(17) Miracles: Can they happen?

as I did a few weeks ago in asking Craig to join us. Craig was one who had come from a background as having a substantial amount of education in the area of philosophy and philosophy of science, things of that sort, having come from the viewpoint of being an atheist to recognizing, no, that's not the right conclusion, and putting his trust in the Lord. I've asked Hal to join us this time. Hal has another kind of side of the same story to tell. So anyway, I'll let him have at it here for a little bit.

It was back in 1492 that I grew up in New York City and spent a large portion of my life there. And after I graduated college, several years after that, And my background in New York City was not philosophy and education. It was street gangs and gambling and all of that sort of stuff. But came out to California and worked there for several years.

And my boss one day asked me if I would mind going on loan to another, to a senior scientist his aircraft was building a spacecraft that was going to soft land on the moon. And this would be the first ever spacecraft to soft land on the moon. And he, this senior scientist, developed a whole entire telecommunication system for the spacecraft. And I said, wow, that's going to be a tremendous opportunity because my job was to take the first spacecraft and do all the checkout and get it launched to the moon. So I went to work for this guy. I agreed to work for him for two years.

I reported on a Monday morning and was kind of standing outside his office in the hall. And here comes this guy walking down the hall. And all I see is a black book under his arm with gold edges. And I asked one of the guys, I said, who's that guy? He says, that's your new boss. I said, what's that under his arm? Is that a Bible? And he said, yeah. I said, is he OK? I mean, anybody to carry a Bible I knew no one that ever carried a Bible. I had never heard the gospel in my entire life.

So I went to work for him for two years, and it was a very interesting two years, because I think I spent most of the two years arguing with him, because he believed that this was the Word of God, and I kept telling him, You are a scientist, how could you possibly believe in a bunch of myths?" And we would just go round and round.

About after a year and a half, he said, you know, you put up a pretty good argument. How much of the Bible have you read? And I looked at him and I said, I think you know, I've never cracked open the Bible in my life. He says, OK, if you're going to argue against it, don't you think you should at least understand what's in it? And I said, you know, Lyle, you're right. But anyhow, during those two years, he would tell me what the Bible says. And he'd talk about prophecy. He'd talk about the gospel.

He had several things going on. Once a month, he had scientists, doctors, lawyers, whatever, men from different walks of life come in once a month. It wasn't like a Bible study, but it was kind of like a forum. He would invite me to these things. All these men were Christians, and these guys believed the Bible. I was shocked, I was stunned. It was not just this one nut I'm working for, but there are several men.

So then in the last three or four months working for him, he invited me to his Bible studies. So I started going to the Bible studies, sat way back in the corner for fear that someone would ask me a question fear that someone would ask me to read something, or whatever.

But I'll never forget, they were going through the book of John, and John 3.16, which you all know, and I know in my mind, I said, ah, I'm okay. I'm not either going to believe, but I'm not going to disbelieve. And what I'll do is I'll just walk this wonderful line, and not doing either.

Then they got to John 3.18, where he talks about, if you haven't believed, you're condemned already. You're condemned already. And I said, uh-oh, if this is true, I'm in trouble.

The two years were up, I left and I went back to my parent organization, worked on that first spacecraft, and nothing changed. But I never got out of my mind his life, because we would sit in meetings where all the managers would sit around. He'd invite me in terms of kind of back up any technical questions concerning the lab I was setting up for him, and I'd sit there. And if you've ever been in these types of meetings with all these managers, with all their pride, and the schedule is slipping, and what they do is just what Adam and Eve did.

It's not me. It's that guy. And oftentimes they would point to Lyle. And I'd sit there and say, Lyle, come on, stop pounding that table. It's not our fault. Tell him. He'd never do that. And I couldn't understand why he would never retaliate. But what he would do is say, well, gentlemen, we're behind schedule, obviously, and there's several things we can do. We can try and make it up, or if we do have a serious problem, we'll have to announce that we have a slip. But he'd work with these guys through the problem.

And I've never seen anybody do that before. But this was event after event in working for him that I saw the person of Christ in his life. And after those two years, I could tell you more about the Lord Jesus Christ, probably, than most believers. I could tell you about his love, I could tell you about his grace, I could tell you about his mercy, I could tell you all those things about Christ, because I saw Christ living his life through him.

