Iain,
You raise a number of very interesting points. First off, though, Vernon
may be getting a "lot of flack" not so much because his YEC views, but
because, IHMO, he tries to explain geological evidence on miracles. Maybe
that's a bit of an understatement, but he and I had an e-mail exchange going
that dealt with the temporal place of the Flood. When I (and others) asked
him about the continental drift, he explained that the continents had moved
at a pretty good clip. Others have pointed out that the high velocities,
necessary to move the continents over that distance in 500 years, would have
generated too much heat. When I asked him then about the magnetic reversals
evident in the basalt on either side of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, Vernon
invoked miracles.
I don't, for a minute, discount the possibility that God could have used
miracles to shove the continents apart and to lay down strips of basalt with
alternating magnetic signatures. However, that explanation is not a
scientifically satisfying one and does lead one to wonder why God would do
this. Not that one questions God as to His motives, but it's sort of us
expecting God to be a gentleman and and "play by the rules." Whatever that
means. After all, God promised to be faithful and constant to the point
that he promised Noah that we could count on the season to follow one
another. If we cannot count of God to be faithful and constant, we might as
well give up on science which, after all, is based on constancy in the
universe. If God chose to make the earth look old (and there is an awful
lot of that; from the movement of tectonic plates to the K/Ar and Sr/Rb
ratio in rocks to the remnant of fission products in the Oklo uranium
deposit, he could just as well have created all of us with a memory five
minutes ago.
Perhaps it would be good start to define a "miracle." My guess is that one
would define a miracle as some event that does not seem to follow the "laws"
of nature as we understand them. In addition, one could argue that a
miracle (performed "through our hands" as you mentioned) is not repeatable.
As to your experience with the lady with the advanced case of arthritis, one
has to give God the glory and be thankful that he used you as the instrument
of his grace. I have no difficulty accepting what you wrote. Why God
healed this person is not for use to ask; all we can do is be thankful. Nor
should we expect that God sets a precedent and that more old ladies can
expect to be healed through your hands. Let's just hope that the lady went
home and fell on her knees to thank God and that she used her newly healed
hands to help other and to tell others what great things God had done for
her.
In one of the courses I teach (on a part time basis, because I have a full
time job doing research into nuclear waste disposal), I ask my students to
write a paper on their views on science and religion. One student wrote a
paper on miracles and we discussed that topic at some length. One of the
things that cam up is that it seems that these miracles invariably involve
some internal disease: chronic arthritis is healed, a cancer disappears, a
lame walks, a blind person receives sight again. Yet, we seldom see
miracles that involve the regrowing of a severed hand or severed arm. This
particular student was in a bad motorcycle accident that had resulted in the
amputation of one of his legs. Yet, in spite of all the miraculous healing
that we hear and read about, to my knowledge, there has never been the
miraculous reappearance of a severed limb. I trust that any member of this
forum will correct me if I'm wrong. That ought to tell us something: either
God chooses NOT to generate new limbs, or these miracles are limited to the
internal parts of the body.
On a personal note, I lost my mother to thrombosis when I was 21 and my only
sister was 11. Our prayers for her miraculous recovery were not answered.
My sister eventually married and had a daughter and a son. My sister
contracted a virus that affected her heart and she died when her daughter
was 11. No miracle either. Was God picking on us and favouring the lady
with arthritis? I don't think so for a moment but it may be tempting.
I think that your experience as a faith healer should be reason for you and
for us to praise God. I would not read much else into this and I would not
have it affect my doing research. Nor would I look for an explanation of
this healing but, then again, I'm not a physician.
I like your comment about us "seeking through a glass darkly." I sometimes
compare looking at the geological evidence as looking into a mirror. We
know that there's no image behind the mirror and yet, we act as if there is.
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: Iain Strachan [mailto:iain@istrachan.clara.co.uk]
Sent: Saturday February 10, 2001 3:00 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Miracles and Science
I have been following the creation-evolution debate with some interest, but
I think it would be more interesting if the discussion were broadened out
into how, as scientists, we interpret miracles. At the moment, Vernon is
taking a lot of flak from scientists who believe (as I do) that science is
all about finding naturalistic explanations. Hence there is opposition and
scorn of Vernon's suggestion that the geological events in the flood
proceeded as supernatural speed. As scientists, that concept threatens us;
we like to see a world that is governed by scientific laws. There are some
observations I would like to make on this.
First of all, I am assuming that as ASA is a group that stands for fidelity
to the bible, that most people here don't have a problem with, say the
miracles of Jesus. But I would maintain that scientists are trained to look
for naturalistic causes of things; to push out the supernatural in favour of
the natural.
Perhaps I can share with the group what seems to be a miraculous experience
that happened to me around 10 years ago. The point of interest in the story
is not the miracle itself, but my subsequent response, as a scientist to
what happened.
