bogus authentication of miracles

NOTE: Authentication here means "declared worthy of belief".

A miracle may be seen as a message - but the trouble is that nobody cares about what it means but what they say it means. The risk of miracles being all about interpretation is terrible. Very few who run after visions even know what the vision has been saying.

A miracle is an event that is not naturally possible. That does not mean it is necessarily impossible. There could be a power greater than nature such as a god that can do it. A miracle is supernatural. It is really magic and superstition under a different name. If a power can instantly remove an incurable terminal disease, then it can guarantee bad luck for those who walk under ladders.

A miracle just for show is one thing - even if it is a real miracle. That thing is show. It is no good for religious or spiritual reasons. An event that you mistake for a miracle because of the lies of others or their errors is another subject. It is no better than a miracle that is just a TV performance..

If you are showing a miracle is real or a vision you need some unreal miracle to contrast it against. This is never done.

Studies investigating supernatural visions and apparitions never cover somebody who wrongly thinks they have visions. Thinks is a different matter from having them. For example, while Catholics investigate sites like Medjugorje, they rarely include a control group or consider how people might wrongly think they’re having visions. And in a world rife with reported visions, they can find a control group easily.

They say that you can have a real series of visions but be deceived in thinking the miracle visions are continuing. The idea is that your mind can make echoes of the original real visions by manipulating your imagination or perception. The memory of the real vision can intrude so that you can think it is happening again. This shows that there is no real way to tell a heavenly vision apart from a false or psychologically made one. It totally ruins the claim that Jesus appeared to establish clearly that he rose from the dead.

Most miracles do not definitely give a message. Apparitions of Mary are examples of miracles that do. But though the Church says it does, it is clear that a miracle healing in the Catholic Church does not actually say the Church is right or true. The evidence is that miracles are random or for show. To seek them or applaud them is to insult the children who are dying who could use a random or showy miracle. The witnesses are one thing but those who listen to them are taking the biggest risk of adoring what for all they know may be a random miracle. The seers and those who live by hearsay are two different problems.

The Church says that most miracle claims are suspect and only a few pass the tests for being truly supernatural. It says its narrow-minded to dismiss all miracles just because so many of the miracle stories are based on lies or errors. That is true but it is not the whole story. There are other considerations too.

Suppose a miracle happens. All you may be able to show is that it is unexplainable and that the testimony to this is reliable. You cannot prove or give adequate evidence that God did it. All you get is an extraordinary fact. You can only guess what did it. What if it is an artificial intelligence that cannot be seen or heard just like God cannot be seen or heard? In fact, you would be entitled to make the best guess and that would be that it is some kind of artificial intelligence. It is false that miracles would show us the existence of God or that Jesus is his supernatural messenger.

Conclusion

Miracle claims often rely not on what truly happened, but on how the event is interpreted and by whom. When a miracle is “authenticated” as worthy of belief, it usually means that it fits into a specific religious or ideological framework—not that it has been objectively proven. This process is riddled with bias, selective evidence, and theological agenda. Miracles, in this light, are not signs from a divine source, but tools used by institutions to reinforce their authority and worldview.

The danger lies not just in the gullibility of believers, but in the fact that people are pressured to believe what others claim a miracle means. Yet, if even sincere visions can be echoed by the mind, and unexplained events can be mistaken for divine action, then certainty is impossible. Claims that Jesus rose, that Mary appeared, or that healings point to God—all depend on deeply unreliable human interpretation.

In truth, miracles say more about those who claim and authenticate them than about any divine power. The “authentication” is often bogus—not because miracles never happen, but because what’s accepted as a miracle is chosen for ideological convenience, not truth. In the end, the biggest fraud may not be the miracle itself, but the system that declares it “worthy of belief.”