The case for miracles

I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek has an important chapter dealing with the possibility of miracles. Since I will be speaking on this in a week, I wanted to write about miracles to make sure I understood their main points.

I think I'll start my presentation with a question: have you or someone you know experienced a miracle? It might be a healing or an answer to prayer. J. P. Moreland, a noted Christian philosopher, says he is always surprised when he asks this question of groups he is speaking to. A large number of people always raise their hands. We in the West are cold, rational people that really don't believe in miracles. But they seem to be happening around us.

Can we justify belief in miracles? That's what the authors of the book tackle. They start with a definition. A miracle is a special act of God that interrupts normal events. It's done to authenticate some message from God.

They use a simple illustration to explain how miracles add to our worldview. They tell of one speaker who brought in two boxes for his audience – one was closed, and one was open at one end. The speaker held up the closed box and said atheists believe the physical universe is closed, like the box. But he said he believed there was a God outside the box capable of reaching into it and performing what we call miracles.

The authors indicate there is a key element here. If we admit there is a God, then miracles are possible. It's always been funny to me that people do believe in God, but they have difficulty with miraculous events associated with Jesus, such as walking on water or changing water to wine. Once you have settled the idea that there is a God, then all possibilities are open since he created the entire universe out of nothing. He can certainly do other, more minor miracles.

Geisler and Turek tackle two well-known objections to miracles. The first one was by Spinoza, who said natural laws are immutable. But the authors point out the creation of the universe seems to throw that objection out the window. They say laws describe, not prescribe what will happen.

The second objection was by David Hume. He argued that natural law is a description of a regular occurrence, while a miracle is a rare occurrence. He then says the evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare. Next, he says, a wise man always bases his belief on the greater evidence, and, therefore, a wise man should never believe in miracles. That may sound like a good argument, but they point out the problem with "the evidence for the regular is always greater than that for the rare." Think of all the things that have happened which are rare but we have better reasons to believe in them – the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the start of new life forms, the entire history of the world. These are all rare events, yet we believe in them. The issue is not the rarity of an event; it's whether we have good evidence for it. They accuse Hume of circular reasoning – he says only believable events are regular, and since a miracle is not regular, it fails to meet this criteria.

The authors end the chapter by discussing why there are no biblical miracles happening today. They mention that most miracles in the Bible actually occurred only during three periods of history – in the time of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. They believe that since there is no new revelation coming from God today that needs confirmation, there are fewer miracles. But I suggest that there are miracles, at least on the smaller scale involving individuals. We'll see what reaction I get when I ask the class next week whether they have experienced miracles.

The existence of a universal moral law

The next section of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist is important but not necessarily easy to grasp. The authors Norm Geisler and Frank Turek deal with the argument for God from morality. It can be summed up this way: every law has a lawgiver; there is a moral law; therefore, there is a moral lawgiver.

Of course, the key portion of that argument is the existence of a moral law. The authors start out by saying our Founding Fathers thought there was such a law. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "nature's law" is "self-evident." They claim Jefferson meant you don't use reason to discover it; you just know it. All people are impressed with the fundamental sense of right and wrong. For example, everyone knows that love is superior to hate and courage is better than cowardice.

They point out that this does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers or that some people don't deny that absolute morality exists. There are difficult problems in morality. In addition, they understand that people suppress and deny the moral law every day. But they say there are basic principles of right and wrong that everyone knows, whether they will admit them or not.

The authors claim there are eight reasons why the moral law exists. First, the moral law is undeniable logically. A person may say "there are no absolute values," but this person who denies all values actually values his right to deny them. In addition, he wants everyone to value him as a person, even while he denies that there are values for all persons. So, even those who deny all values nevertheless value their right to make that denial. That's inconsistent.

Secondly, we know there is a moral law by our reactions. The authors included a great story to prove their point. A professor at a major university in Indiana gave one of his relativistic students who did not believe in absolute moral values a lesson in this point. The professor, who was teaching a class in ethics, assigned a term paper to the students. One student, an atheist, wrote eloquently on the topic of moral relativism, arguing that all morals are relative and there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness. It was actually a good paper with good documentation. The professor read the paper and wrote on the front cover, "This is a good paper, but I'm going to give it an F because you put it in a blue folder." The student, of course, was enraged and said that it wasn't fair to give him a bad grade because of the folder. The professor acted puzzled, saying the student didn't believe in moral values, so why was he talking about something being fair. The light bulb went on the student's head. He realized that he really did believe in moral absolutes. The authors say that a good way to get moral relativists to admit that there are absolute morals is to treat them unfairly. Their reactions will reveal the moral law written on their hearts and minds.

There are more arguments for the existence of moral laws, but I will save those for future blog.

The philosophy behind Darwinists

This blog is a continuation of a summary of a powerful book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek.. The last time I discussed the book I was working my way through a chapter about the complexity of life. This time I would like to finish that particular chapter, which talks about the philosophy behind Darwinism and materialism.

The authors say Darwinists have been successful in convincing the public that Darwinism represents science while those who oppose Darwinism represent bad science. However, Geisler and Turek say just the opposite. It's the Darwinists who are practicing the bad science because their science is built on a false philosophy.

Where does Darwinism go wrong? Many Darwinists start with the idea that God is not necessary because science can explain everything. But there are all sorts of rational beliefs that cannot be proven by science: mathematics and logic (science can't prove them because science presupposes them), metaphysical truths (for example, there are minds that exist other than my own), ethical judgments (you can't prove by science that Mother Teresa was good because morality is not part of the scientific method), aesthetic judgments (no one can scientifically prove something is beautiful), and science itself (the belief that the scientific method discovers truth ironically can't be proven by the scientific method itself).

The key point the authors wish to get across is that science itself is built on philosophy. So, if you have bad philosophy, you get bad science. How is it that science is built on philosophy? First, scientists use philosophical assumptions and the search for causes. For example, scientists assume by faith that reason and the scientific method allow us to accurately understand our world. You can't prove the tools of science by some sort of experiment – the laws of logic, the law of causality, the principle of uniformity. Secondly, philosophical assumptions can dramatically impact scientific conclusions. I think right now about the debate on climate change. Many scientists are getting a conclusion that they wish to get to keep the scientific funding going.

The authors say the bad science of Darwinists essentially comes from their false philosophy of naturalism/materialism. Geisler and Turek have five reasons why materialism is not reasonable. First, there is specified complexity in life that cannot be explained materially. Think about the DNA message. Secondly, human thoughts and theories are not comprised only of materials. How much does love weigh? Third, if life was simply material, then we could take these materials and make a living being. But we cannot do that. Fourth, if materialism is true, then all people of human history who had spiritual experiences have been completely mistaken. That's hard to believe considering the list of those who have had such experiences – think of Abraham, Moses, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ. Fifth, if materialism is true then reason itself is impossible. Why? If mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in our brains, why should we believe that anything is true? Chemicals don't reason, they react. We would be doomed to conclusions based on chemical reactions rather than reason.

Well, that's a lot of heady material to consider, and it deserves further thought. But I think it's pretty powerful.