Went back to my current organization and one phase of testing before you launch a spacecraft, you have to put it through the environment that the spacecraft is going to operate in. So we had a big environmental chamber, huge, where we put the spacecraft up in that chamber and simulate space. So we'd pump it down with liquid nitrogen and create almost a vacuum and simulate the minus 250 degree temperature on the spacecraft on the backside of the spacecraft and on the part of the spacecraft that was facing the Sun it was plus 250 degrees so you had a 500 degree temperature differential on that spacecraft and you had to make sure that that your fuel tanks didn't freeze or didn't overheat, so you had fuel to do your mid-course corrections, etc, etc. So you had to test it in the environment to make sure that it would function in space. Before we pumped down that chamber and put it in the chamber, we had it on the in-belt. the end bell is the bottom of the chamber that goes up and gets sealed. I went in early one morning, about two o'clock in the morning, knowing all the tests we were going to run, because I wrote the test, I wrote the procedures, and I knew the test access that we had to have on the spacecraft to bring out through the chamber walls or the end bell. And so I sat in the chair, just going through all the tests and then all of the test points and made sure that everything was connected.

After I was satisfied, I just sat down and looked at that spacecraft and said, boy, why now?

We've been here 4.5 billion years, or the Earth has been here 4.5 billion years. We've been here 3 million years. Man has been here 3 million years. Why haven't we done this 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago? Why now? Why have I got this wonderful privilege of working on this very first spacecraft that's going to go to the moon?

And then I started thinking, where did this all come from? I started at the top of the spacecraft with the solar panel, solar cells, made out of silicon. Where did it come from? Where did the silicon come from? From the ground. And then worked my way down the spacecraft, the whole structure made of titanium. Where does it come from? The ground. Graphite, where does it come from? The ground. Went down to all the electronic boxes which I knew by heart. Transistors made of silicon, germanium, where does that come from? The ground. Copper wiring, printed circuit boards, copper, where does it come from? The ground.

I mean, everything on that spacecraft, I realized, came from the ground. And all we did is to take the order which already exists in the ground, rearrange it, and put together this spacecraft. And then it hit me. That, wow, there is perfect order. There is perfect order. here, which was perfect, and just reassembled it into this spacecraft.

And I got thinking about my background in terms of thinking that there was no creator. And all of that with the two years I spent with Lyle. All of that the Lord took and just kind of put together and just went through my mind probably for six months or a year. I don't know how long that was.

But then I remember just driving home one night and all of that just coming together and I said, there's got to be a God. There has to be a God. I got home, opened up the front door, sat on the couch, and said, Lord, I believe you. I believe that you sent your son. And, Father, I will never, ever doubt your word. If you say six days, it's six days. If you say this earth is young, it's young. And I don't care about my background. And I don't care what scientists say. I'm going to believe you. And that started my track for the last 30 some odd years.

So, the Lord's been faithful. He's been so good. And the wonderful part about, as I think about it, no one ever hit me over the head with the Bible, no one ever coerced me, the Father didn't coerce me, never forced me, just tenderly drew me to him, out of his love. And that's who he is, that's the way he operates. Any questions?

This was this was this was after this was just this was just before the Apollo spacecraft where we put a man on the moon and the problem was that scientists believe that there was about 44 feet of micrometeorites or moon dust on the surface of the moon because if you got 4.7 4.5 billion years and and we knew that there were these micrometeorites falling on the surface of the earth and therefore they were falling on the surface of the moon and we knew the rate. They put up spacecrafts and collector panels to collect these micrometeorites and they went through these calculations and they said there's going to be 44 feet of dust or micrometeorites on the moon. And so a spacecraft, any manned spacecraft, they felt would just go through the 44 feet. And so that was the reason for an unmanned spacecraft. Okay. Thank you, Hal.

I think it's helpful as we're intentionally and intently going through various topics to hear the stories like Craig and Hal have told us, when we get talking to people, probably it's unlikely that they're going to say, well, let's go down the list and we're going to find the list of topics and questions right in line with what we looked at.

