural. So everything is a miracle! God trying to make special miracles only obscures this truth - if truth is what it is! If the miracle down the right is a bad thing, the infinite miracle of creation is off the scale bad!

Imagine a good dentist has healing powers. He could heal your agonising and rotting tooth problem by a miracle. He would be wholly good in doing so. The dentist who has the power but who chooses to pull your tooth out is a dentist who is using evil to do good. The view that God isn't evil for letting evil happen for it's not real, refuses to admit that God not helping my tooth with a miracle means God is evil. It tries to say that if God permits evil for a greater purpose that this evil is not a real thing so God is not even slightly evil for using evil to produce good. It tries to say that God is not making evil power to assist him in producing good for evil is just good that is in the wrong place. So God is wholly good in his purposes. So he is as perfect as the miracle dentist. But it doesn't work. No matter what evil is, it is still there. It is still used. God is still using good in the wrong place to make good. He is still using wrong to make good so he might as well make and use evil understood as a power not a negation to do it.

So we have looked at the view that evil is unreal and a negative and not a reality. It is a vicious view. If miracles lead to God they lead to that evil view. Faith in God is evil in principle and often in practice. If miracles invite and enhance and ground that faith they are abominations.