Testimony for a Miracle and why it is not enough
A miracle is what is not naturally possible. It is a
supernatural occurrence. It is paranormal. It's an act of God. There is no
hard evidence. Witnesses tell us that that they saw something unexplained
and that it was a miracle. That they can't just say it is unexplained
shows they are not as honest as they claim to be. Where one says, "I saw
Jesus standing glorious on a cloud", one should be saying, "I saw Jesus standing
glorious on a cloud but I cannot explain how I saw it or if it was really him.
Maybe there is a natural explanation even if nobody finds it."
WHAT MAKES A TESTIMONY TO MIRACLES
A testimony to miracles is only accepted on these presumptions and conditions:
#One presupposes without evidence that miracles happen. You would not be
listening unless you assumed a miracle is possible in the first place and you
only know it is possible if it actually happens.
# One forgets that testimony is what faith in an event being a miracle is based
on but testimony means presupposing that everything that happens is natural. For
example, if a miracle could fool John that X murdered Y what use would any
testimony be? You presuppose that there is no chance of supernatural tampering.
This is not biased or unfair - it is in the nature of testifying that the
possibility that the supernatural is interfering or manipulating is excluded.
#The witness is judged as reliable.
#The witness makes you feel you want to believe.
#You suspend judgment of, excuse or ignore anything that seems to suggest the
inauthenticity of the miracle or the miracle account.
#The miracle is made fairly safe from refutation. A miracle account where you
are told that the Virgin Mary has moved into a cottage down the road will be
rejected outright but you feel safer believing she appeared to somebody
yesterday for a while and this person alone could see her. This is really about
trying to get yourself to believe. If you really that convinced that miracles
happen you will not cherry-pick what miracle accounts to accept and what ones to
reject or ignore. I am talking about when one miracle account is as
well-substantiated as another. Miracle believers and healers and prophets are
always careful to make it hard or impossible to test their claims. If you really
believed you could heal you would tell a person not to let the doctors operate
on her child's cancer but you don't. That contradiction and inconsistency makes
it sensible to reject miracle testimonies and to regard a person who accepts
them as stupid. The witness ruins the case their own own sincerity so their
testimony can be dismissed.
#A miracle that one man got healed will be accepted while a miracle that claims
the cure for cancer has been given by Heaven will be rejected. Again this is
people trying to manipulate themselves and therefore others to believe. If one
man is really miraculously healed then it is possible that a miracle revelation
about the cure for cancer can come. The believers in miracles do not trust
miracle claims as much as they say.
#A miracle that has some followers and believers will be heeded more than one
that does not. This is not faith in miracles at work - it is our tendency to
follow the crowd to fit in that is at work.
#A miracle from a loving God should be about inspiring people to love each other
better. Thus it should be the lesson conveyed by the miracle that matters not
believing in the miracle. If God appears to a dying man and gives him a drink of
water, the lesson should be that we must help the dying and whether God really
appeared should not matter. Miracles are magic if you assume that all
supernatural events that cannot be attributed to pure divine love are magic.
They downgrade your good side. Miracle tales are about something and it is not
love even if they are sometimes made out to be love.
DARK SIDE OF DEPENDING MIRACLES ON WITNESS TESTIMONY
Every religion and believer rejects some miracle claims though there seems to be
good testimony for them.
If you base your faith on testimony, you must always be open to new testimony
and new light which means you have to be prepared to change your faith if you
need to.
If you don't want to dismiss a miracle testimony as nonsense, you can decide to
sit on the fence. That is a lot more sensible than believing in the testimony.
Hard evidence is better than testimony. Testimony is evidence with lesser force.
If we put supreme importance on faith in a God of miracles then testimony will
never be as good as hard evidence and cannot be enough.
The person who testifies to miracle only testifies that they interpret what they
remember as a miracle. Faith in their testimony is impossible when all you have
faith in is their interpretation.
People who care about what they want to believe more than about the truth are
vain. They want to think they are being reasonable. They are being arrogant for
they are not. We know such people when they won't look at the case against what
they believe and when they ignore the truth though it bites them in the
backside. The worst of them actually puts their belief or opinion in a framework
that makes testing the truth of it impossible. For example, Christians say that
God never ignores a sincere prayer. They say that if you don't get what you want
you will get something as good or better. But good things happen to everybody!
And so do bad things! By making a doctrine untestable the believers safeguard
their arrogance and conceal it. Thus they worsen their arrogance. They oppose
the person who rejects the doctrine or who without rejecting it sees no reason
to accept it. They oppose it inside if not in their outward deeds. They might
even be derisory. If they don't act that way they are derisory in another way
for the framework they make and maintain is derisory. It is an insulting
attitude to have towards the fair and dedicated truthseeker. They have taken the
first step towards persecuting that person.
Arrogant people do not set out to act arrogant for they know it makes them look
ridiculous. The crafty among them try to hide behind the mask of humility.
The believer in the supernatural is a bigger danger than the non-believer who
worships and promotes the untestable. If the believer in Jesus found out that
Judas rose from the dead and pretended to be Jesus he will say this discovery is
actually a supernatural hoax. He will say that maybe Satan magically faked the
evidence that it was Judas. If there is no supernatural or if you don't believe,
then there are less ways of making something untestable.
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF USING MIRACLE TESTIMONY AS EVIDENCE
Belief in testimony is a necessary evil. Testimony helps but it is not enough to
base faith in the magical on. Belief in testimony assumes there is no magical
power out there to delude the person testifying to anything. When you ask
somebody to believe you you are saying that there is no magic that could mean
you were magically fooled or misled. Testifying to a miracle is a contradiction
for a testimony presupposes that miracles do not happen.
If you want to believe in miracles, you are going to have to forgo testimony and
believe any nonsense.
Religion accepts the testimony of miracle witnesses when
it has done no professional tests to see how much or how little people will lie
about the supernatural. If too many people lie about the supernatural then it is
reasonable to deny that their miracle tales should be accepted. Believing would
then be deranged.
Some say, "Everything we believe is based on testimony. Our senses testify to
us. So it stands to reason that our feelings testify to us too. If we feel there
is a God then it is reasonable to accept this testimony of our feelings. Some
say their feelings have magical powers and the power to transform. We think the
testimony of our feelings to God makes more sense and is more reasonable.
Instead of doing magic let us submit to the will and love of God."
We say we accept the testimony of others about things. We never do. We testify
to ourselves that we want to accept this testimony. We accept not the testimony
we are given but the testimony we give ourselves. It is our testimony to the
testimony that we accept not the testimony. That is why we should question and
doubt particularly in religious matters. Trying to argue that feelings are
enough is a recipe for chaos and confusion. It stifles the voice of reason.
The Church says if exceptional and perhaps miraculous events happen, we cannot reject them as unbelievable. If we do, we are saying no testimony however honest and sane the testifier is is any good. But let us consider this. If we reject belief in them, we need not really reject the wonders. We could be just not making a decision one way or another. Believers use testimony as a weapon and won't let us do that! And believing somebody experienced something that is not easily explained is enough. Miracle goes too far.
FINALLY
Believers in miracles are united in NEVER looking for hard evidence or asking for it in their study of a suggested miracle. Even if testimony could be enough, we cannot trust those people. Looking for testimony can be a way of making sure the miracle will past the test even if it is nonsense. Testimony is good but it is not everything. It is not enough to justify belief in the majority of unrefuted miracles. It is perhaps not enough to justify belief in any miracle.
