(I signed up for Frank
Turek’s on-line course through Cross Examined.org, I am continuing to summarize
the lessons as I go through the 2004 book I
Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, by Frank Turek and Norman
Geisler.[1] This is a summary of Chapter 8)
A discussion of miracles must start with the reason for miracles. God communicates
with us in three ways: General
Revelation (Natural Theology), Special Revelation (the Bible), and
Miracles. A miracle is simply an exceedingly rare event that can't be explained by the natural laws of a regular, orderly universe. But miracles are not anti-science and are not a "science stopper." To the contrary, we actually need
science to have miracles. The universe must be orderly and have regular laws
for us to recognize when a miracle happens!
Miracles are a way that God can tell the world that they should be
paying attention to what is happening.
Miracles occurred in very small windows of time when God
wanted to get a truth across or confirm a new revelation. Miracles done through people happened in the lifetimes of Moses,
Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the apostles. Moses needed miracles to deliver
Israel out of Egypt and survive in the dessert; this also established the
Mosaic Covenant. Elijah and Elisha
needed miracles to deliver Israel from idolatry; to show Israel that they were
breaking the Covenant. Jesus and the
apostles needed miracles to confirm establishment of the New Covenant. There
has been no need for miracles since because there hasn’t been a need for God to
establish another covenant or confirm some new truth. Because of God’s moral nature, it should be
expected that God would want to communicate some important specific information
with us so we would better know His purpose.
He used miracles to do this.
A good analogy to explain miracles uses a closed box and an
open box. The closed box would represent
the materialist world; the universe is all there is and nothing enters or
leaves the box. An open box would
represent a universe in which God could do miracles. God created the box and all the rules and
laws by which things can happen within the box.
He left the box open so every so often he can reach into the box and do
something inconsistent with the existing rules and laws.
The greatest miracle of all is that all space, matter, time,
and energy came into existence out of nothing.
If God exists and performed the greatest miracle of all by creating the
universe (the box), then any other miracle that has happened within the
universe would be possible and easy for God to do. Since God exists, miracles are possible. If there is a God that can act, then there
can be acts of God.
Two of the objections to miracles actually are just
objections to the fact that miracles are rare events - which is the definition
of a miracle. So, most objections to
miracles are simply objections to the definition. Richard Dawkins doesn’t think miracles happen
because he wouldn’t like doing science if he thought a miracle might suddenly
just happen in the regular, orderly universe.[2] Dawkins doesn’t believe in miracles because
he doesn’t like them. This is similar to
David Hume’s objection. Hume basically
said that if miracles happened more often, then he could believe them. In other words, if there weren’t miracles,
then they would be believable.
Another objection to miracles comes from the philosophy of
naturalism. If you have the pre-existing mindset that nature is all there is (a
closed box) and nothing supernatural exists, then of course miracles are ruled
out before even looking at the evidence.
It is ironic that the ancients believed in the miraculous to explain the
creation of the universe and after more than 2000 years of scientific study, we
have come full circle, back to “super-natural miracles” to explain what we see.
Plato talked about a “best soul” who is the maker and father of all who ordered
the primordial chaos into the rational universe. Aristotle concluded that the universe had to
be caused by an immaterial, divine, living intelligence; the uncaused first cause.
Naturalists now explain creation by referring to a cause outside of our
universe. Fine-tuning is explained away by some kind of universe generator,
also outside our universe. And the beginning of life is explained by some
arguing the earth was “seeded” with life from somewhere outside our
observations. Creation and the beginning
of life are both rare events and are now, again, being explained by something
we can’t observe and don’t fully understand (kind of like a miracle).
If God created the universe, then miracles are
possible. By definition, miracles are
unusual, rare events that involve the super natural. Dismissing miracles simply
because of their definition is a philosophical mind-set, not a decision based
on evidence. A close, honest look at the
evidence shows that it is reasonable to believe that miracles actually
happened.
