11 Jan Science Asks Us to Give Them Five Free Miracles
Blog Series
Why Believe in God? ~ If You Reject God, You’ve Only Done Half the Job.
In our second installment in this new series here on the blog, I want to lay a bit more of a foundation to introducing the subject before diving deeper into each miracle modern science wants us to give them. As we saw last week in the first post in this new series on why to believe in God:
There are Five Free Miracles Modern Science Asks Us to Give Them (and they will explain the rest)
Last week I recalled an incident in which ethnobotanist Terence McKenna, in a TED talk said, “Modern science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle and we will explain the rest.’ The one free miracle is the appearance of all the mass and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it in a single instant from nothing.”
A nervous ripple of laughter spread throughout the audience when he said that, because it seemed transparently true to the audience to put it in such brutally simple terms, though they knew they were not supposed to agree with it.
But in reality, it is far worse than that. Modern science is not asking for one free miracle. They are asking for five!
Five miracles fundamental to existence that modern science is powerless to explain:
- How something came from nothing.
- How order came from chaos.
- How life came from non-life.
- How consciousness came from non-consciousness
- How transcendence came from consciousness.
Now, let’s look more closely at these scientifically inexplicable realities.
- Something came from nothing.
It’s a fundamental tenant of reason that something cannot come from nothing. Physicist Stephen Hawking said, shortly before he died, that he could see how the laws of physics could produce the big bang. But that doesn’t work. If there is “nothing,” there are no laws of physics.
There is NOTHING! And it’s a departure from the laws of reason to suggest that something can come from nothing.
Modern science has no explanation for how something could come from nothing to produce the Big Bang. That’s the first free miracle they ask for, as Terence Mckenna so brilliantly stated.
- Order came from chaos.
The second free miracle modern science asks for is for order to come from chaos. According to the Big Bang theory, there was a “big bang”. It was a titanic, unimaginable cosmic explosion.
Have you ever set off a firecracker? Or seen a stick of dynamite explode? Or watched a television documentary showing bombs dropping? Did any “order” come out of the explosion? Of course not. It was utter chaos.
Yet, “miraciously”, the universe we see, post-Big Bang, has settled into a marvelous picture of order and apparent design. Planets rotating around stars, stars rotating in a large galaxy, galaxies revolving around each other, all with such precision that we can calculate years, months and days from the magnificent order that we observe.
This is so unusual that atheist scientists often admit that the order and apparent design of the universe is the most compelling evidence of the possibility of creation. They don’t admit to a creator, but they admit to the compelling nature of the order of the universe.
In The Tailor-Made Universe, scientist P.C.W. Davies wrote, “Why does it all fit so well? It looks like someone made the universe. I don’t believe it was made, but it sure looks that way.”
- Life came from non-life.
Next we must ask how “life” could come from an explosion of lifeless matter? Science has no explanation. Scientists have hypothesized as to how it might possibly have happened, but as they do experiments to test their theories, it is failure after failure after failure.
So, let’s say we gave them the free miracles of something coming from nothing and order coming from chaos. But they are not satisfied with those two. The third free miracle modern science asks us to give them is for life to come from non-life.
- Consciousness came from life
So, let’s say we gave them the first three free miracles. Now modern science asks us to give them the free miracle of consciousness coming from non-consciousness. We give them trees or algae or bacteria or viruses… all manifestations of life. But how did consciousness come from non-conscious life?
How did Bach come from bacteria?
Renown physicist John Hagelin said, “There is a deep philosophical problem surrounding how you get consciousness from a hunk of meat.” The hunk of meat to which he is referring is the brain. If there is no God, if there is nothing but whirling molecules, how in the world do we account for consciousness?
It is such a deep problem that some deeply committed secular scientists go so far as to deny consciousness. They assert that consciousness is an illusion. It only seems to exist.
Since most scientists can’t go that far, they just ask for the fourth free miracle giving them consciousness from non-consciousness.
- Transcendence came from consciousness
Here is the last free miracle they ask for: for transcendence to come from consciousness.
Animals are conscious. Animals have intellect, emotions, and will. They think, they feel, and they choose. But it is all in a box of stimulus and response. Animals do not ponder life and death. They do not wonder who they are, why they are here and where they are going. They have no concept of God or the possibly of an afterlife. They function within the world of food, reproduction, and direct responses to other stimuli in their environment.
Humans, on the other hand, transcend the life of animals. We do wonder about the purpose of life. We do wonder if there is a God and an afterlife. We do wonder who we are, why we are here, where we are going. We also have a concept of beauty and we have a moral code… things are inherently right and wrong to us.
Humans are above the animals. Modern science has no explanation for why or how. That’s the fifth free miracle they ask us to give them.
Conclusion
If we give modern science five free miracles: how something came from nothing, how order came from chaos, how life came from non-life, how consciousness came from the non-conscious, and how transcendence came from consciousness, modern science asserts that they will explain everything else.
The fact is, however, the emperor has no clothes. Modern science has an explanation for some of the easy stuff… observable phenomena of the world… but on the essential issues, they are flummoxed, stumped, mute.
Modern science has no answers for the great questions of life, yet often sets itself up as the explainers of everything. Everything except the fundamental realities that truly matter, that is.
The only power modern science has is that most scientists are willing to lock arms and agree to their assumptions and conclusions, and agree not to let God into the equation, and thereby perpetuate their inadequate explanation of reality.
In the weeks ahead, we will look more closely at each of these free miracles to gain a better understanding of them, and build our confidence in the existence of the God of the Bible.
Next week, we will look at Miracle #1, how something came from nothing, part 1 of 3.
In case you’re new here
This blog post is part of a series titled “Why Believe in God? If You Reject God, You’ve Only Done Half the Job.”, introduced on January 5, 2022. As the series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives at www.maxanders.com.
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I look forward to going through this faith-affirming journey with you.
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