It's certainly purposeful to have answers to these questions. And certainly as believers, it is supportive of our faith to have answers to these questions. But as Hal brought out, This does not do an end run around or substitute for the need for the unbeliever to see the inexplicable life of Christ in the believer. You notice that that's one of the things that, you know, Hal could sit there and argue, you know, back and forth with this other senior scientist, but as he looked at this scientist's life, he could not come up with any explanation for that and the character of this man.

So, I would just Bring that out. We're going through all kinds of neat topics. It's not a substitute for the life of Christ and the believer. We have a handout that goes along with this week and next. Anybody in need of that? Okay, so everybody's covered on that? Okay.

What we want to take a look at, and our time will be a little pinched, but I think usefully because of Hal's message to us here, We want to take a look at miracles. Can they happen? Anybody talk to someone who scoffs at the idea of miracles? Anybody had that happen to them? Randy's nodding his head. I see another hand go up there. I've run into it as well. What's been your experience when people scoff at miracles?

What do they come up with? What do they say? Yeah. Okay, so the miracles that are recorded are just magic tricks, okay? This is sort of a grand scale magic trick, all right? Randy, what did you hear? Okay. They rely entirely on their own witness, senses, etc. And if I haven't seen it, touched it, felt it, heard it, I don't believe it. Okay. These are some responses.

The way this has been written up is from the standpoint of atheism, the materialist atheist, as Randy had pointed out some weeks back, The atheist has a philosophical problem, and that is that the atheist claims to know everything. That's the atheist philosophical problem. They have to say, I know everything about everything that is, and I have certainty. And, of course, the atheist can't really stand on that.

You begin to say, well, what exactly have you experienced? How long have you lived compared to the things that have been around on the planet. So there is a point of challenge there. Now, to be fair, there are other people who might scoff at miracles but would not necessarily be an atheist. Can you give me some instances? Who might scoff at miracles but not necessarily be an atheist? Pardon?

Jewish people? What do you mean by that? Can you elaborate? Many of the Jews are rather skeptical of mindset. Is that what you're saying? I'm not sure. Quite a few Jews are skeptical. They will be skeptical of miracles in the New Testament. Yeah. Okay. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. They would believe the miracles of the Old Testament, but not the New Testament. Okay. And there are Jews who go all the way to the point of atheism. So you have a kind of a spectrum in there. Yes, Tom. You're saying in the roles that he played? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So George Burns' roles were rather skeptical. How about, yeah, Marilyn? Okay, in other words, they're looking at things, the order of nature just has to stay in place. Okay, yes.

Yes, there are agnostics who don't stand firmly on atheism. That is, they're not making a statement of faith that says there is no God, which requires that they be omniscient. But instead, they're just saying, I don't know, and then they choose to take a skeptical position towards miracles.

That's what you're saying. Are there any others you can think of? Okay, are you saying then Christians? Possibly someone who does believe in the Bible, but says that that's where it stops. That God isn't doing any miracles now. Is that what you mean? Okay.

How about, there's another one, and it may be along the lines of what Marilyn brought up, and that's deism. Anthony Flew, who is a British atheist, recently decided he's not an atheist anymore. He's a theist, but he believes basically in deism. A number of the founding fathers of our country fall into that category. An intelligent God created the universe and then just kind of walked away.

So anyway, there are people of kind of varying beliefs. This is written up for the sake of kind of focusing it from the standpoint of the materialist atheists. So there may be some points here that you wouldn't fit. Let's jump to the brief chart in the middle of the first page there.

What we see there is under the category of belief, we have the Christian and the atheist, who I'm assuming is a kind of a mechanistic materialist atheist. The first point that you see after that is the first cause. Believers in the Bible look at God as the first cause. How does the atheist look at things? What's that? There is no God, and so what do they see as the first cause of the material universe?

Yeah, something happens so that matter is continually in existence. And so they're looking at that. We'll come back to that in a little bit. But yeah, they basically have to look at matter as eternal. This, by the way, was the belief of many of the Greek philosophers, even the ones that Paul talked to on Mars Hill, the Areopagus. they believe that matter is eternal. So what we have is a modern version of that, a modern myth, if you will. And so there's that idea. Now, how about the normal state of things? What do you see? Pardon? The laws of nature for both. How about that? Here's a point of agreement. Essentially, yeah, Randy? Okay, go ahead. Yeah.

