11. Over the moon

‘For we say that all portents [miracles] are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature’.

St. Augustine, The City of God, Book XXI, Ch. 8.

‘The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script, part is already visible, part is still unsolved’.

C. S. Lewis in God in the dock; essays on theology and ethics (Eerdmans, 1994) p.29

‘Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed to see such fun

And the dish ran away with the spoon’.

British nursery rhyme, 1765.

Isn’t life strange? You look in vain for a good quotation and then three come along together! Unlike buses, however, you don’t have to choose which one to take; you can use all three. And that’s just as well because we are going to need as much help as we can get as we turn from the laws of nature to consider things that appear to violate them — miracles.

You don’t believe in miracles? That’s a pity, because Richard Dawkins does.           You didn’t know that Richard Dawkins believes in miracles? Yes, really, though he would prefer to call them ‘extremely improbable events’ rather than miracles. But don’t take my word for it, read what he says himself[i]. Dawkins writes:

‘A miracle is something that happens, but which is exceedingly surprising. If a marble statue of the Virgin Mary suddenly waved its hand at us we should treat it as a miracle, because all our experience and knowledge tells us that marble doesn’t behave like that’[ii].

He continues, ‘In the case of the marble statue, molecules in solid marble are continually jostling against one another in random directions. The jostlings of the different molecules cancel one another out, so that the whole hand of the statue stays still. But if, by sheer coincidence, all the molecules just happened to move in the same direction at the same moment, the hand would move. If they then all reversed direction at the same moment the hand would move back. In this way it is possible for a marble statue to wave at us. It could happen. The odds against such a coincidence are unimaginably great but they are not incalculably great. A physicist colleague has kindly calculated them for me. The number is so large that the entire age of the universe so far is too short a time to write out all the noughts! It is theoretically possible for a cow to jump over the moon with something like the same improbability. The conclusion to this part of the argument is that we can calculate our way into regions of miraculous improbability far greater than we can imagine as plausible’[iii].

We’ll come to the cow in a moment. Let’s first examine the hand-waving. RD seems to be under the illusion that marble is a gas in which molecules move around randomly and can finish up anywhere they like. Unfortunately for his miracle (‘It could happen’ he says), marble is not a gas but a crystalline solid composed of calcite, aragonite and/or dolomite crystals. The atoms or ions that compose these crystals are not free to wander where they will but are locked into the crystal lattice and vibrate about their mean position at a frequency that is typically around 15 Teraherz — that is 15,000 billion times per second. Any atom that tried to set off on the long-range journey envisaged in Dawkins’ miracle is going to be hauled back to its starting point in short order (exceedingly short order).

But let’s suppose for argument’s sake that the all the atoms in the statue’s hand did suddenly move in the same direction. What would happen? As soon as they had moved less than their interatomic separation (let’s say a hundred millionth of a centimetre or four billionths of an inch) the boundary between the moving hand and the stationary arm would experience a sudden outward pull. Since every action produces an equal and opposite reaction, the unmoving arm will restrain the hand from moving further and will, in fact, pull it back to and beyond its original position — creating an oscillation that would travel throughout both hand and statue as a sound-wave. You might hear Dawkins’ miracle but you certainly wouldn’t see it.

A second problem is that a spontaneous movement of the statue’s hand would violate the laws of conservation of energy and linear momentum (the velocity of a body in a straight line multiplied by its mass). Prior to the Dawkins miracle, the hand has neither linear momentum nor kinetic energy (the energy of motion). Suddenly the atoms all move upwards in the same direction and the whole hand takes off towards the ceiling. It now has both linear momentum  and kinetic energy, neither of which it had before. Two basic physical laws of conservation have been broken and Thomas Huxley’s chess master wouldn’t like that at all.

It’s no use saying that the new momentum and energy come from the motion of atoms within the hand. Before the miracle, the collective momentum of the assembled atoms is zero because the atoms vibrate randomly and their movements cancel out. So if the hand moves and acquires linear momentum, this momentum has appeared from nowhere. Likewise, the kinetic energy of the hand cannot come from the vibrational motion of the atoms, because this energy simply reflects the temperature of the solid and is not available to move anything.

We’ll leave aside other naivities — such as the implication that marble, if not exactly gaseous, is at least made of plasticine so that the statue’s wrist can flex without snapping off — and get to the point. Dawkins says ‘it could happen’ but he is wrong. It couldn’t. The idea that the internal motion of atoms in a lump of crystalline rock could somehow cause that lump to move from here to there is scientifically ridiculous. Harry Potter it may be, but science it is not. Which brings me to the moo-cow and the moon.

The kinetic cow

Can the cow really jump over the moon? According to Richard Dawkins, yes, it can. ‘It is theoretically possible’, he avers, with more solemnity than I can muster on the subject. Personally, I’m with the little dog in the nursery rhyme, so let’s have some fun (‘sport’ in the American version of the rhyme). Let’s begin by giving credit where it is due. Even without the help of Harry Potter, Dawkins has at his disposal three possible lines of argument — bootstrap-elevation, the bovine wave-function, or telekinesis. Let’s take a look at all three.

We have already seen one fine example of bootstrap-elevation (picking yourself up by your bootstraps) in the strange case of the waving statue. Let’s try another. I’m sure Richard D and I can agree that the cow’s unaided muscle power couldn’t propel it over a haystack, let alone the moon. So how does our bovine astronaut acquire her kinetic energy and achieve escape velocity without the services of NASA? Ah, you might reply, consider an equatorial cow. Being located on the surface of the earth at the equator, it already has a huge velocity, travelling through space at more than 1000 mph due to the rotation of the earth. Could this not launch the cow into space by a kind of slingshot effect? Well, hardly. If it could, we would all be over the moon (as they say) along with the cow. But even worse, the moon itself would be travelling away from us as fast as we could approach it. There’s something called gravity that keeps both cows and speculations in their place (and moons too).

How about an appeal to quantum mechanics (QM) then? Perhaps this is what Richard Dawkins has in mind (he doesn’t give much detail about his moo miracle). If electrons and photons can have wave-functions, why not cows? You will remember from Chapter 2 that sub-atomic particles behave in strange ways that can only be explained by assuming that they are not located in a single place but only have a certain probability of being somewhere. This probability is specified by the wave-function which varies in strength from place to place but exists everywhere — so there is a non-zero probability that the particle could be anywhere in the universe.

If we apply this idea to the cow, then her presence beyond the moon, though highly improbable, is not impossible. Furthermore, QM actually does teach that each and every object has a wave function that spreads throughout space. Wow! Perhaps RD really has hit the bullseye (or the cow’s) this time? Sadly, no. We’ll let his friend Victor Stenger put him right: ‘quantum mechanics changes smoothly into classical mechanics when the parameters of the system, such as masses, distances, and speeds, approach the classical [large-scale] regime. When that happens, quantum probabilities collapse to either zero or 100%, which then gives us certainty at that level’[iv]. Stenger is here referring to a phenomenon in QM known as ‘decoherence’. For reasons not well understood, quantum particles that exhibit wave-function behaviour when isolated from other particles (or when coherent with them), cease to do so when they interact with the environment[v]. If there are too many particles of different kinds knocking around, all their wave functions get nervous and ‘collapse’ — meaning that instead of having the freedom to turn up anywhere, each particle decides where it wants to be with 100% certainty. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, as we saw in Chapter 2, you only have to look at a quantum particle to make its wave function collapse in this way.

The outcome of all this is that every particle — electron, quark, atom and so on — in our long-suffering cow (or any other massive object) knows exactly where it is, even before we look at it. It’s right there in the cow and nowhere else (which is what we mean by classical or non-quantum behaviour). But if all the constituent parts of the cow know they are localised in a field on a farm in (say) Filey or Farnborough, it is evident that neither the cow nor any part of it will be found on the other side of the moon. There really is no such thing as a cosmic cow.

Telekinesis

OK; how about telekinesis? Telekinesis or psychokinesis refers to the alleged movement of solid objects by pure thought. Could Richard Dawkins be trying to think the cow over the moon — or simply wish it there? I believe this could be the answer to the conundrum. But why would he want to do that? The answer takes us to the heart of his thinking.

The problem for Richard Dawkins and his fellow atheists is this. They face serious difficulty in explaining the ‘miracle’ of the origin of life in a purely materialistic way. Indeed, the problem appears insuperable, as we shall see in the next chapter. But let’s just accept for the moment that atheism currently has no answer to the riddle. The careful atheist will not appeal to as-yet-unknown scientific discoveries for an explanation, because he recognises that such an argument is a mirror-image of the God of the gaps theory he so despises. So what can he do? His first strategy is to ‘prove’ that even the most bizarre events imaginable — like marble motility or bovine ballistics — could conceivably occur by natural causation. Of course, his explanations fail miserably at the scientific level, but that will not worry him unduly as long as he succeeds in planting in our minds the hazy idea that any ‘miracle’ may have a natural explanation.

