Steve Schramm
[Originally published as the first part of TCQ Week 3: Science and the Supernatural]
Last time, we paid special attention to the limits of science. In our quest to see whether science can disprove the Bible, we’ve seen that scientists often commit “category errors” and other logical jumps, taking them out of the realm of science and into philosophy. Now, we’re exploring this tension further by taking it to its logical conclusion.
Many seem to think there is a necessary contradiction between a biblical worldview and our ability to do science. Critics often mock the Bible because it seems the Bible is set in a world where science is hardly a consideration, let alone possible.
We’ve already seen that the biblical worldview is not only a requirement to do science, but we’ve also seen the facts of history — science arose out of a biblical worldview, not in spite of it.
Now, let’s explore from a more practical standpoint how the interplay between science and the supernatural shakes out.
Do Miracles Contradict Science?
David Hume was a well-respected 18th-century philosopher. His work is considered some of the most important in modern philosophical thought, particularly as it relates to the subjects of naturalism and skepticism.
He is perhaps most famous for his argument against miracles, which goes something like this:
- A miracle is a violation of the natural laws that are established by consistent and repeated human experience.
- Evidence should be weighed based on its probability, which is determined by past experience.
- Human testimony can be unreliable due to factors such as error, deceit, and exaggeration.
- When evaluating a miracle claim, one must consider:
- The probability that the laws of nature have been violated.
- The probability that the testimony is false or mistaken.
- Since the laws of nature are consistently observed, it is more likely that the testimony is incorrect rather than the laws of nature being violated.
For centuries, Hume’s argument against miracles was a cornerstone of anti-Christian philosophy. Hume’s argument is a strong one. Laws of nature seem pretty much inviolable, and yet we know human nature is quite fickle.
On Hume’s account, it’s simply more probable that the biblical authors were making something up than that the laws of nature were ever violated. And since Hume’s definition of a miracle was a violation of nature, case closed. Right?
This is a perfect example of why you should never take someone’s case at face value. Proverbs 18:17 says,
The first person to present their case may seem right, until someone else comes and questions them.
That’s a biblical argument for cross-examination. What it assumes is that the “first person” may seem to have an airtight case, but there’s a fly in the ointment. Something’s off. And it will take someone else to come along and question them to find out what it is.
Sometimes the problem with an argument is obvious. Sometimes it isn’t. In the case of Hume’s argument, the logic is flawed right from the get-go. Notice his definition of a miracle: “A violation of the laws of nature.”
One of my favorite Christian philosophers, Alvin Plantinga, has a saying: “Why think a thing like that?”
It’s a good question! Why think that a miracle must defy the laws of nature? Is there some specific logical contradiction between a miracle occurring and the laws of nature occurring? That doesn’t seem obvious to me.
What are the laws of nature, anyway, according to Hume? And in what specific scenario would a law of nature be violated by a miracle? These are the kind of questions we must ask to get to the bottom of issues people raise.
When we consider what a law of nature actually is, a different picture emerges.
Dr. William Lane Craig more accurately describes how we arrive at them:
The laws of nature are idealizations of what will happen under certain given conditions.
Here are a couple of common-sense examples:
- Because of gravity, if you drop a pen, it will fall to the ground. That’s unless you interfered by snatching it up with your other hand.
- Potassium and Chloride will combust when combined, but both are present in the human body, and we seem to be fending off spontaneous combustion okay.
This is made possible by what are called ceteris paribus conditions (all things being equal). Put simply, the laws of nature have inherent conditions. If these conditions are not met, the law is not broken; it simply does not apply.
Craig summarizes the implications:
“The laws of nature are idealizations that describe what will happen under certain conditions if no natural or supernatural factors are interfering with the idealized conditions implicit in the law. So when a miracle occurs, it doesn’t violate the laws of nature because the laws of nature describe what will happen if there is no supernatural agent interfering with the conditions. Therefore, miracles should not be considered to be violations of nature’s laws.”
There is a further issue with Hume’s argument. He argued that no amount of evidence could ever establish a miracle because the improbability of the event itself would always outweigh the reliability of the testimony.
Since miracles, by definition, violate the laws of nature and are therefore incredibly improbable, according to Hume, it is always more rational to believe that the testimony is false than to believe that a miracle has occurred.
Dr Craig goes on to explain the problem with his approach:
“Probability theorists realized that if you simply compare the improbability of an event to the reliability of witnesses, you end up denying events we know actually happen. For example, the odds of winning the lottery are incredibly low, yet we still believe the news when it reports the winning number. Hume’s mistake was ignoring that you also need to consider how likely it is that the testimony would be as it is if the event didn’t happen. This means that even highly improbable events, like miracles, can be rationally believed if the evidence supporting them is strong enough. For instance, the probability that the morning news would announce a specific lottery number if it weren’t the actual winning number is incredibly small, making it reasonable to trust the report despite the low odds.”
Books like Hume’s Abject Failure, written by the secular philosopher of science, John Earman, show that Hume’s argument is dead on arrival and need not be taken seriously, despite the fact that you’ll still hear many internet atheists making his argument today.
Arguments For Miracles?
This leads naturally to another consideration: There is evidence for the miraculous!
Hume only considered what is called the “prior probability,” meaning the probability of the event occurring compared to its probability of violating the laws of nature, before evaluating the evidence.
But that all changes once the evidence for the miracles enters the scene. The probability equation changes dramatically then.
There are tomes dedicated entirely to miracle claims. A robust, yet lay-friendly approach can be found in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Miracles, which I highly recommend.
For our purposes here, I’ll discuss two examples I like to use.
Evolution
It should be clear by now that I do not personally believe in molecules-to-man evolution. But one line of argument I like to use often is called the reductio ad absurdum, or reduction to absurdity. This logical form allows us to follow an argument all the way through to its logical conclusion to see if it holds up. If it’s a bad argument, it will implode on itself.
This happens when examining miracles and evolution. I’ll once again allow Dr. Craig to explain:
“…the idea that evolution could have occurred without an intelligent Designer is so improbable as to be fantastic. This has been demonstrated by Barrow and Tipler in their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred, the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth.
“They estimate the odds of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4^-360 (110,000)^, a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God!
“And here the Christian can be much more open to where the evidence leads. He could say, ‘Well, God could have used evolution; He could have used special creation. I’m open to the evidence.’ But, you see, for the naturalist, evolution is the only game in town! No matter how fantastic the odds, no matter how improbable the evidence, he’s stuck with it because he hasn’t got an intelligent Designer. So it seems to me that the Christian can be far more objective on this point.”
The same could be said for the Big Bang. To put it simply, a Big Bang needs a Big Banger. In fact, the Big Bang was actually a derogatory name given to the theory in its early days because it came under fire for looking so much like the biblical creation account (the leading theory at the time was called Steady-State, which posited an eternal universe).
So the two most popular scientific models used to discredit the Bible today—the Big Bang and Darwinian Evolution—even if they were true, would require theism to be true as well.
To be continued…