Because the believer believes, or should believe, in God's sovereignty and God's control, that we actually should perceive God as always sustaining us, always maintaining us. So what we perceive as natural is actually God supernaturally preserving nature and preserving things. So the miraculous is actually always happening. from a Christian standpoint, because God is preserving us, giving us our very breath, allowing us to walk and breathe and act. Yeah. And that's something, actually, we address that later, but that is something that stands behind it. We can say that they believe the same thing. However, the reality is that the Christian even looks at it and says, not only is the existence of things something that God has brought about, but the sustaining of things is God's continuing action.

The intelligent design aspect points to some kind of theism, doesn't it? It's rather nonspecific. A person could be a deist and believe in intelligent design, that is, Deism being that here is an intelligent creator who designed things and then walked away. Miracles would be set aside from that standpoint as the universe continues based on the laws that are set in place, and God, in the deist view, is no longer continuing to be involved with the universe, and therefore things operate entirely by laws of nature set in place at the outset. but with no allowance for miracles. Another question there? Okay.

All right, now, and then the reason for the laws of nature, and that's another aspect of it, comes up with an intelligent design question, and that is that the atheist looks at laws of nature are inherent in matter, but has no more reason than that for why there is a certain order a pattern in what we see. The atheist can't explain why there is order beyond that. Why is it that we have planets that orbit around the sun and we've got biological activity that seems to follow some kind of a consistent pattern. The atheist can only say that's the way it is, but cannot say why it is.

The believer is in a different mode, actually, as Randy was pointing out. It is the God of creation who has set the order in place and sustains that order that is the reason for why things are the way they are. Jack? Well, and this is a fundamental problem.

Matter by any existing observed law Anything we can tell and any tests that have been done cannot create itself. We've never observed that taking place. No. Cannot be created or destroyed. Basic things you learn in physics and thermodynamics. Let's think about this. I'm kind of moving here to the top of the second page here.

One of the big differences is that the Christian looks at the universe as an open system. It operates based on natural laws that are in place, set in place there and sustained by God. Jesus Christ is seen in Scripture as the creator and sustainer of the universe, one of the things we saw in Colossians chapter 1. He not only is the one who brought it into being, but it continues to exist. by his action.

Now, it is, however, continues to be an open system. What do we mean by open system? Yeah, in other words, the universe itself is not all there is. And, unlike the deist, we would say, biblically, that God continues to interact with the universe. So the universe is not closed off from any outside influence, but is instead open to God's continuing influence, who is also the one who is the sustainer. So the universe is not looked upon in the Christian view as an open system. Excuse me, is looked upon as an open system. The atheist, however, looks upon the universe as a closed system. The atheist looks at it and says, this is all there is. There is no external influence. Everything has to be explained in view of what we see, hear, touch, feel, smell in this universe that we know of. That's it. There is no outside the material universe to interact. That's the atheist viewpoint.

Now, as we look at that, one of the questions we've got to ask is, as the authors of Scripture wrote things, did they have the discernment to know the difference between what was, quote, normal and what was miraculous? Think about this. Here's Joseph. Mary comes to Joseph and says, Joseph, I am pregnant by the Holy Spirit's working. Joseph thought, oh, okay, right? Or what did he think? What did he think?

Yeah, he says, first off, no, this doesn't fly. He was assuming the natural order of things in which, no, a virgin woman does not get pregnant by herself. And that's why initially, as it says in Scripture, his initial plan was, I've got to quietly divorce myself from this woman. This is not possible. Until the Lord made it clear to him, no, Mary's telling you the truth. And this baby that is in her is indeed there by God's doing. Now, did Joseph understand the difference between the normal operation of law and miracles? Yeah, he did, didn't he? And that's one of the points we make. Let's think about this. Here are the disciples. They're out on the water. Jesus isn't in the boat with them, and He comes walking on the water.

And they see Him, and they say, oh, alright, He's walking on the water again. Is that what they think? No. What would be the normal set of affairs if they were out on the boat in the middle of the lake somewhere and Jesus was coming at the boat? What would they expect to see if Jesus was coming at them? He's swimming or he's in another boat, right?