But then comes the tricky bit. He now needs to make an agile leap from ‘miracles may have a natural cause’ to ‘miracles must have a natural cause’. This he attempts to do using our old friend ‘probability’. Specifically, he advances the thesis that everything imaginable in the physical universe will surely happen by natural causation if you wait long enough, provided only that its mathematical probability is not zero. And this sounds plausible because, having rejected the old Newtonian idea of a deterministic universe, we can rule out nothing in principle. But although plausible the thesis is false, because mathematical probabilities bear no necessary relationship to physical possibilites, as we saw in Chapter 1. It is mathematically possible to build an infinitely tall tower of bricks but it is physically impossible to do so, because sooner or later the weight of the tower will crush the bottom brick to powder and the whole (non-infinite) tower will collapse. Before mathematical probabilities can be applied to the real world they have to be passed through the twin filters of logic and physical reality.

The fact is that we can imagine very few physical events that are mathematically impossible. ‘Impossibilities’ arise in the physical universe not from mathematical constraints but from the laws of nature (such as the non-infinite compressive strength of bricks). It’s not mathematics that prevent statues waving or cows jumping over the moon, but the stubborn facts that energy and momentum must be conserved and that QM wave-functions decohere in massive objects.

What is God? I mean what are the “properties” of a god. If god is a thing then we must be able to define it in terms of “properties”.. What makes a god a god? We all have our own conceptions of God–the god of the bible the Hebrew god most of all. Can we have a generic description of what a god is? So I can recognize what a god is not. How do you know what a god is? How can I recognize a god?

REPLY. Thank you Sarita for your question. Let me try to answer it by giving my own experience (which I posted recently on the Christian Apologetics Alliance website).
“I was converted to Christ as a 19 year old by reading the New Testament. No one told me I had to believe its authenticity. No one even told me I should read it. I wasn’t brought up in a Christian family nor did I attend church as a child. In grade school ‘Religious Instruction’ was my worst subject … I couldn’t get my head around it at all. I didn’t even own a Bible. Yet a day came when, as a physics student, I felt an irresistible desire to read the NT. I borrowed a copy from a friend and began to read. The overwhelming sense I had was of the reality and truth of what I was reading, and above all of Jesus Christ as a living Person. I had been an avid reader of classical novels, poetry and all kinds of fiction, but the NT was totally different and it was so true that I embraced its teaching … a life-changing experience. Now just 60 years later I have the privilege of preaching that same gospel truth each week. The authenticity of the NT writings is for me not just something derived from historical arguments, good though they are, but was a matter of personal experience long before I heard those arguments!”
If you haven’t read my book “Who made God?” I suggest you would find it really helpful in answering your question because its approach is to advance as an hypothesis that the God described and defined in the Bible does exist and then to work out the predictions of this hypothesis, comparing these predictions with the kind of world and universe we experience in reality. I find a close agreement between predictions and observations … which therefore validates for me the definition of God given in the Bible (the self-existent Creator of all things ex nihilo, a transcendent spiritual PERSON who created man in His own image and who sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world to redeem the race that had rebelled against Him … and so much more of course).

Dick Lane (Author of The Cognitive Dissonance of Barkley Pontree and An Open Letter to Dr. Bart Ehrman in Response to His New Book “Forged”)

barkleypontree.blogspot.com

GOD IN MIRACLE AND PROVIDENCE

This article is an edited version of the original chapter 4 of my 1980 and out-of-print book. Earlier chapters can be found on this website as Parts 1 through 4.

Is God actively involved in nature and in history? The very expressions ‘miracle’ and ‘providence’ imply an affirmative answer. But how can miracles occur in a universe ruled by natural law? How can the ‘blind forces’ of nature be manipulated by a non-physical Deity to bring about specific events in history and human experience? How can the spiritual realm interact with the physical world without introducing chaos in the latter? These are some of the questions tackled in this second address at the British Evangelical Council Conference in 1979.                                   

Our task here is to show how the direct involvement of God with our ‘real’ world may be seen as a fitting and natural consequence of the relationship between God and His creation considered in chapter 3 [Part 4] rather than as an arbitrary meddling or, even worse, the superstitious invention of simple minds.

God in miracle and providence

The main theme of the previous chapter was the subject or doctrine of the ex nihilo creation, the idea that all the physical and visible universe sprang from the fiat of a God who is pure spirit. From that primary doctrine we derived the secondary doctrine of universal sustenance, that is, the idea that God upholds all things by the word of His power and that in Him (the Second Person of the Trinity) all things consist or hold together (Colossians 1:17). We saw that this doctrine flows naturally from the concept of an ex nihilo creation, but that it is also separately and independently stated in Scripture. We looked at this doctrine of universal sustenance and saw that it provides a biblical view of the nature and character of science.

We now want to move on to see how the idea of universal sustenance legitimizes the concept of miracle, how it undergirds the doctrine of providence and how it points to the doctrine of human accountability (and thus prepares the way for the gospel). Previously, universal sustenance showed us the way to a biblical view of science. Now that same doctrine may help us see how miracles and providence can be under­stood in the context of a scientifically characterized universe.

Miracles

First of all then, let us consider the subject of miracles. At the outset let it be clear that the miraculous is absolutely fundamental to Christian theology and the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no way that we can banish the miraculous from our Bible without sacrificing the gospel itself. The interaction of God and the spiritual realm with our material universe is fundamental because Christianity is based upon historical facts — the incarnation and resurrection of Christ and the future general resurrection and judgement. All these were, or will be, miraculous events. It has always seemed rather inconsistent to me that some Christians should do everything possible to avoid invoking the miraculous in the discussion of creation, because they must admit it in discussing the gospel.

On the other hand it is essential to have a proper theological approach to the miraculous, a theology of miracles. It is not sufficient merely to say that miracles happened because the Bible says so. The people to whom we are preaching in this scientific age demand a fuller explanation. Therefore my purpose is to examine the concept of miracles in the context of the scientific and materialistic culture in which we find ourselves.

Let me then define what I mean by a miracle. My definition is as follows: ‘A miracle is an event consequent upon a localized change in the laws of nature’. You may recognize that this definition relates to what I wrote in chapter 3 [Part 4] about the character of scientific law, namely, that it is something which has an immediate spiritual origin and cause, and which can be represented in biblical terms as ‘the word of God’s power’ (Hebrews 1:3).

Let us see where this definition of miracles takes us. Firstly, it excludes some biblical events which we normally and loosely refer to as miraculous. For example, the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites is plainly ascribed in Scripture to natural causes. There was a strong wind which forced back the waters and held them in place. There is no indication that we are dealing there with a miracle in the sense that I have defined it, requiring an alteration in the laws of nature. Because natural causes were employed (albeit by God Himself) this event falls under the heading of providence rather than miracle, as we shall see presently. Thus this definition of miracles is somewhat restrictive in relation to what I might call a ‘popular’ view. It is also clear, I think, that I am only concerned here with events in the material world and not those occurring solely within the spiritual realm, such as the ‘new birth’ (John 3:1-8) which we often refer to as miraculous since it is a direct and humanly inexplicable work of the Spirit of God.

The second point to notice is that a miracle involves a change in natural law. This is an uncompromising statement, because it forbids any scientific ‘explanation’ of the miracu­lous. This follows because science is the study and codifica­tion of natural law, that is, those laws which habitually, normally and universally control the working of the world in which we live. If those natural laws are, for a time, changed, then what happens during that period of change cannot be comprehended under the heading of ‘science’. Science can make no comment whatsoever about events which involve a change in the laws of nature. You notice that I say ‘a change’ rather than a ‘suspension’ of natural laws. A suspension suggests a void, an absence of law. We are not, however, proposing an absence of law but rather the replacement of one set of laws by different ones.

Although our definition forbids any scientific account of miracles, it does not follow that science can in any way disprove miracles or demonstrate that they cannot happen. This is a common fallacy, to think that science states or implies that miracles cannot occur. The truth of the matter is, of course, that miracles lie outside of the terms of reference of science so that science can, in and of itself, make no contribution to an understanding of the miraculous. Remember that science does not create natural law. Rather the reverse is true, namely, that natural law is the cause of, and justification for, science. It is because the laws exist that science can also exist. Science studies that which already exists in this universe and must concern itself with the habitual and universal behaviour exhibited by nature. It cannot consider any fundamentally altered behaviour that might take place.

