Suppose you were god. What's the purposes of miracles?

Miracles are all around you every day, you merely need to open your eyes to the wonder.

some (most) people are closed to the wonder around them. For them, a dramatic miracle can awaken them to the communion with the Divine.

To get people to wonder about the mystery of the universe if for only a second.

I would dispense them out as favors or gifts to those who please me, not unlike the way Trump awards department head positions based on sucking up and not actual knowledge or familiarity with the purpose of the departments duties.

This is probably the way it is done anyway.

No need for miracles. The Universe is awe inspiringly magnificent just as it is.

Interesting responses, @zenvelo and @LostInParadise but not responsive to to the question.

What’s the benefit to god for making miracles? what’s the motivation?

To mess with people’s minds! For his own personal entertainment!

To prove his existence.

If I were God everything I did would be for my own personal amusement.

@chyna – to prove his existence to who? God already knows he himself exists.

To those he bestowed his miracles on.

Who could say that this “God” was indeed “God” and not some other entity pretending to be “God?” He/she could make one believe he/she is whatever he/she wants one to believe, so how could one, how would one, truly know??? Ya know???

So let’s assume God exists and that there is some sort of plan, just so we don’t have to argue about those. Hopefully we can also agree that there’s suffering in the world.

Then it might make sense that God is collecting experiences from a wide range of situations, including the negative experiences that are so difficult to explain how an omnipotent being could let them happen.

Maybe God has some way to guide each individual or maybe instead it’s just a set of principles that govern actions and the environment we live in. Maybe it’s all just random. But however it runs, the world is producing a wide variety of experiences for the people here.

If you’re collecting experiences, then that variety would be a good thing.

I think miracles would give God a much wider set of experiences and maybe provide some interaction into a system that otherwise runs itself.

In the OT, miracles are used either to prove G-d’s (sorry, old habit) existence to the viewer such as showing Moses the burning bush, or to make someone do something. Using the story of the Exodus again, G-d sent the ten plagues to make Pharoah let the Israelites leave Egypt and parted the Red Sea so they could get across it. (And thereafter closed it up again so the Egyptians in pursuit were drowned.) So basically, it is to show he exists and to enforce his will.

God being omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent are all fundamentally incompatible with each other. If God exists, he/she/it probably isn’t benevolent. It would follow that God creates miracles to fuck with us.

@elbanditoroso Such an anthropocentric question, that it must be “done for his benefit”. Why not accept it as a gift to you, a small bit of joy in your life? A bit of sharing of the ongoing, evolving, Creation of a universe that is bound and connected through love?

@zenvelo Why would he/she/it even bother?? What would be the point?? He/she/it is the “almighty,” isn’t he/she/it??

@kritiper – I agree with you. If god is almighty, all knowing, and all powerful. then why are miracles needed for god? Humans benefit, maybe, but god doesn’t.

@elbanditoroso , Since God is perfect as is everything created by him, there is no motivation to do anything. This would be a deist view of God. The deists were largely done in by the theory of evolution.

So the mighty must be apathetic?

@kritiper You ascribe your human motivation to the non human Divine. The Divine provides miracles for your amazement and wonder as an expression of the all encompassing Love.

Like Barnum, you put on “miracles” to fill the tent. who wants to worship a dull dried up ordinary deity?

Miracles only have a purpose from a human perspective. For God it would be like cheating at patience.

I’d do it to make corrections to insufferable things gone wrong. Trump’s bones would slowly melt. Pence would be struck by lightning. A plague of locusts would destroy Monsanto corporate headquarters. TV evangelists would suddenly start confessing and/or singing Send Me Your Money , lions being poached would become bulletproof, roads encroaching on wildlife habitat would be swallowed by the earth, forests would start swallowing up deforestation efforts, nuclear weapons would stop working, immoral wire taps would be filled with recordings of random teenage gossip conversations and video-game smack-talk, computer records of customer buying habits would be randomized, and records of student loans and many other predatory debts would be removed, etc…

@zenvelo You can really spread it thick. But it falls on deaf ears…
I was raised a Catholic and have heard all of the stories. What’s more, I have studied the facts and the fantasies to my satisfaction and have made my decision about what I believe, and what I don’t.

As a child growing up in the Church, I believed miracles were mostly to keep people headed on the right track, because God wanted people to make their own choices, but sometimes they needed clues to keep them assured of the right and wrong of their choices/actions.