Those would be explanations we would say, well, that's the normal state of affairs. He comes walking on the water and they are quite alarmed. They're not thinking, you know, this is just a normal state of affairs. they had a discernment of the difference between what was the usual operation of natural law and what was miraculous. So, the authors of Scripture, and we just picked a couple of examples, the authors of Scripture are not ignorant of the distinction. Now, the question is, would the atheist, let's say they had an atheist in the boat, What would they think of what took place?

Yeah, this is a trick. That's right. This is surface tension, anti-gravity. What's that? What's that? Yes, that's right. This is slow motion water skiing. What would happen is the worldview, this is a closed system, the worldview, the set of assumptions says this is not a miracle because the universe is not an open system. It operates entirely by natural laws. Therefore, there is some other explanation for this than this is some miraculous event. It is the set of assumptions that drives the conclusions. something that can be proven demonstrated, right?

Now, the disciples considered that natural law would say Jesus should not be walking on the water. Did they then assume as the atheists did? Did they assume, oh, there must be some explanation for this that, you know, just fits in perfectly with natural law? They didn't. No. And the reason is, it's a difference in world view. They certainly had a hard time with it, but they also didn't just set it aside, oh, I've got to find a natural explanation. Yes.

Here's something interesting. Suppose you have someone, and there are cultures in the world where the distinction between natural law and miracle is nondistinct. Everything is seen as miraculous. And they see, particularly in animistic cultures, where everything is inhabited by some spirit, and spirits are doing all kinds of things.

The distinction between natural law and miracle is not there in those cultures. The atheist is really on the flip side of that, aren't they? because they can't distinguish between a miracle and natural law. So the atheist is in a similar position to the person who can't distinguish natural law from a miracle. Yes, in other words, it's the same circumstance, lack of discernment between miracle and natural law, but it's the flip side of it. But it's really the same inability to discern. Okay, page three, looking at the top part there. Here's the other aspect of things.

What happens in the realm of science? Science is primarily a method. And what do we do? We start off with a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a starting model, a starting understanding that we further test. And when we've tested it with a number of observations, then we call it a theory. When we test it even further to the point where we say, we've tested this to the point of boredom, And so we then call it a law. And so we have that sequence. Hypothesis, educated guess, theory, substantially confirmed, law, confirmed to the point where we believe it is the truth.

So those are the three steps in science. What we have to deal with all along are observations. And how many observations does it take to call something a law? The truth is scientists haven't arrived at some kind of a, here's the magic number, but it's generally looked upon as a great number of observations and probably something on the order of thousands would be typical. Nonetheless, all that you have is a sampling, don't you? What you have is a number of observations. You have a sampling Is it an exhaustive sampling of all possible data? No. You've determined that this is law based not on all data, but on a sample.

What the materialist who believes that the universe is calling the shots is saying is that my knowledge is exhaustive. They've gone from saying, I have such a substantial sample that I have confidence in that sample to saying, This is exhaustive and no future sample, no future data will contradict any of the past data that I've got. So it is similar to the atheist move, I know all things, in saying I, on the basis of a limited set of data, will now make an absolute statement about the entire universe that says everything must comply with the data that I've observed so far.

Back in the 1920s, there was a scientific law that was put in place in atomic level physics called the law of parity. Two scientists back when Nancy and I were just starting elementary school, got a Nobel Prize for disproving the law of parity. It had already gotten to the point where they called it a law, and then they came and disproved it to the point where it's completely kicked out. Got to start over again.

So to take something like that and to extrapolate it to the point of this is absolutely certain, which is what one is doing when they say miracles are impossible, miracles cannot happen, is not a step based on reasonable science, it is a step based on faith. what is increasingly probable. That's what science can do, increasingly probable and extending it to the point of an absolute.

You do that based on faith, not based on science. In the middle of that page, there's a bolded kind of a four term sequence there. And what that is, is shows in rather quick outline, the sequence that science has gone through. One is from a Christian worldview.

The first scientists, in the true sense, came up with the understanding of science because they believed that there was a God who was orderly, and a God who had made mankind, after his image, therefore able to observe the orderly universe. It was those Christian assumptions that founded science.

