Is the significance of a miracle more important than the fact of a miracle?
Religion says that God occasionally does sudden healings etc or may raise a man from the dead as a sign of his love.
The significance of a miracle is more important than the factuality of the
miracle. That is because the significance of the miracle can be determined more
easily than determining if the miracle happened. And also because a miracle
happening is not as important as the importance of the meaning of the miracle.
If a miracle happening was what was important then we should concern ourselves
with reports that apples came to life and started talking to people for a few
seconds!
Jesus' miracles were not significant because he did small things like casting
out demons and withering fig trees and claimed to rise from the dead leaving
only apparitions to prove this. If the ghost of your father appeared to you
saying it was not a ghost but his resurrected body you would be mad to pay any
attention!
God is supposed to have cured people at Lourdes to show that his mother Mary
really appeared there. The significance was the message that Mary was there. The
trouble with the significance is that it diminishes the importance of the
healings. A decent doctor who cures a patient does it entirely to cure the
patient. He does not even partly do it to prove his ability or to get glory.
Whatever cured at Lourdes, it was not God. Not surprisingly doctors have
debunked many of the alleged miracle cures there.
What kind of person would want to believe in miracles coming from a God who
worries more about giving signs than healing and who uses healings as propaganda
or to get converts?