MIRACLES ARE OCCULTIC

When people say magic is real or miracles happen, they are saying there is something inexplicable there and the cause is supernatural or something that is bigger than nature. Belief in such things is always motivated more by a desire to believe than concern for truth. How do we know? If something is inexplicable that does not mean it is supernatural. It only means you don't know enough about nature and often you cannot. Perhaps a lie was told or a mistake was made that made something natural look inexplicable. Maybe the waters were muddied. Inexplicable by definition means that you must admit that an unexplained or unidentified error might have been made.
 
The occult is regarded as bad to believe in because people want to believe in it.
 
If something is unexplainable in natural terms, perhaps it is supernatural or perhaps in some unexplainable way mistakes have been made.
 
Occultists say that magic will endanger the person who practices magic without purity of heart.
 
Religion is replete with hypocrisy and most people pray for selfish reasons. That is occultism for it is treating God as stupid enough to fulfil selfish desires. Even if properly understood religion is not occult, it is still the case that the vast majority do not realise this and are more occultists than religionists. Miracles do nothing to combat such occultism. Indeed most of the fans of miracle apparitions of Mary and miracle shrines are enthusiastic simply because it appeals to the part of them that wants to avail of and relish the occult.
 
A miracle is even more occult than a magic spell for a spell supposedly works in a natural way.
 
We don't believe even the most honest and intelligent of people when they see a magical event that has to be supernatural even if it really happened.
 
Religion encourages us not to believe for it opposes magic at least on the surface. It gives no evidence to support this disbelief. It simply takes it for granted that magic is nonsense. When possible it will forbid belief.
 
Religion denies that miracles are the same as magic. Miracles are defined as acts of the love that God chooses to demonstrate in a dramatic way.

It seems that outlandish miracles such as a cat growing two heads instantly or your teddy bear coming alive and doing all your housework in five minutes are out. They would be mainly/solely about showing off. The Church then claims to see miracles as being about love. God feeding the starving by miraculously sowing crops to feed them would be seen as being about love and not displaying power.
 
If miracles are really about love, God will not ask us to depend on the testimony of others that miracles happened. He will show us the miracles. Why? Because to make us find out about the love from another person is really just like a man who won't tell his wife he loves her but gets his friend to say it for him. He is not very concerned for her wellbeing when he has to pass the message on through an intermediary. It is better for her to hear it from his own lips. She will doubt his love more if she hears it from another person for she will wonder, "Maybe he does not love me. Maybe he cannot tell me he loves me for I will see that." If he can't show her his love by telling her he loves her, what other things will he chicken out of? What else will he do to let her down?

Also, if God really loves you he will run the universe properly for you. He will not leave you starving so that he will have to make food for you out of nothing. A good God does not reason, "John will starve if the potato crop fails. I will let it fail and then miraculously put potatoes in the field." Rather he will reason, "I will avoid the need to do anything that looks like magic. I will look after his crop. It would not be right to have him suffering just so that I can show I can put crops in the field like magic."

The fact of the matter is that the miracles Christians say show us God's love are still shows of magical power.

Religion simply pretends that the magic events it believes in such as Jesus rising from the dead are not magic but miracles. What then if miracles are reported by honest and reliable witnesses? Should we believe then?
 
Religion says we should at least in some cases. This position in reality urges us to be agnostic about what reports are genuine and what are not and what cannot be decided. It does not justify religion saying that miracles show its claims are true. For example, the Catholics say, "Look this holy wafer bled miraculously and it proves that our priests can really turn bread into God's body without it seeming to have made any difference." Rather it makes religion biased and dishonest for it refuses to be agnostic and consistent.
 
If they really believe miracles show God's love and magic is mainly about showing off power then they will not be honouring miracle healings etc. They will prefer to honour the God who gives us the doctor whose heroic skill saved the patient instead of running to shrines to honour a God who makes people throw their crutches away. You will not learn the same from a miracle.
 
Religion, in fairness, does say that in a sense everything mundane is the greatest miracle of all. If so, any weird kind of miracle is distracting from that. It is about attracting people to the unexplained and the bizarre. If we pretend that the weird miracles do not distract then the weirder they are the better!
 
Sceptics and believers disagree on the truth of: “Miracles are necessarily absurd”. Sceptics say they are necessarily superstitious and magic and therefore absurd. Believers say they are not necessarily these things. Both say that magic is absurd. Is there really a difference between miracles and magic? The believers say that miracles make sense and are done to show the love of God and to encourage us to love. A God will not need to do miracles if he runs the universe properly. He will show us love in our daily lives. There will be no need for miracles. Thus if miracles happen it is because he cannot communicate his love.
 