Then things went from there to here's the method, and the method had its own existence regardless of whether one was a Christian or not. Then to modernism, which is the understanding that, okay, now we have this scientific method. Now this scientific method then is able to establish everything. To now post-modernism, which is grabbing people's minds in our era.

The reality is the Christian worldview can be shown to be responsible for the development of science in the first place. What the atheist has done is instead of taking faith to support and develop science, they've taken science to the point of faith in absoluteness of the material universe. They have used Christian assumptions and Christian faith to arrive at their conclusions. The only problem is that their faith is in a non-existence of a God, rather than the existence of a God on which science is based.

Now, the point that was brought up earlier is the second law of thermodynamics. First and second laws do not allow for matter to continually recreate itself. The second law says, this is the law of entropy. It says basically the universe is headed towards a heat death. Heat is uniformly distributed. Everything is of a uniform temperature. Motion has all come to a place of ceasing. All energy has been spent. That's the direction.

Now, if you go backwards in time, what that points to is at some point in time is a higher energy level and level of order that things were put into place back in time. To look back in time and to say infinitely, forever, things have had the order and the energy level necessary does not compute in the realm of science. You cannot go back and have the universe create order and energy levels again and again and again and again. The first and second law of thermodynamics put a start to the universe and put an end to the universe. It doesn't make for an infinite universe into the past and infinite universe into the future. The only way that you arrive at that is belief in something outside of what we've observed in the present universe in order to somehow keep recreating matter and keep recreating order on and on and on.

Yes? Yeah, how good are we at extrapolating given the small period of time that we've been around? And what accuracy do we have? Furthermore, if we have some point of extrapolation, how do we go forward or backward in time to verify our extrapolation? We can't. Yeah, Tom's point is correct. Looking at the tiny sample that we have, is that an adequate sample on which to extrapolate?

How about the amount of the universe we've been in? Hal told about, we've gone to the moon here with an unmanned spacecraft since then with a manned spacecraft. Have we gone beyond that? We've just gotten an unmanned craft on Mars. The reality is, out of the entire known universe, we've been able to examine closely a very limited sample. Here we are on planet Earth. Do we know everything about planet Earth? No. We're continuing to discover things here. Based on the limited knowledge that we have, an extrapolation to the absolute, into the infinite past, and into the future, is foolishness. Yes, Randy?

As post-modernism becomes more prevalent in our universities and schools, there are actually more and more teachers, even in the science field, that are starting to reflect the concept of laws and everything to do with them. There's more and more theories, and so far, not much proof. So a lot of the things that 10, 20 years ago were being taught as more absolute standards are shifting to more and more meaning.

Yeah, postmodernism which looks very much to subjectivity and underscores uncertainty is the death knell to the materialist atheist viewpoint from our society's standpoint. It undermines that there is any certainty It undermines our ability to look outside of the viewpoint of our own culture. That's the postmodern view. What postmodernism does is it keeps my thoughts trapped inside my head, in other words. I can't state objective and true things outside of myself. Somebody else may state something and I have no basis on which to resoundingly support or deny the statement somebody else makes. Postmodernism undercuts science. The postmodern view would provide no basis for what we understand as modern science.

Carol? I think the important thing is that we lose the fact of truth. Yes. Yeah, the postmodernists keeps things, it is subjectively true. Someone can believe whatever they wish, but there is no basis to say this is truth with a capital T. This is truth that the Bible lays out that applies to you universally. The postmodernists would deny that. You are certainly entitled to believe that the Bible is true, the postmodernists would say, but your ability to say something like, unless you put your trust in Jesus Christ, you will objectively go to hell, they would deny your ability to say that.

And to say that in the postmodern mind frame would either be thought of as suspect, what are you trying to pull? or just rank ignorance. You just don't understand. It would certainly not be taken at face value as intended. Well, we've run plum out of time, so we're going to have to stop here. You have the handout in your pages there for next week.

What does science know, and how does it know it? Let's pray. Lord, as we look at these things, thank you for the knowledge that we do have. Knowledge certainly that is supported by things from science and logic, and yet in the end, knowledge that we have of certainty. because of your Holy Spirit's work in inspiring scripture and of your Holy Spirit's work in our hearts to convince and convict of the truth. And we thank you for that. We thank you that we can count upon these things and entrust all things to you. In Jesus' name, Amen.