Having said this, let me state what should be obvious from the previous chapter, namely that the alteration of natural law that occurs when miracles happen is an intellectually acceptable idea. For if natural law is, as I have maintained, the moment-by-moment will of God — the instantaneous ‘word of His power’ — then any change in the hierarchy of natural law is brought about by a momentary change in the ‘instructions’ that God ‘issues’ to His created universe. Because natural law is His immediate will, then a departure from that law must equally be His will for that moment of space and time. This is the key to the legitimization of the miraculous. That is, a proper understanding of the source of natural law allows us to say that the miraculous is just as ‘natural’, just as rational, as the normative laws of nature.

Let me use an illustration which may help to clarify this point. I habitually travel from my home to my office in London by train. An observer, like the scientist observing the natural world, would quickly dis­cover the rules or ‘laws’ which control my travelling habits. He would find that five days each week I leave my home and travel by train, then that I miss two days before recommenc­ing the cycle. But very occasionally I find that I need a car in London and therefore travel by road instead of by rail. To the observer that would appear to be a breach or alteration in my ‘laws’ of travel. But although this is an infrequent occurrence, and therefore exceptional, my journey by car is no less a deliberate act of my will than is my habitual choice of train as a means of transport. Thus in the matter of God’s control of the universe there is a natural and habitual control, designated in Scripture as the ‘word of His power’ and designated by science as natural law. But there is also an unusual, infrequent and limited exercise of the divine will in what we describe as miracle — in which the ‘normal’ is superseded by the ‘special’ in a deliberate act of God carried out for a particular reason. Miracles are thus just a different manifestation of the divine will from that which we regard as ‘normal’ in nature; but both nature and miracle share the common characteristic of being the will of God in moment-by-moment action.

Let us move on to the second aspect of my definition of the miraculous, namely that it involves a localized change in the laws of nature. It is self-evident that miracles are normally localized in space and time. Even the ex nihilo creation itself was localized in that it involved the origin of time and space. In Jesus’ miracle at the wedding in Cana, it was only the water in the stone jars that turned into wine, not the contents of the local well! Nor did the water which constitutes so much of the human body change into wine in those who stood by. The results might have been interesting had it done so! When Mary conceived as a virgin, it was a unique event which did not involve parthenogenesis in all the unmarried women of Judea. Miracles are thus demonstrably localized in space and time, and this does raise a possible problem concerning the explanation of miracles that I advanced earlier.           The problem is this: if God’s normal will, which we observe as natural law, is universal, how can any change in that law be local? There is an asymmetry here in God’s behaviour towards the universe. The ‘word of His power’ appears to be a universal operation. The laws are the same on earth, on Mars and, as far as we know, in the remotest galaxy. They were the same yesterday as they are today and will be tomorrow. But this change in natural law which we call miracle, is localized, introducing an asymmetry. Let it be said immediately that the concept that all the workings of nature are the moment-by-moment activity of God allows us total freedom to accept such an asymmetry, simply because God possesses the freedom to act as He pleases. However, there is perhaps something of a moral dilemma in this idea of asymmetry between the normal and the miracu­lous. I have been trying to establish that they are essentially the same thing, namely the expression of God’s immediate will, and this asymmetry seems to weaken this idea.

One possible approach to this problem is as follows. Given that God desires to interact with His physical creation in a way that would be manifest to men, the alternative to a localized change would be wholly destructive. A universal change in the laws of nature, even though it were for a moment of time only, would be destructive of the kind of universe in which we live. Miracles are not a necessary con­sequence of the existence of God. It is conceivable that God could have remained in that general relationship with creation that is expressed in natural law and described by science. There needed to be no inevitable employment of miracles in God’s dealings with the physical world. But had He adopted that approach, it would have been very difficult for man to deduce God’s activity from this general ‘background’ behav­iour of the universe. This is not to ignore the teaching of Romans 1:18-21 that man ought to deduce God’s existence and power from just this evidence but fails to do so. Nevertheless, given that God desires to manifest Himself and demonstrate unmistakably His existence and His interest in the world, how could He rationally go about it? The localized change, giving rise to what we observe as a miracle, seems to me to be the only possible manner in which God could achieve these purposes without a total disruption of the fabric of the universe. Thus the asymmetry we noticed in God’s dealings with the physical world is not the stumbling-block that it first appears to be. It is (anthropomorphically speaking) God’s only option if He wishes to make His presence known physically to men who are blind to the evidence of nature itself concerning His ‘power and Godhead’.

Miracle in creation

We have now finished with our definition and must move on to our second topic, namely, miracle in creation. Firstly, all Christians, as far as I am aware, agree that a miracle occurred at the beginning of creation. That is, the creatio ex nihilo was a miracle falling within my definition, with the special feature that the ‘change’ in the laws of nature involved was the actual origination of those laws. It is interesting to note that the concept of an ex nihilo creation is peculiarly Judaeo-Christian. Although there are many creation myths from different ancient cultures, the idea of a creation from nothing is exclusively biblical in origin. Indeed, even most non-Christians are normally forced to admit that the origin of the universe was a miracle in the sense that it can never be explained by science. [Attempts to do so, such as the 2010 book The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, fail miserably to do so, at both a scientific and philosophical level]. However, having agreed on that starting-point, Christians, and specially Bible-believing Christians, then take very different courses. They differ as to the subsequent incidence of the miraculous in the formation of the earth and universe as we know it today. Some are theistic evolutionists, not only in the restricted sense of Darwinian evolution but in the global sense of believing that after the original creation, the whole history of the universe can be described scientifi­cally (non-miraculously) and in evolutionary terms. Thus the original ‘big bang’ origin was followed by an expansion of the universe (still observable today by means of the galactic ‘red shift’). Clouds of gas cooled and condensed into stars and galaxies. Heavier elements came into being as a result of stellar explosions, planets like earth condensed from the debris, and everything that has occurred sub­sequently on earth, including the origin and development of life, can be explained by appeal only to the outworking of natural processes describable by science. Let me make it clear that many of these natural processes are compatible with a belief in the historicity of the opening chapters of Genesis. But those of whom I am speaking, rigorously exclude as a matter of philosophical principle, any miraculous element. They are, of course, inconsistent if, as Christians, they accept the miracles of the New Testament and look forward to a miraculous end to this present age — while denying that miracle could have had any role in the post-creation formation of our present world and the life that inhabits it.

It is interesting to speculate why some Christians who accept the Bible as God’s revealed Word do adopt this position. I believe that they unwittingly read into the Bible philosophical presuppositions that are themselves extra-biblical. For example, they read in a false view of natural law, namely that these laws are somehow independent of God. They admit that He created them at the beginning, but then somehow left them with an independent existence. As long as one holds this erroneous view, it is quite natural to claim that those laws must have operated inexorably from the beginning of time and that any exception to their operation is inadmissible — because it would violate the very rules that God has made. If, however, natural law is understood in the biblical sense, that is, as the immediate expression of the mind of God, then this problem vanishes and the biblical account of creation can be studied without the burden of extra-biblical philosophical constraints.

Thus we come to the question: ‘Does the Bible teach that miracles were involved in the formation of the worlds sub­sequent to the ex nihilo creation?’ This is not such a straight­forward issue as may appear at first sight. I would maintain, however, that the Bible does teach that such miracles occurred, and the three main arguments in favour of this view are as follows. The first is that the events recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis could not possibly have taken place on the time-scale permitted by a straightforward reading of these chapters, if they were caused solely by natural process. There must have been transformations or changes in natural law for these things to have happened in the time allowed by the record. Many seek to introduce long periods of elapsed time into the Genesis narrative, either by allowing that the ‘days’ were in fact eras of time, or by such artificial devices as the ‘gap theory’. And, of course, the ‘day-age’ theory is followed by some respected evan­gelical commentators. But if we read these early chapters of Genesis with a mind innocent of preconceptions, it seems in­escapable that things were happening at a rate and in a manner that is unknown to science today. It seems to me, therefore, that these passages of Scripture contain a miraculous dimension that can only be bypassed by special pleading as to the inter­pretation of the passages.

My second reason for believing that the ‘subsequent creation’ involved miraculous stages is the repetition in Genesis 1 of the refrain, ‘And God said “let there be”.’ It seems to me that if the processes described were simply natural, the repetition of this expression would be superfluous. If all that is being described in this chapter are successive steps in a completely natural process, one would expect the refrain to introduce many other significant events (as distinct from teachings) in Genesis and elsewhere in Scripture, but this is not what we find. The very fact that a fresh pronouncement from God is associated with each stage of the creation implies that a non-natural, or miraculous event was about to occur. If this is not the case, I can see no purpose for the use, almost uniquely in this narrative, of the language employed.