Miracles should get the same credibility as tales of witches and vampires!
 
The Bible is full of Magic and Occultism

The Bible is claimed to have been written by God. Jesus repeatedly insisted that the Bible must be obeyed for it is the word of God.

The Bible first and foremost tells us to pray to God. People pray for they feel that they have tuned into a God who can protect them. They get deluded for they can't see how they are no better off than people who don't pray. People pray and get a sense that things will be all right. This is divination - the person seeks reassurance by using tarot cards or reading tea leaves. They get a vague sense of reassurance, they divine that things will be all right somehow. Prayer itself is occult. The same comfort that you get from reading your horoscope is the comfort that prayer gives you. Prayer is superstition. The miracles of the Bible can be understood as supporting the basic Bible endorsement of prayer. They are based on the occult and they endorse it.

You know that wealth and happiness are two separate things yet you will seek wealth to be happy though it makes nobody you know happy.  Yet you imagine you (or your loved one) could and virtually will be the exception.  The whole point of seeking wealth is that you think it will magically make you or somebody else happy and to pray is to do magic too. Both things are the same so if it is a vice to want magic happiness from money it is to want it from prayer as well.
 
The Bible makes little or no effort to back up the miracle tales it has. It just gives us hearsay. An example is how it says that Elijah was miraculously fortified by bread and water for forty days so that he could go to the mountain of God. Another example is that of Balaam's donkey which talked to him. No investigation of Jesus' reported miracles ever took place. Thus the Bible must embarrass those Christians who claim that Christianity makes sense. They hide their embarrassment and lie through their teeth that their religion is reasonably believable. They say the miracles reported in the Bible are backed up by sufficient evidence.
 
The miracles of Jesus are treated in the Bible as if there is no room for debate and therefore investigation is unnecessary. Christianity has never been able to produce miracles that good.
 
Miracles reported at Lourdes and Fatima have to be declared plausible by investigators hired by the Church.

Christians say they agree with the sceptics that sufficient evidence is necessary for belief in Christianity and the biblical miracles. But their own Bible refutes them. It reports miracles and expects us to take the mere reporting as sufficient evidence!
 
There is no other word for the Bible miracles but magic. Miracle claims made without the company of sufficient evidence are just magic.

Finally

Strange people say, "God needs to let a baby suffer a terrible disease and die screaming for it is part of his plan to maximise good. He lets it happen to bring good out of it. God will not do crazy miracles." If you have to let a baby suffer then surely you might have to do a bizarre miracle such as turning the sun green or bringing the moon to life for three days? It is an insult to the baby to say that God can make a virus to hurt it and cannot do crazy miracles as if hurting the baby is the lesser evil or not an evil at all!
 
Strange people say, "God made all things out of nothing. This is not magic." Sorry but it is. Witches are supposed to turn princes into toads so turning nothing into something is even more magical.
 
If people adore God because he has all the power, that is disturbing. They have to be motivated by fear of the power or a wish to feel powerful by staying on the right side of it. To want to feel absolutely powerful does not mean you have the power personally for you can have the power by cuddling up to it when it is somebody else's. In that way you make it your own power in a sense.
 
If people adore God because of his love then they will still adore him even if he has lost even the power to boil a kettle. Make no mistake - it is not just about the love.

The real reason people adore God is because he is a cosmic wizard, the universal sorcerer.
 
Belief in magic is opening a Pandora's Box. If you believe in magic yourself, you cannot say anything if another person has magical beliefs that differ from yours and which are dangerous. If a child feels pressured to ask Santa for gifts she doesn't want, she will expect Santa to know this for he is magical and bring what she really wants . Imagine the hurt and disappointment that can result from belief in Santa. Parents should take responsibly for this risk but they do not. A religion has to be controlling and authoritarian to stop things going out of control altogether.
 
Roman Catholicism used violence to suppress violent believers who disagreed with it. For example, the Albigensians upheld the magical belief that if you die by starvation you will become a saint. The Church despite her own murderous doctrines, suppressed them violently because it felt Albigensian beliefs would wreck society completely. Society generally backed the Church up as its hypocritical power structure gave it some protection though it was far from perfect or humane itself. It was a case of better the devil you know.
 
Belief in magic not only kills the mind but takes lives.  To seek to do magic or to get a God to do it for you is about the search to feel you have absolute power.  Absolute power is dangerous and to want it is to become corrupt even if that corruption does not seem to show.