Miracles: Seeds, Saints, Sands and Popes

Take any viable plant seed. Take, for instance, a poppy seed: a tiny bit of blackness, smaller than some grains of sand.

Add the proper conditions, generally just some water and ordinary soil. What appears to be a miracle follows. The seed sprouts, and under proper conditions grows into a plant thousands of times its original size. Then it creates beautiful flowers, which in turn each create hundreds of new seeds.

Until the 19th century or so this seed to flower process was a mystery. It was attributed to God (the mental projection on a much smaller Universe, by some humans, of a universal King), or was just a mystery of nature.

The recent accelerated filing of two dead Roman Catholic Church Popes for sainthood, by the current Pope, has re-opened the debate about miracles.

That Church basically admits to having no ability to produce miracles. Its miracles are more mundane than the sprouting of a poppy seed. No living Catholic can show any special power over nature. No Catholic can point at an ordinary grain of sand and make it grow into a poppy plant.

Catholic miracles are miracles of fame. A famous Catholic gets prayed to. If enough sick people pray to these potential saints, someone will get well, probably through the triumph of their innate immune system over some disease. Getting well happens every day, but Roman Catholics want to treat some healings as a miracle caused by their prayers to dead personalities.

Let me be clear: Buddhists are not able to produce genuine miracles. Neither can Islamists. Nor any of the many Hindu sects, nor any of the self-promotion gurus who run about like ants on a hot summer day. Donald Trump does not do miracles, nor do cinema stars, not even Matthew McConaughey.

The closest thing to a miracle the Catholic Church produced in the last century was the Miracle of Fascism. The fascist leaders (Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Philippe Petain, Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII, and their allies and underlings) collectively almost managed to kill every Jew and Atheist in Europe. Call it the Holocaust Miracle. But they did not do it by waving magic wands, or converting non-Catholics by sprinkling them with holy water. The holy instruments were extermination camps, tanks, warplanes and just following orders.

I do not call myself an atheist, though others may use that label for me. I believe in Natural Liberation. If I say the poppy seed is a miracle, I mean a miracle within nature, not anything outside of nature. And if I say it was a miracle the Roman Catholic, fascist troops were defeated in World War II, I know it was the Red Army, its soldiers and tanks and all the apparatus of war, that defeated the Pope and his minions.

It is not possible to turn sand into a poppy seed, but it can be turned into silicon, which in turn can be used to do tricks with electronics, including calculating accounts and posting puppy videos to social media. Tricks are not miracles, but they have their uses.

Few humans want to be hopeless. Hopes crushed by Reality (governments and bosses of all sorts), many people want to believe in miracles.

Show them a poppy seed. And teach them some history. Adolf Hitler was Roman Catholic. Don't let that be forgotten. Popes are not good people. Popes are bad people. If you want to argue that some are more or less bad than others, that is your business.