Thirdly, Genesis states plainly that the work of creation was completed on the seventh day. ‘Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made’ (Gen.2:1-2). If the creation had been accomplished by the outworkings of natural law it seems inconceivable that such a claim could be made, for natural process continues uninterrupted. The forces which shaped the continents and oceans in Genesis 1 would be the same as those that shape them now. The evolution of the biosphere in the biblical record would be one and the same process as is, allegedly, at work today. There could have been no termination of the work of creation if it were simply the product of natural process. There must have been something distinctive about the six days of creation for them to be represented as a separate era with a distinct end. I suggest that the singularity of that period lay in the performance by God of miraculous creative acts.

What, then, are our alternatives as we regard creation from the viewpoint of miracles? Firstly, there is the global evolutionary approach in which the entire universe as we know it today is attributed to the operation of natural process. You may feel that what I have said about the spiritual origin of natural law makes the evolutionary viewpoint more acceptable to the Christian rather than less, since it leaves God as the prime mover behind all process even though it be natural rather than miraculous. I must accept that this is the case. But while this is philosophically acceptable I am forced to reject theistic evolution purely on biblical grounds, since as I have just argued, Scripture implies that that creation subsequent to the ex nihilo beginning involved miraculous acts on the part of God.

Mature creation

The next alternative to theistic evolution — the opposite pole of interpretation — is the concept of ‘mature creation’, namely, that the universe was created largely in the form that we know it today, with the exception that the Noachic flood wrought dramatic changes in the geology and climate of the earth. On this view the galaxies and stars, the earth and the moon, the entire biosphere (life in all its forms) and man himself, were created in a period of six literal days as described in Genesis 1 and have undergone no significant change since that time. It does not deny modern cosmological observation; it does not imply, for example, that nuclear processes do not operate in stars or that supernovae do not occur in remote galaxies. It does not mean that certain changes and adaptations do not take place among living species or that genetic mutations do not occur. But these are seen as small variations within the initial creation. According to ‘mature creation’ the heavens were created ready-made, together with the light trains which span the immense distances between the stars and earth and by which the former are made visible to us. This implies, of course, that we only seem to be seeing cosmic events that took place millions of years ago, but this is a natural consequence of the creation of light en route, together with any variations in wavelength and intensity that we may (wrongly) interpret in terms of extremely ancient events.

But in my view, ‘mature creation’ fails in its declared purpose of reconciling biblical testimony with modern scientific observation. To begin with, there is a basic philosophical difficulty, namely, that mature creation may be an essentially empty concept. I can put this most dramatically in the following way. You do not know it, and I do not know it, but the universe was, in fact, created at 6.00 a.m. this morning! The fact that we are all unaware of this is because our memories were created in a mature form along with ourselves. You think that yesterday you did certain things and met certain people. But you are wrong. You think that was the case because your memories came into existence this morning complete with a store of ‘recollections’ which bear no relation to real events. This is, of course, a reductio ad absurdum, yet it represents a valid philosophical objection to the doctrine of mature creation.

Of course, Christians could argue in reply that the 6.00 a.m. creation is inadmissible because it would make God a liar, since our Bible purports to record real historical events stretch­ing back somewhat earlier than six o’clock this morning. This would impugn the character of God and we may therefore legitimately distinguish between ‘mature creation’ and the 6.00 a.m. hypothesis. But we must appreciate that the world of unbelief has no such inhibitions and can fairly claim that the concept of mature creation, because it can never be disproved (any more than the six o’clock creation) adds nothing to our under­standing and is thus an empty concept.

The second problem with mature creation is that it is too exclusive of natural process. It so denigrates ‘process’ as a participating mechanism in the formation of the universe that it becomes unbiblical, suggesting that everything happened in a flash, in a puff of blue smoke as it were, without the lapse of time. But the Bible is quite clear that process was involved in creation. However we regard the six days of creation, it took time to bring into being the earth and all that it contains. We cannot eliminate time and process from the creation for the simple reason that the Bible does not eliminate them. A simplistic view of mature creation is thus unbiblical because its rejection of process leads it to deny the clear teaching of Scripture.

We must not allow our reaction against the excesses of evolutionary thinking to drive us to an untenable opposite view in which process is treated as a ‘dirty word’. Such an overly simplistic approach leads to absurdity as well as a denial of Scripture. Some of its supporters imply, for example, that matter once existed without coexisting natural laws such as the second law of thermodynamics. But you cannot have matter and energy, space and time, without all the rules that describe their behaviour. Yet some authors almost suggest that the whole period before the seventh day of creation was so miraculous as to be beyond discussion or imagination and we should not allow natural process to intrude into that era in any shape or form. For example, the statement that the earth was ‘without form and void’ is taken to mean that there was no such thing as gravity at that time, and that the earth was shapeless. It is much more likely to understand this quotation as meaning that there was no geographical form (the whole surface of the earth being covered in water) and empty of life. There is a real danger that under the banner of mature creation some go so far out on a limb as to become both irrational and unbiblical.

A middle way

There is a ‘middle way’, avoiding these problems and remain­ing true to the actual record of the Bible. I do not use ‘middle’ to signify a compromise between evolution and creation, but rather a rational approach which can be justified intellectually as well as remaining true to the belief that Genesis should be read as sober history. In my view, what I have said about the character of scientific law makes it rational (and even necessary) to believe that process (the normal operation of natural law) and miracle can and did coexist. The existence of one does not exclude the other. We do not have to think of a six-day miraculous creation when no natural process was permitted, fol­lowed by a post-creation era in which all occurrence can be described by science.

To dramatize this somewhat, it is per­fectly possible, and consistent with the biblical account of the creation, that fish were created de novo in an aqueous environment that obeyed all the natural laws of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics — that is, in a perfectly normal sea such as we know today. That within this completely natural medium, obeying natural laws, a change in the laws of nature occurred by which God brought into being, by miraculous fiat, the hosts of sea-dwelling creatures. An atheist will scoff, of course, but before he or she does so let me point out that atheism requires that just such a ‘miracle’ occurred when, within some wholly natural environment, the first living entity sprang into existence by pure chance. And if, as some evolutionists have speculated, life originated on earth more than once, the parallel would be even closer. Either way, we must invoke either God or chance to account for events that are beyond the capacity of science to explain.

The miraculous origin of various life-forms is entirely consistent with the miracles of the New Testament. To return for a moment to Cana, the wine that was created in the stone jars was produced in vessels which behaved in all respects as natural objects obeying natural law. Everything associated with the miracle, with the sole exception of the water itself, was obeying natural law at the time the transformation took place. Thus the coexistence in the creation record of miracle and process seems to me to be a necessary deduction from Scripture.

This means, of course, that many of the processes with which biology, geology, physics and chemistry deal, can be associated with the creation, from the ex nihilo origin of the universe to the completion of the work of creation on the seventh day. It is vital to a proper understand­ing of Genesis that we allow miraculous fiat to occur as and when stated in the record but it is highly likely that natural processes were also simultaneously involved throughout the events recorded in the creation narrative.

No one is in a position to be dogmatic at this point. We have to accept that none of our ideas, in so far as they are not confirmed explicitly by Scripture, can be said to be final and complete. It is quite possible, by way of example, that the original creation ex nihilo lay at some time of unspecified duration prior to the dawning of light on earth. In Exodus 20:11 this earlier period would be comprehended in the first day, which, unlike the subsequent days which were delimited by morning and evening, could thus have been of indefinite backward duration. This view would permit the acceptance of a ‘big bang’ origin of the universe as currently . favoured by cosmologists. On the other hand, the succession of night and day which delineates the remaining days of creation seems to me to provide no scriptural authority for the ‘day-age’ theory. The other days can only be understood as periods of the rotation of the earth upon its axis.

So then, I believe there is something of a middle way. What we must avoid (and this is the key to the whole matter) is an imposition upon Scripture of foreign philosophical prin­ciples, whether the principle involved is called ‘evolution’ or ‘mature creation’. Let Scripture speak.

Providence

Let me move on to the third and final point of my lecture, namely ‘providence’. This is, of course, an enor­mous subject and I hope you will understand that I am dealing with it in the limited context of the natural world and our view of science. My treatment is therefore of a somewhat clinical nature. Providence is one of the most glorious doc­trines of the Christian faith and of the Bible, and although we shall see something of its anatomy, we shall see little of its true loveliness in this brief consideration.

