DANGERS OF THE SUPERNATURAL

Many people who did great works for the poor, were still willing to torture and kill witches and heretics during the Middle Ages. They probably reasoned that even if they were mistaken, they meant well and besides overall they were still doing more good than bad. Thanks to people like Thomas Hobbes who said that the notion of persons who have no parts or materiality is nonsense, Baruch Spinoza who showed that miracles are nonsense so we don't need to fear witches doing them and David Hume who debunked religious fundamentalism and arrogance, most people began to have doubts to the level that they were unwilling to kill others over their alleged supernatural powers and their heresies. Their scepticism led to people seeing how wrong it was to kill heretics and witches and it has saved countless lives. Science while unable to prove that any witch has no power or that demons do not exist, makes belief in them unnecessary. It provides you with other explanations. Science shows that a natural explanation is the best one and the one to be preferred.
 
A miracle claim is necessarily an argument that the paranormal or religion shouldn't have to logically defend its claims or to present adequate evidence.
 
The state does not take spiritual and psychic and magical charlatans seriously because a huge percentage of the nation believes in the supernatural. To believe in the supernatural or to support religion is to enable the state to let charlatans get away with it. The charlatans sell supernatural help that does nothing at all. They give counselling without qualifications and have clients depending on magical beliefs and claims that will soon harm them and disappoint them. They use people who are helped by the placebo effect as examples of how their powers work.
 
Jesus Christ once let a woman waste lots of expensive ointment on his feet. The critics said the ointment should be used to buy food for the poor. Jesus said that the poor would always be with them but that he wouldn't. That was how he tried to justify the waste. This dangerous teaching has people failing to give money to the poor and the dying for they want to save up for a trip to Medjugorje where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared. They claim that going to honour the Virgin's presence and get her blessing is far more important.

Supernaturalism is about life and faith more than metaphysics or physics or anything.  In relation to science it is irrelevant.  Yet supernaturalists endlessly undermine science.
 
People who warn against or refute magical or supernatural claims are sometimes persecuted and even murdered. Catholics in India would have had the sceptic Edamaruku jailed only he escaped. His crime? He discovered that miraculous water coming from the feet of a statue of Jesus was coming from a toilet and the water was disease ridden. The rest of the Catholic Church was complicit in its silence.
 
Hume said that miracles are more likely to be down to fraud, ignorance and mistakes than to be real supernatural events. Was he saying no evidence at all would suffice? No he said it needs to be exceptionally good and it never is. This doctrine tells us that a miracle claim is a potential threat for we could be fooled and to protect ourselves we need to be very particular with the evidence and evaluating the claim.
 
Even if miracles do happen, those who verify them often find what they want to find. Even if they are innocent, human nature is a problem. The believers are putting people at risk of being fooled. If you say a miracle happened then you must face some tough questions to eliminate deception or mistakes.
 
The person going to a fortune-teller is really going for reassurance - they want to hear that they will be okay or that some power is in control of their future. They don't really care if it is true or not. The miracle believer as well wants to think that there is a supernatural power in control of their future.
 
Christians say that those who dally with Ouija boards and meditation and yoga etc do not know what they are opening themselves up to. They claim engage in such practices without knowing the source of the powers you will encounter is certainly asking for trouble.
 
It is interesting how believers in miracles seek after them while warning people who seek different kinds of miracles from the ones they like of opening themselves up to the unknown. They warn, "You do not know who or what you re opening yourself up to." They think the Devil might be making an input.
 
Most people who believe in the supernatural argue that it is best avoided as you don’t know what you are opening yourself up to. It is said by many religionists that if you go to a healer who is not using God’s power, a demon may heal you and give you good feelings but will get you some other way. For example, a cure of cancer can be granted and then the next thing depression or diabetes appears.
 
Yet the same believers in the supernatural open themselves up to certain powers in the form of the saints and angels and sacraments. The Catholic Church says that there are many fake sacraments given out. It says the Church of England for example does not have any power to give sacraments apart from baptism or marriage. It could be then that the Church of England is passing on evil forces through its fake sacraments.  Religion tends to hold that attempts to pass on divine power that fail leave it open to the Devil and his angels to step in and apply their power.
 
The evidence for the truth or believability of the Christian faith is poor and its easily refuted. Thus the Christian tampering with the supernatural and magic prayers and sacraments and saints is no better off than the person dabbling in Spiritualism or Witchcraft.
 
To say magical events against nature happen is to say there is a small chance that if you cut a person’s throat they will recover instantly and without any evidence of injury - ie miraculously. That undermines how evil it is to do this thing so belief in miracles is evil and puts faith before people. Jesus, to his credit, did say that faith should not come before people when he stated that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27).
 
It is a mystery among religious believers why a miracle of healing happens to one person instead of somebody more worthy who also seeks a miracle. The terrorists of 9/11 sincerely believed it was a mystery why Allah wanted them to attack America. That does not excuse them but miracles command belief in mystery inferring that it does excuse so miracles however good they seem are evil and it is evil to promote them.
 
Miracle beliefs are encouraged by immoral religions. A God who won’t cure a leper until the leper goes to a Catholic shrine is obviously more interested in showing off and promoting the shrine than in helping the leper. Some people might say that we have free will and mess up God's creation against his will. They argue that sometimes we wreck it so much that God has to do miracles to fix the damage. So they deny that a miracle is more about showing off than helping. They say the miracle is about showing love to the leper. They deny there is any showing off at all. But it is a contradiction to say that God has the power to avoid needing to do miracles and then that he has the power to do miracles to fix mistakes. Either he has the power to do what he should do or he has not.  

Supernatural beliefs are harmful even if they have no apparent bad consequences. They are bad in themselves. They are a bad influence on others.

 
A lie no matter how much good that comes as a result is still a bad thing in itself. It is the same principle at work in the following case. Belief in the supernatural is bad even if it looks good or does much good.

Some beliefs lead to harmful actions. 

Supernatural beliefs lead to people wasting time in Church and studying them when they could be making dinner for the poor.

Miracle beliefs are seen as harmless by many. But the attitude underlying this certainly is not harmless. The attitude is, "Miracles do happen." The person who encourages friends to listen to Christian healers who tell them to eschew all medicine and medical care has the same attitude as the person who says miracles encourage a respectful attitude towards medical care. Both have a risky attitude. Their attitude is essentially dangerous. It is only luck that the latter person does not endorse dangerous religious practices. Bad attitudes are still bad when they do not result in harm. The risk of harm is still there and they are bad for that reason.

If you would proclaim that God cured you or that some heavenly being appeared to you, that is on the level of feeling inspired to act as God’s executioner. If you preach that miracles have happened to you, you are saying you would harm for religion or that somebody else should.

Some Catholics say that Catholics must never try to encourage people to get interested in Catholicism and maybe joining it by telling them that the miracles of the saints show the Catholic Church to be the one true religion. That is because many of the miracles are bizarre and the message intended by the miracle is rather unclear. For example, the levitations of St Joseph of Cupertino were useless miracles. They make God look like an entertainer. The strangeness of the miracles indicates that the Catholics don't really know if God does them or not.
 
It is better for nobody at all to believe in miracles than for people to believe they are possible or that they happen if so much as one person is hurt by that belief. For example, people die because they suppose there is a miracle-working God who will reward them with a resurrection to everlasting life for refusing a blood transfusion.
 
Whether miracles are about fixing mistakes or show they are not from a force that deserves worship and admiration.
 
Miracles oppose reason and honesty and decency. They are a mark of religious evil.
 
The belief in the paranormal is so dangerous that anything that even slightly weakens the barrier against such believe is a threat.