I was involved in a small "prayer ministry" group in my local church
(straight down the line Evangelical Church of England). I had become
involved in it purely on the basis that I had previously been involved in a
telephone counselling service (The Samaritans), and wanted to use my
listening experience in a Christian context (despite its Christian inspired
name, the Samaritans is a secular organisation, and forbids any sort of
proseletysing). The prayer group operated on the basis of having one or two
people available at the altar at the end of a service to offer prayer for
anyone asking for it. Prayer, sympathy, counselling; that's what I had
assumed I was there for. However, one Sunday, another lady in the team
brought up an elderly woman to me who was clearly in some distress. "Just
look at her hands! Can you pray for her?". I looked and saw that her
fingers were bent and immobile; she told me it was chronic arthritis. I
was actually horrified at having to do such a thing; I had never done such a
thing before, and furthermore, a good school friend of mine had previously
completely lost his faith, following a failed prayer for healing. However,
in this case, there was clearly no escape from the situation; the woman was
there, in distress, but with trusting and childlike faith. No option but to
go for it. I put my hands on hers and went through the motions, not with
much hope or faith, it has to be said. I can't really describe what
happened except to say that some sort of "event" or discontinuity seemed to
happen, which as a sceptical scientist I rationalised away as wishful
thinking on my part. In truth, I was too spooked out to notice what
happened, until I found out later. After the service, in the car park, I
noticed the lady, who waved at me, smiling and bending her fingers to show
they were completely free to move again, and then I realised that something
must have happened. Later on, the woman who had brought her up to me told
me she'd seen the hand relax and free up almost immediately.
However, since then, I've not become some wonder miracle healer; nothing
like this has happened since then - and I did not seek it as it was quite
nerve wracking! And as the years passed, the scientist in me has started to
question what happened; tried to rationalise this - maybe an attack like
that can pass off just like that; maybe it's a mental thing, etc etc. Then
recently I shared this with some people from the church, and a
physiotherapist told me in no uncertain terms that the regaining of mobility
"just like that" definitely does not happen; it would have had to have been
miraculous.
Now the dilemma this story presents to a scientist, it seems to me, is as
follows. With my Christian hat on, I believe God does make things happen
miraculously, and often those miracles "break the laws of science". And
often scientists don't like this; because it seems like cheating. Hence the
quotation from George Murphy's recent post:
: "We knew of old that God was
so wise that He could make all things; but behold, He is so much wiser than
that, that He can make all things make themselves."
.. the implication being that somehow it's better if the "supernatural bit"
is done right at the beginning, and the rest follows from the laws of
science, without further divine intervention.
But I am sure many of us do believe in miracles. On John Burgeson's
web-site you will find a moving story about how he and his wife were
simultaneously inspired to adopt two children from an orphanage in the far
east. They simultaneously wrote letters to the adoption agency without
knowing the other one had done it. I would suggest that this "word from
God" is just as much a miracle as the healing event that I described above.
A piece of information "arrived" somehow in two peoples minds simultaneously
that couldn't have been there before. (Though again, a skeptical scientist
might attribute this to coincidence).
So the question is, where does one draw the line, and tell the skeptical
scientist inside to be quiet? I feel that if we all did this more often,
then we would see a lot more of the miraculous.
The other point I would like to raise is this concept of a "deceptive God".
Some of Vernon's ideas have been attacked because, for example the creation
of everything "with appearance of age" would be deceptive, and we don't like
the idea of a God who deceives. I would only suggest here that it seems
foolish to judge God on our terms. "I'm more moral than God, so I don't
believe in such a God". If one considers the resurrection appearance of
Christ on the Emmaus road, it could well be read as being extremely
deceptive. Christ joins the two diciples, "but they were kept from
recognising him" (Luke 24:16). Later on, Christ talks about himself in the
third person, explaining everything in the scriptures concerning himself.
It is only after the breaking of the bread that "their eyes were opened",
and they saw who it really was. Later they reflect on how their hearts
burned within them as he talked about the scriptures.
Why did Christ let them go on believing that he was just a stranger? Why
not put them out of their gloom and despondency right away? Surely it was
deceptive to appear to be someone else? I'm sure better theologians than I
have expanded on this passage, but it seems to me that this might be telling
us something quite significant about the nature of Divine revelation.
Namely that God chooses to reveal things in his own time, and that what we
see "before our eyes are opened" may well be completely different.
Of course I'm not suggesting we should stop doing science. I get the
impression that some (though by no means all, and certainly not Vernon)
people in the YEC movement seem to have a contempt for science, and that is
something I really can't take. Science also reveals God's glory as the
Creator and Sustainer of the universe. But I feel too that we must
acknowledge that we "see through a glass darkly". Reality (God's reality)
may be drastically different from what we perceive.
Iain Strachan.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Feb 10 2001 - 21:25:12 EST