What do we mean by ‘providence’? As we defined the miraculous, so we now need to define providence. My defini­tion is as follows: ‘Providence is God’s manipulation of natural processes and events to fulfil His purposes.’ Thus I draw a clear distinction between miracle and providence in that miracle involves the alteration or change of natural law, whereas providence involves God’s use of natural law and process to bring about His designs. I also see three different kinds of providence, at least, that we may recognize in Scripture. The first is what I will call the overall scheme of God’s beneficence. Many Scriptures point to this, for example, Psalm 145:16: ‘You open your hand, and satisfy the desire of every living thing.’ Psalms 65 and 104 are other clear examples: You visit the earth, and water it: you greatly enrich it with the river of God . . . you prepare them corn.’ ‘He causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man.’ Admittedly, these statements are highly poetical, but we must beware of thinking that because something is poetical it is somehow less true. These are true and valid statements of fact. The things referred to in the psalms, such as the hydrological cycle of evaporation and rainfall, the cycle of life and death in nature, springtime and harvest, are the consequences of natural law, and thus can properly be described in scientific or naturalistic terms. But since natural law is the word of God’s power, and since the natural universe is upheld on an instan­taneous basis by the will and mind of God, it is also perfectly proper to do what the psalms do, namely to ascribe to the beneficence of God all the functions of natural process and their due results.

It is a direct consequence of the doctrine of universal sustenance that these processes may both be de­scribed by science and ascribed to the providence of God. There is no contradiction or ‘double-think’ involved. So let us not be ashamed of the Bible when, in our scientific age, it speaks of God watering the earth and causing the grass to grow. Let us not dismiss these words as merely poetical and lacking in scientific credibility. In a most profound sense these ‘poetical’ statements are highly scientific because they take us beyond science to the ground of all being — the spiritual reality that lies beneath science, namely, the being and the mind of God. These biblical claims, far from being sub-scientific, are valid in a more fundamental sense than any purely scientific statement could ever be.

We come secondly to something I will call ‘special provi­dence’ in the realm of nature. We are still thinking about nature but we now consider particular instances of provi­dential care or action on the part of God. An example of this is the crossing of the Red Sea which I earlier deliberately excluded from the realm of the miraculous. This event falls into my definition of special providence. Here we have a sequence of events that, as far as we can tell, took place by natural process but the timing of which was ‘miraculous’ in the more general sense of that word. These happenings were clearly not just coincidences; they were ‘miracles of timing’. Natural events conspired in an extraordinary way to fulfil God’s pur­pose at that moment of history. The provision of quails in the wilderness for the starving Israelites and the earthquake that wrecked the gaol at Philippi provide further instances of natural events which occurred at just the right moment and in just the right manner to give rise to the desired effects in the purposes of God. Jonah’s storm is a further case in point. None of these events can be placed in the realm of the miraculous as I have defined that term. They are rather instances of the manipulation of natural, non-miraculous causes by God with a view to achieving certain definite results in the affairs of men and nations.

This brief description of ‘special providence’ does raise some problems. How, may we ask, does God so direct natural process? In one sense there is more difficulty with this con­cept than there is with the idea of the miraculous. In the latter we simply say that God ‘changed the rules’ of nature, so that things took place that could not otherwise have done so. That is quite an easy concept to grasp. But now we are saying that God somehow manipulates the laws of nature without changing them; that He acts to produce specific desired effects within the constraints of natural law. How can this be? How can the rules of nature be manipulated without being altered?

I am not sure that I can provide a complete answer to this particular philosophical difficulty, but I will attempt to point the way to a solution. The first thing to grasp is that natural law, as understood today by scientists, is based upon statisti­cal concepts. In the nineteenth century the climate of opinion among scientists was essentially deterministic. People believed that if it were possible to know the momentum and position of every particle in the universe, it would in principle be possible to predict completely the future course of events, because these would follow as rigorous consequences of the laws of cause and effect. On this view the only bar to a com­plete prediction of the future was our ignorance of the present!

Such determinism is, of course, contrary both to our instincts (which lead us to believe that we do possess at least a measure of freedom to determine our own destinies) and to the teaching of Scripture. But it is more germane to my present argument that this nineteenth-century deter­minism was routed, in the first quarter of our present century, by the introduction into science of quantum mechanical theory. Einstein, as a matter of interest, never did fully accept the idea that all natural law is ultimately based upon statistical processes. Nevertheless, it is today accepted that on the macroscopic level the laws of mechanics, electro-magnetism, chemistry and so forth derive from the statistical outcome of innumerable microscopical (atomic scale) events. To give a simple example, the pressure inside a motor tyre, which appears macroscopically to be a constant measurable quantity, actually arises from the continual bom­bardment of the inner walls of the tyre by the molecules of gas that it contains, moving in a totally random fashion which can only be described by statistics. So the pressure is not in fact constant. It is subject to tiny variations or fluctuations which can indeed be measured with suffici­ently sensitive instruments.

Once we let go of determinism in science, and allow that macroscopic laws in nature are the outcome of averaging effects over a vast number of micro­scopically random events, you will recognize that there is room for indeterminism; for a variable outcome. And there is therefore room in natural science for the involvement of God in determining the precise outcome in nature of the operation of natural law. There is room for the manipulation of the infinitely complex interactions to produce, for example, an earthquake in one place rather than another, at a set time rather than a different one, and of an intensity cal­culated to achieve a particular effect. I do not pretend to have answered completely this profound problem of how the providence of God works on a physical and natural plane, but I hope these thoughts may point the way to its solution.

The third type of providence I want to mention can be described as God’s providence mediated through human behaviour. The first two classes of providential action are, as we have seen, concerned with the physical world, not neces­sarily involving human participation. But there is clearly a third kind of providence that is mediated through human behaviour. There are many examples in Scripture. God har­dened Pharaoh’s heart, and this gave rise to certain important consequences in the histories of both Egypt and Israel. God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he was instrumental in the restoration of Jerusalem under Zerubbabel. Nebuchadnezzar was taught that the ‘Most High rules in the kingdoms of men’ and that He does so by manipulating the minds and hearts of men. This kind of providence presents no dif­ficulty at all, because as we saw previously, God is spirit and mind and it is therefore a logical consequence that God has total freedom and capacity to act upon the minds of men — to sway and direct them so that they become His agents whether willingly or not. Clearly this applies not only to men like Pharaoh and Cyrus, but even more so to the believer, who is concerned from the outset to discover and obey the will of God. I shall not dwell upon this aspect of providence further since it seems to present no difficulty to the rational mind and fits in very simply to the theological and scientific world-view that I have tried to present in these lectures.

Human accountability

So we come finally and briefly to the subject of human accountability to God. Let me repeat what I said earlier, that my treatment of the subject of providence in this lecture has of necessity been a somewhat clinical one and one in which the true glory of God in providence has been implicit rather than explicit. But in this final section, as we approach the subject of accountability, we do begin to close with the more human and personal aspects of our theme.

I hope that in the course of these lectures, whatever else we have or have not seen, we have grasped something of the immediacy of God. This is the thread which has run through­out my remarks, whether concerning the ex nihilo creation, miracles or providence. God is here. God is present and at work in all things at all times. ‘In all life Thou livest, the true life of all’ runs the hymn, and this concept of the immediacy of God has the capacity to transform all I have said from mere theology and philosophy into the warmth and reality of an awareness of God. The immediacy of God is the lodestone that can infuse all our meditation with the glory of the living God.

The whole burden of what I have said leads to the conclusion of the apostle Paul, namely, that ‘God is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being’. We have seen the immediacy of God in the doctrine of universal sustenance, in our concept of the miraculous, in general providence, in special providence and in providence mediated through human behaviour. And even as we contemplate these things from a scientific and philosophical viewpoint, God closes in upon us. He does so to such a degree that we may well begin to tremble , even by virtue of the unvarnished philosophical ideas we have considered in this lecture. Jesus Christ said of the Father, ‘Fear Him who is able to destroy …’. If I may truncate this Scripture even further, we might say ‘Fear Him who is able’ — who has ultimate power and authority; who holds the breath of every living creature in His hand; whose presence and will alone uphold the fabric of the physical universe in which we live; who is the invisible Reality that lies behind and within the visible world.

Let us order our priorities aright and with the apostle ‘look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal’. These unseen things represent the ultimate spiritual reality that we call God and, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father.

The immediacy of God, it seems to me, lays upon all people the responsibility to seek to know Him. Paul declares, ‘God … has made of one blood all nations of men … and has determined the times … and the bounds of their habitations — that they should seek the Lord … and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us’ (Acts 17:26-28). Our life is so grounded in the life of God that to neglect to seek Him is a denial of our human nature. If we do neglect to do so we shall surely be called to account for it is the duty of every creature to know and recognise its Creator. The concept of duty is, of course, a moral one and stems from the fact that God and man alike have moral natures. Yet human moral responsibility is only another manifestation of the unity that God imposes on the universe, a unity we have examined in the context of science. We are morally responsible to God because we are made in the image of a moral Deity.

“I sent the Dutch PDF edition of the book before publication to one of my acquaintances who’s professor of New Testament in Belgium and here is his initial reaction, after having only read the foreword and your introduction To get you started:

‘Wow! What an enthralling initiative! I have only read the first pages and not even the first chapters yet, but I am already won over! Yes, I would very much appreciate a copy so I can point others to this book!’

