Humanity is distinguished from the animal world by the ability to think abstractly. Our brain, which is essentially a byproduct of evolution, has become our most powerful weapon, allowing humanity to survive in the difficult conditions of the last period of the Cenozoic era. Thanks to the ability to think, we were able to become the dominant species on Earth, subjugate many elements and create a modern civilization.
From the very beginning of the formation of human society, people began to ask the question: who are we, why are we here and what is our goal? The transience of human life, its fragility and the frequent suddenness of its end led humanity to such a phenomenon as religion. But, even without considering such complex philosophical categories as the meaning of life, people, unable to answer most of the purely practical questions, attributed their reasons to some external forces beyond their understanding. Thus, the concepts of deities and the cults of their worship appeared.
It should be noted that with the beginning of the formation of the first foundations of statehood among people, representatives of the religious class (shamans, priests, etc.) immediately became closely intertwined with the emerging power, and in some cases, they themselves represented the supreme power. And it lasted a very long time. The first secular states appeared quite recently, no more than three hundred years ago.
The emergence of a monotheistic religion further strengthened the ties between secular and spiritual authorities, and all the dogmas of religion began to be adjusted to the practical basis of people's way of life. Lack of resistance and boundless submission to the authorities, restriction of freedom of thought and action - the granite ideology of religion was brought under all this.
Most modern religions are based on the principles of faith, that is, in fact, they are creeds. However, most believers find it difficult to understand all the nuances of this or that teaching about God or other higher powers, and without them the church cannot provide any evidence of the existence of these higher powers. And then things like religious miracles come into play. Representatives of "Abrahamic" religions, in particular, Christianity, are especially rich in them.
For more than one century, there have been phenomena presented by the church as manifestations of the divine principle. This includes both individual artifacts (vessels with the blood of saints, fragments of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, the Shroud of Turin, etc.), and some phenomena that are inexplicable from the point of view of modern science - the lighting of the Holy Fire, the change in the direction of the Jordan stream, myrrh streaming icons, etc.
According to one skeptic, the factory for the production of saints has always been on Earth. And the church has always jealously guarded its secrets, not revealing information about the origin of unique artifacts and limiting researchers' access to them. Sometimes it came to completely ridiculous things. For example, if you count all the fingers of John the Baptist stored in Catholic churches, then their number exceeds the number of fingers and toes of a person.
However, the inexorable development of the natural sciences led not only to a revision of the church's view of the structure of the world and society, but also to a radical alteration of the very concept of preaching its doctrine. It got to the point that the Catholic Church, for example, about a hundred years ago, radically revised its approach to its work and chose a new doctrine - Thomism, set forth in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas. The consequence of this was a change in the church's interpretation of the world order, the separation of the concepts of God and the material world. This was indirectly reflected in the approach of Catholics to miracles - a special commission was created that considerably "thinned out" the list of church miracles, in fact, leaving only a dozen out of about three hundred unexplained phenomena officially declared "miracles".
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The development of science in the twentieth century did not leave the church any chances for a monopoly of miracles. Recently, almost all miracles and artifacts have been comprehensively investigated by scientists from biologists to physicists, and the data obtained as a result of their research does not look in favor of clerics. For example, the same Turin shroud turned out to be a crude forgery by an unknown author from the 14th century, and the vessels with the blood of the saints do not contain blood at all (a substance that stands out as blood was actually a complex organic polymer), and so on.
Similar disappointments befell the worshipers of the fire descending from nowhere in Jerusalem during the Passover. With regard to the properties of holy water, the explanation of its long preservation was given even earlier - the used silver vessels and crosses had a bactericidal effect due to silver ions. And so on and so forth - every day the number of "miracles" is steadily decreasing.
However, be that as it may, "people like to believe." From year to year there are more and more evidence of the manifestation of "divinity" in one form or another. The formed consumer society requires new and new sensations, and it is only necessary for some priest from the provinces to announce that God's grace has come to them in the form of, for example, dandelions in the form of a cross that blossomed in January, immediately, like bees on honey, in the forgotten town is being thrown down by thousands of pilgrims and journalists.
Many people explain such phenomena by the lack of education among believers and, as a result, by the inability to critically evaluate this or that phenomenon. Our society is too lazy to understand anything. Easier to believe. No one would have thought that the phrase “I believe, for it is absurd” by a third century religious figure would be so relevant almost two thousand years after it was uttered.
If God really exists, then proceeding from the image of him that the church draws for us, he does not need any proof of his existence, and he also does not need absurd believers. God is above this. And by rewarding a person with the ability to think (and, therefore, to doubt), God opened up to us not only the ability to comprehend the world ourselves, but also gave us the gift of creation. This is what should determine the goals and aspirations of a person - to think, doubt and create!