Augustine taught that heretics should be tortured. So the Church ran the Inquisition under the Dominicans for 600 years. And Thomas Aquinas said he looked forward to heaven so he could enjoy seeing the suffering of the souls in hell.
Aquinas was an obese sadist. And Augustine provided the theology of torture. And both are Fathers of the Church.
I would say that Augustine is the one who almost single habdedly corrupted the Church and turned int into the monstrosity all the skeptics react against so much today.
And his position there influenced the authoritarian structure of the Church, and he spawned the doctrine known as Calvinism which says that the damed are
preordained to that state. They echo Aquinas in saying that the whole purpose of that is that God gets something being "glorified" in this damnation (with some such as Spurgeon even saying the redeemed are to "enjoy" this).
From there, you got Puritanism, which said that the "elect" are predestined to wealth both here and in the afterlife, leading to self-justified racism, classism, and of course, intolerance/persecution. God favors "us", and disfavors "them". That's why we have the economic problems today, and people will still blame taxes being given to the "underserving", while the filthy rich at top are seen as "deserving", and nobody ever thinks, that the economy is in such as state of scarcity, yet there are these people who have total abudance. They all "deserve" it, people seem to think.
And Augustine also influenced the Church's shame towards sex, perhaps the biggest cause of much untold pain and misery (though guilt). This from his own guilty conscience from his pre-conversion lifestyle. Aquinas was also said to have been influential in this somehow (monasiticism or celibate priesthood, or something).
So people need to realize a lot of what they don't like about Christianity comes from this one source, who was 400 years after Christ.
This is the classic blood libel against the Jews which you are repeating without shame or remorse.
The blood libel started with the Gospel of John where he has the Jews crying out, "Let His [Jesus] blood be upon us and upon our children'.
And the blood libel that the Jews are deicides has been carried down the millennia by christianity until it culminated in the holocaust.
I remember a nice old Polish lady just after WW II at a Polish railway station on the way to Auschwitz, justified the holocaust by saying, "Well, they [the Jews] are Christ killers, aren't they?".
Those people who used that rationale forgot they they were sinners, too, who necessitated the death of Christ (including the fact that the Romans would allow themselves to be so "goaded" in the first place, when they knew He was really innocent).
That again is the corrupt influence of Augustine. Misconstruing what it means to be "chosen". The Jews were "chosen" over others in the OT, but because they "murdered", Christ, they forfeit that, and now "we" (Western gentile Christians) are the new "chosen". They thus actually end up repeating all the Gospel-denying errors of ancient Israel! (not realizing chosenness was a burden for divine
service, and not special favors over others and self-righteousness).
One issue of whether or not to believe in miracles has to do with the practical effects of religion. A person who believes in the miraculous power of God will believe that such power can change their life. Therefore they can change behavior that they could never change without faith, and their life will improve. A person who does not believe in the miraculous power of God will not be able to dramatically change their behavior and therefore their religion has to practical purpose.
Of course the other side to this is that once you accept miracles are possible then their is no reason to disbelieve any of the stories of the New or Old Testament. So this creates something of a dilemma for each Christian about what exactly to believe is true. Each person ends up drawing the line in a different place.
As others have pointed out, the "miracles' of "life-change" are things that are possible to anyone. What Christians have that others might not, is the
motivation to change. But when you look into how you actually "change" (as taught in Christian books, serons, etc, which has become a huge celebrity-making industry), then it's basically the same "steps", "struggles" and "daily choices" as secular self-help, only flavored with God (such as praying every day).
This invites scrutiny of Christians's behavior, after all, we're saying we're so much better behaved than everyone else. But in practice, we're not that much better. (we try to avoid cursing, drinking, smoking, lying, stealing, cheating, and of course, non-marital sex), but it is really not impressive to people. Especially compared to the explicit physical miracles in the Bible we are likening them to. So I think we've been a bit misguided with this claim of "miracles".
I may have been unclear in my point, so let me clarify.