Since he’s professor at a Belgian university, I’m sure the book will also do well over there. Let’s hope so!”

Subsequently the friend in question e-mailed to say, “please feel free to use my name”. He is Professor Gie Vleugels whose details can be found at:

http://www.etf.edu/onderwijs/docenten/prof-dr-gie-vleugels

Of course, Prof. Vleugels could change his mind when he reads the rest of the book! But the encouraging thing to me is that the initial impression is such as to make him read on enthusiastically. Since the main target audience for Who made God? is the person-in-the-street who would not normally be concerned with the Christian message or biblical worldview, the initial engagement of the reader’s mind (whoever the reader might be) is vital to the book’s evangelistic purpose.

This article is Part 4 of a series covering the content of my out-of-print book “God. science and evolution” first published in 1980. Although inevitably out of date in some respects, its message is, I believe, just as important today as it was 31 years ago. In this chapter (chapter three of the original book) I examined the importance and feasibility of constructing a biblical ‘theology of science’, a theme that continues in the following chapter which I will post here in due course as Part 5. Added comments and updates are enclosed in [square brackets] in the text. References to my book Who made God? are abbreviated to ‘WMG’.

INTRODUCTION

Is it possible for an ancient book such as the Bible to provide the Christian of today with a philosophy of modern science? The answer given to this question in the two chapters that follow is a resounding ‘Yes’. A biblical view of science is not only possible but essential if the church is to refute effectively the largely materialistic outlook of our present age — an outlook that falsely claims the support of scientific evidence and knowledge. Without such a ‘theology of science’ we are unable to relate spiritual truth to the scientific view of nature and thus by default we allow atheism to claim science as its own. To the ordinary man, science represents the objective truth about the real world in which he lives. Layman though he be, he therefore tends to accept whatever world-view appears to command scientific respectability.

Chapters 3 and 4 [of the original book] set out the guidelines for a ‘theology of science’ which permits a biblical interpretation of science and all it reveals to us about the universe of which we are part. Originally given at the 1979 Annual Conference of the British Evangelical Council at Westminster Chapel, London, these lectures deal, firstly, with the idea of God as the universal Creator and Sustainer and, secondly, (in chapter 4) with the questions of miracle and divine providence in the physical world.

GOD IN CREATION

The middle ground

I want you to imagine two mountains with a plain or valley between them. The first mountain represents biblical theology and world-view, while the second represents agnostic, atheistic or materialistic philosophy. What I shall term the ‘middle ground’ between them represents the physical universe in which we live out our daily existence. This middle ground is disputed territory. There is a battle for its possession. Why should this be? Because a world-view which fails to encompass and account for the ‘real’ world around us is unlikely to capture the attention and allegiance of the minds of men. Whichever philosophy seems best to explain the physical context of human life is most likely to command man’s sympathies, for it is in the natural world that he perceives himself to ‘live and move and have his being’. Of course, the Christian understands that it is in God that we ‘live and move and have our being’ but the one who does not believe does not yet possess this insight. Yet it is to such people that the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed and it is vital therefore that a biblical philosophy of nature should form an integral part of that gospel. The apostle John recognized this clearly in introducing his account of the life and work of Christ with a prologue which announces Christ as the ‘Logos’, the Creator of all things (John 1:1-3). We must therefore possess the middle ground in the sense that we offer a full and satisfying account of the physical universe (and of the science which so successfully describes it) in terms which are consistent with the biblical revelation. Otherwise that ground will be so overrun by materialistic philosophies, such as the evolutionary world-view, that men’s minds will be wholly closed to the importance of spiritual things.

We face a situation, I fear, in which Christianity has largely yielded the middle ground to its opponents in the battle for the minds of men. We have allowed currency to the belief that the physical universe and science are no concern of religion. We have implied that what is material is not spiritual and is therefore quite irrelevant to the Christian message of personal salvation. I want to say, with all the emphasis I can, that this is a very dangerous and unbiblical attitude to adopt. For if we are to reach men and women with the gospel, we must do so in the context of their real-life experience. Among other things, this means that we must take account of our present scientific culture if we are effectively to evangelize.

In yielding this middle ground to the atheistic and agnostic philosophies of our day, we have failed to develop a true biblical theology of science and nature. Instead we have espoused a simplistic ‘complementarity’ in which we have said, ‘The scientific description of the universe is valid and complete and self-contained, but, of course, you must also have a complementary theological description.’ We have hidden, if you like, behind this concept of complementarity, whether consciously or not, to avoid the necessity of forging a truly biblical account of science and nature. It has been a position of strategic withdrawal by which we escaped involvement in the conflicts between science and religion.

I am sometimes accused of being too hard on the principle of complementarity and those who espouse it. I want to say that there is a measure of validity in the concept, but I think its dangers greatly outweigh its benefits. For what it does, at least in the eyes of the world around us, is to concede a materialistic view of the universe and of nature. We protest that men must also embrace the complementary theological view but they say, ‘No, thank you very much, we are quite satisfied with the materialistic view. You are free to superimpose your theologies but we are satisfied with the self-contained naturalistic view of the universe which excludes God.’ Thus I say that the middle ground is vital. We shall not reach men’s minds unless we can offer an interpretation of the real world in which they find themselves. This is why I say we cannot evangelize effectively in our modern culture

without a biblical theology of science. We must have something to say about the nature of science and its interpretation of the natural world in which we live that demonstrates the necessity of a higher theological level of understanding.

Creatio ex nihilo

‘But’, you say, ‘where do we start? What is the starting-point in developing this theology of science?’ Well, the starting-point is really self-evident. We must start at the beginning and I want to suggest that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is the key to this whole subject. There is a tendency, I think, to take this familiar doctrine for granted and to consider it so self-evident that having defined it there is really nothing more to say. If someone attempted to preach a sermon on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo we might well fear that after five minutes he would have said all that could be said. To think in this way is seriously to underrate and underestimate the power of this particular doctrine, as I hope to show.

This is a neglected doctrine. I cannot remember ever hearing a sermon or an address or even reading a book about the subject; which is rather strange, because this doctrine is absolutely basic to any attempt to provide a biblical view of science and the world around us. It is a neglected doctrine, and like the key that lay in Pilgrim’s pocket all the time he languished in the dungeons of Doubting Castle, I believe we have here a key which will allow Christians to come off the defensive and take the offensive in this battle for the middle ground. It is a neglected doctrine and yet it underwrites the whole relationship between God and creation. This concept of the origin of the physical universe is the basis of all subsequent events and all subsequent relationships between God and His creation, including ourselves as human beings. To particularize this a little more, let me say that negatively the doctrine emphasizes the limitations of science, and positively it underlies a biblical concept of science. These are the two things that we shall look at in this essay. Furthermore, this doctrine legitimizes the miraculous, undergirds the idea of providence and even implies human responsibility, thus anticipating the gospel. These other things we shall take up in the following chapter.

Let us first of all see the doctrine of creation from nothing, creatio ex nihilo, stated in the Scriptures. These references do not in any sense constitute an exhaustive list, nor am I concerned here to expound these texts but rather to cite them. We must start, of course, on the threshold of the book of Genesis. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’. Here is the clearest possible statement that there was a beginning. This was obviously a beginning of the physical universe, not the beginning of God, since He was the pre-existent One who effected this beginning. He originated the entirety of what we know as the universe, ‘the heavens and the earth’, not from some prior substance but in a pure creative act.

There are some who would take this verse and water it down. They do not do so in order to avoid the implications of an ex nihilo creation, but rather to substantiate the ‘gap theory’ in which an attempt is made to introduce into the Genesis story a sufficiently long time-span to allow for the processes of evolution. In so doing they attempt to translate this verse as a conditional clause, making it read something like this: ‘In the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth the earth became without form and void.’ The primary statement becomes that relating to the condition of the earth rather than the creation. This, of course, robs the verse of its primary impact and empties it of the creative content which I am ascribing to it. I am not a Hebrew scholar and do not pretend to understand in full the arguments against this [but see Hebrew scholar E. J. Young’s interpretation at http://www.christianbeliefs.org/books/genesis/gen-1.html.] I believe, however, that it can be demonstrated very clearly both from a theological argument and from the very form of the language that the traditional rendering is the correct one. Furthermore, to render this verse as a conditional clause is to introduce a circumlocution which is totally foreign to the crisp, straightforward style of the remainder of the chapter.

However, of course, we are not limited to Genesis 1. We come to Hebrews 11 and the third verse: ‘By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible’ (NASV). Here is as clear a statement as we could wish of the doctrine of creation from nothing. [To suggest that this anticipates atomic theory is a special plea too far; in any case atoms are visible en masse and the NT commonly equates ‘invisible’ with ‘spiritual’ as in 2 Cor. 4:18].

In the prologue of John’s Gospel we read that ‘All things were made by [Christ] and without him was not anything made that was made.’ By definition I think that must be a statement of this same doctrine, for if there had been anything material that pre-dated the physical universe as we know it, then it would have to be something that He had previously made and the argument only pushes the beginning back a little further in time. Revelation 4:11 declares, ‘You are worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created.’ Psalm 104, though highly poetic, is in many respects also appeals to this doctrine. One particular statement is that God has ‘stretched out the heavens like a curtain’. Poetic indeed, but nevertheless it embraces a significant truth and one compatible with modern cosmology. Finally, Nehemiah 9:6 states, ‘You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth, and all things that are in them . . . and you preserve them all.’

So we have many Scriptures on which to base our exposition of this doctrine and I would like to see this done more vigorously than is usually the case. My purpose here, however, is not to expound Scripture, but to provide the philosophical framework in which that can properly and logically be done.

Let me put into modem parlance, into scientific terminology, just what this doctrine of creatio ex nihilo means. It means that by an act (or fiat) of pure spiritual power God brought into being both matter and energy, which together I will call the substance of the universe. He also brought into being space and time which, in scientific thinking, combine to form what is called the space-time metric, a four-dimensional continuum, to which all events and all existence in the universe are referred. Finally, in addition to these things, God brought into operation the laws and rules of the natural world which control both the substance of the universe and the space-time metric. It is an oversimplification to think of the ex nihilo creation simply as the creation of matter, as perhaps many of us do. We have to realize that the creation of all these other things was vitally and essentially involved: matter, energy, the space-time metric and natural law. It is inconceivable that matter and energy, space and time, could have been brought into being without those rules and laws by which these entities both exist and interact.

A little earlier I used a tautology, namely the expression ‘pure spirit’. It would have been sufficient to say that God is spirit, but I added the word ‘pure’ to emphasize that it was spirit and spirit alone that gave birth to the material universe. This then is a statement in modern terms of the doctrine we discover in the Scriptures quoted earlier, and this doctrine is a powerful weapon in our battle for the ‘middle ground’. I want to spend the remainder of this chapter justifying this statement in some detail.

The limitations of science

I said at the beginning of this chapter that the ex nihilo creation leads us, firstly, to an understanding of the limitations of science and, secondly, to a biblical concept of the nature of science. These are the two things we are going to look at now. I am going to present the limitations of science in a negative way (science cannot do this or that), but in doing so I am not really making negative statements. In pointing out the limitations of science I am emphasizing positively the essential role that the ex nihilo creation has to assume in our total scheme. When I say, therefore, that firstly science cannot explain origins, I imply the positive assertion that theology can explain them by means of the doctrine of creation.

The inability of science to explain origins is a direct consequence of the very nature of science, for it is the study of what ‘is’, namely, the physical universe as we find and observe it around us. Science cannot speculate about that which ‘was’. I am not, of course, saying here that science cannot describe past events. It can indeed do so, but only in so far as those past events were controlled by the laws that are now known to operate — only as long as they took place in a world such as the one we observe today. It is perfectly proper for us to extrapolate our scientific knowledge backwards in time, as long as the rules do not change or undergo a discontinuity at some past moment. It is quite impossible, however, to extrapolate backwards to a time when those laws did not exist.

The unbelieving world has been quick to recognize the implications of this problem. They have recognized the impossibility of explaining the origin of the basic stuff of the universe (matter, energy, space, time and law) in terms of present scientific processes. Attempts have been made, therefore, to avoid altogether the embarrassment of a beginning, and the best known of these attempts is probably the theory of continuous creation. This idea was advanced some thirty-five years ago by Bondi and Gold, and later developed by Hoyle and Narliker. The attraction of the idea lay clearly in its philosophical rather than its scientific content. Indeed the scientific content of this theory actually violated one of the most fundamental laws of science, namely the conservation of matter and energy.       But the proponents of the theory, and those who still support it (although it is largely out of favour today [that is, in 1980]), were willing to sacrifice the most cherished principles of science in order to gain their philosophical objectives, namely, to do away with the necessity for origins, to banish the idea of a beginning. Instead they would substitute a ‘steady state’ model in which there was no beginning and to which there is no ending of the universe. I say that this theory has been discredited, as indeed it has on purely scientific grounds. But I would warn you that the philosophical ambitions which promoted it are still alive. For example, in the context of the currently accepted ‘big bang’ theory of the origin of the universe, there is a variation of the steady state theory, namely, the idea that the universe may oscillate unendingly between explosion, expansion, collapse and rebirth in a fresh explosion. [this idea runs into a serious problem concerning entropy; see WMG p.119] Let us not imagine, then, just because scientific evidence has ruled out the former theory of continuous creation, that our materialistic philosophers have abandoned their attempts to banish the idea of an ultimate origin of the universe.

Some of you may have read a book by this year’s Nobel Prize winner, Steven Weinberg, entitled The First Three Minutes. In it he describes the ‘standard model’ of the universe, in which the beginning is conceived to have consisted in an explosion of unimaginable magnitude. The book then traces, by way of theoretical speculation, the development of that universe in terms of its content of matter and energy, its temperature and the processes which may have occurred, during the first three minutes of its existence. In actual fact, these ideas are pressed back to speculate on what happened within the first one-hundredth second of the existence of the universe. It may well be that some version of the ‘big bang’ theory is compatible with the biblical account of creation. I certainly do not rule that possibility out of court. But no matter how close to the instant of origin one may be able to press the scientific model of the cosmos, it remains impossible for such an explanation to be applied at or before the zero time point. Thus it follows that science, even at its most speculative, must of necessity stop short of offering any explanation or even description of the actual event of origin. It is at this point then that theology must enter the picture, not as an admission of defeat but rather on account of the very nature of science.

The second inherent limitation in science is its inability to explain scientific [i.e. natural] law. I have already suggested that the rules which govern and control the physical world are an implicit and inseparable part of the creation fiat. If this is so, it follows that scientific law can no more be explained by science than can the ex nihilo origin itself. Let me explain this in more detail. There is a certain arbitrariness about scientific law. For example, the law of gravity states that the gravitational force between two masses is proportional to the product of those masses divided by the square of the distance between them. It is quite conceivable that a universe could exist in which the gravitational force was proportional to the inverse cube of the distance, rather than the inverse square. Or, rather than the square or cube, it might even be the power 2.5 or 2.7, or some other non-integral figure. There is no reason that science can offer to explain why the law of gravity should be exactly what it is. There are an infinity of alternative laws that might have been. [the inverse square law actually follows from the 3-dimensional nature of space but this doesn’t change the basic argument. Why are there only three dimensions? Indeed modern string theory needs ten or more dimensions of space most of them ‘hidden’].

If, walking along a beach, I pick up a single pebble, I automatically reject in that very act a myriad other pebbles that might have been chosen instead. This is what God has, in effect, done in setting forth the laws of science. Each law, whether expressed in words or mathematical symbols, represents a choice from among an infinity of possibilities. Of course, if the laws were different, the universe in which we lived would itself be different, but provided the laws were not mutually exclusive or contradictory, that universe could exist.

If we ask science why the laws are such as they are, and not otherwise science can do nothing but shrug its mathematical shoulders and reply; ‘That question lies outside my terms of reference.’ Science must take the universe as it finds it, and this is one of its most profound limitations. The ex nihilo creation answers the question that science cannot. Why is the universe as it is? Simply because God chose that it should be so. His choice of one law over against the possible alternatives was a deliberate act which automatically excluded those other alternatives. Lest some should think that what I have just said is childishly simple, let me point out where lies the profundity of these statements. It lies in the fact that choice is an attribute or action of intelligence. Without intelligence there is no true choosing but only a response to the rules of chance. But before even those rules existed, a choice or distinction was made as to what they should be! The unavoidable conclusion is, therefore, that intelligence pre-existed the natural universe and the laws by which it functions. The only escape from this argument

lies in a total agnosticism concerning the fundamental nature of scientific law.

There is one other important thing that needs to be said here, and which leads to the subject that will be dealt with in the following chapter of this book. If it is true that the whole physical universe derived from pure spirit, it follows that we have in our present age a coexistence of the material and the spiritual realms. It is inconceivable that the prime mover, the pure spirit, should in some way vanish or disappear from the scene once the material universe had been created. So it is a logical necessity of the ex nihilo creation that we have in our present time a coexistence of the material and spiritual.

From this we may move forward to another conclusion, namely, that the doctrine of ex nihilo creation leads naturally to what I will call the doctrine of ‘universal sustenance’. I use this expression to indicate that the material universe is sustained by, and has a derivative existence from, the spiritual realm. We must not simply think of a coexistence of the two, but see a dependent relationship of the physical upon the spiritual. The apostle Paul said, ‘We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal’ (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Earlier this year I spent a few days in northern Italy, on the shores of Lake Garda. There, on that very beautiful mountain lake, there are many places where the cliffs rise sheer from the waters for a thousand feet or more. The massive rock plunges from snow-capped peaks and disappears below the surface of the lake, to re-emerge, of course, on the far side. One could argue from the superficial appearance that the land simply stops when it reaches the lake surface, but we know that this is not the case. The rock, although it plunges beneath the water, is still there. So important is its presence that if there were no rock beneath the surface, there would be no water in the lake! This is a faint picture of what I am trying to say about the coexistence of the material and the spiritual realms. It is not merely coexistence; it is a supportive and sustaining relationship between the invisible and the visible realms. As the hidden rock that forms the lake bottom supports and contains the visible waters, so the hidden realm of pure spirit upholds the material universe to which it earlier gave birth. The material world only exists because it is undergirded by the spiritual world.

Finally in this section, I would suggest that science cannot explain the phenomenon of mind.

What is mind? Either mind is self-existent, and therefore non-material in origin, or else it is the emanation or by-product of the physical brain. It seems to me that there is no alternative to these options. Either mind is a consequence of the electrical impulses and organization of an anatomical organ, or else it is a self-existent phenomenon which ‘rides upon’ brain function without deriving from it. A well-known philosophical argument points out that if thought is merely a by-product of brain function, then our thoughts and ideas have no validity, since they are simply the consequence of non-rational physiological and chemical processes which are not themselves endued with ‘meaning’. If this be the case, then these arguments are themselves meaningless and void of content and cannot be relied upon as true in any sense. We are thus forced either to accept that mind has a genuine existence apart from brain function or else we are locked into a circular argument that empties all philosophy of meaning.

The concept of self-existent mind is perfectly respectable, not only because it is the position we adopt intuitively, nor even because the alternative makes nonsense, as we have just seen. It is increasingly recognized, on the basis of what is called ‘information theory’, that information and concept may ‘ride’ upon matter, while at the same time being something other than matter. To give a simple illustration, I might take a number of symbols from our alphabet and set them down on paper. They may make sense or nonsense according to the way they are arranged. If I write down, say, three hundred such symbols, even if they are arranged in a pattern, they may still convey no meaning. I could, however, arrange the same symbols into words and sentences to spell out a communication full of significance for the reader. It is obvious that the message and the meaning are quite independent of the symbols. The same message written in a foreign language will require different symbols. I might even invent a new language to express my message and provided that you were taught the conventions of that language, you could read and understand what I was saying. Thus although the message has no manifest existence apart from the symbols (it ‘rides’ upon the symbols), it is clear that the symbols themselves do not equate with the meaning they convey. The symbols are arbitrary and may (by agreement between the writer and the reader) be varied without affecting the meaning.

So, by analogy, we may logically claim that mind has an existence independent of brain function, just as a message has an existence independent of the physical symbolism used to convey it. In physical terms you cannot separate the message from the symbols, of course, and, similarly, mind and brain cannot be separated. But our inability to effect physical separation in no way contradicts the claim that mind has an independent existence in the world of spiritual, non-physical reality.

Even from a scientific viewpoint, then, it is quite proper to assert the independent reality of mind, and this assertion is a logical requirement of the doctrine of ex nihilo creation. For pure spirit is mind, since it is impossible to conceive of spirit apart from the idea of mind. This is not to say that pure spirit is limited to mind but it must clearly possess a ‘mental’ dimension. Pure spirit is not form. It is not motion. It is not material. It must be perceived as intelligent or it must remain altogether incomprehensible to us. It should not surprise us therefore that, as creatures in the material universe, we can nevertheless identify a category of non-material existence that we call mind. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the ex nihilo creation and of the interaction between the material and spiritual realms inexorably associated with such an origin.

Going further, it follows naturally that the physical universe as we find it is capable of being codified and understood in terms of mental concepts, including such things as mathematics and scientific law, for this material world, like our own human minds, derives from the mind of God. The compatibility between our minds and the character of the created world (which alone permits that world to be described in rational scientific terms) is evidence that both human mind and nature flow from the same source, namely the eternal pre-existent mind that we call God.

The nature of science

So much for the limitations of science. Let us now turn to consider the nature of science. I want to suggest five propositions which are descriptive of science. I will set them down and then examine the impact upon them of the doctrine of ex nihilo creation.

1. Firstly, science is law. The laws that govern both the substance and the processes of nature can be comprehended in a single word, ‘interaction’. That is to say, the laws of science describe the manner in which matter and energy interact to produce the phenomenon we call the universe. ‘Science’ is, of course, something of a portmanteau word, but in essence science, both in its pursuit and as a body of knowledge, can be reduced to the study of these interactions. The corpus of scientific knowledge can therefore be expressed as a collection of laws, while the endless search of the scientist is for unity within the diversity of laws that describe the way nature behaves. The high object of science is to reduce our understanding of the universe to ever more fundamental principles, from which the great variety of interactions may be derived as so many special cases. This is illustrated by the 1979 Nobel Prize for physics awarded to two men who demonstrated that, at sufficiently high temperatures, two of the four known laws of force in nature merge into a single law. There is, then, a continual search for simplicity, a desire to reduce the plethora of different laws to a few basic general principles. The further this search is rewarded by success, the more truly can it be asserted that science is law.

2. Secondly, science is derivative from law. That is, what we know as science is a consequence of law, and not its cause. This is an important distinction because it is easy to fall into the error of thinking that science somehow creates the laws of nature. This is not the case. Science simply discovers and describes the rules by which the universe operates, and is thus derivative. It is not that the laws have somehow come into existence as a consequence of scientific endeavour. Rather, it is because the world is, in a physical sense, law-abiding that it becomes possible for us to pursue the activity we call science. If the rules of nature changed from day to day, or if the behaviour of matter and energy fluctuated in a random and unpredictable manner, it would be impossible for science to exist.

3. Thirdly, science is rational. We have already anticipated this point by recognising that the human mind, in its rationality, is alone equipped to practise science. The fact that we can express the laws that control the universe in terms that a rational mind can formulate, means that science and the underlying reality that it seeks to portray are both rational in character.

4. Fourthly, science is unified. We have already referred to the search for generality and basic principle, and this search is driven by the conviction among scientists that there exists an integrity in the universe, a harmony, a design. The world of nature is a single entity, controlled by mathematically expressible and interlocking processes. The universe is not, to the scientist, a rag-bag of fortuitous, meaningless and contradictory events. It is a system which exhibits a fundamental unity of structure and harmony of function. This alone justifies the pursuit of pure science.

5. Fifthly, science is universal in space and time. As far as we know, the laws of science are the same on earth, on the moon, in the sun and in the furthermost galaxies. The laws of yesterday are the same as the laws of today, and tomorrow’s laws will be the same as today’s. There is, in other words, a consistency in the structure and function of the universe, which is easy to take for granted, but which is not trivial in its implications.

The major point I want to make concerning the propositions is that science cannot find cause for these things within itself. These concepts, which describe the nature of science, do not arise from science itself and therefore must lie outside it. They are philosophical concepts for which science itself can offer no explanation and upon which science itself can throw no light. Far from ‘explaining’ the universe, science on its own begs all the essential questions about the nature of the physical world and, indeed, about its own nature. More generously, perhaps, we might say that science focuses attention on the necessity for a philosophical world-view, for, without such undergirding, science throws up more questions than it answers (specifically, why does science exhibit the characteristics outlined in my five propositions above?).

Universal sustenance

This leads us to the doctrine of ‘universal sustenance’ which, I maintain, provides just such a philosophical world-view and one which is derived wholly from the biblical record. The doctrine states that God not only created the universe at its origin, but that He actively, moment by moment, sustains the universe in all its manifestations, both in its substance and process. In particular, He does so in and through the scientific laws by which we choose to describe the world around us. (I realize that traditionally this idea would be considered part of the doctrine of providence, but I am deliberately separating this teaching from providence to bring it forward with greater clarity and force.)

This doctrine of universal sustenance is implied by the ex nihilo creation. This was the force of my illustration concerning the mountains of Lake Garda, namely that the coexistence of the spiritual and the material implies a dependence of the latter upon the former (‘The things that are seen are temporal but the things that are not seen are eternal’). This implication is greatly strengthened by a number of Scriptures. I like the Authorized Version translation of Revelation 4:11: ‘For thy pleasure they [that is, all things] are and were created.’ God has a purpose for this world and those who inhabit it, and just to state this is to grant that there must be a continual interaction between the material and spiritual realms. If God is to receive pleasure from His creation, He cannot be a remote and uninvolved figure. He must be active in the real world.

But we do not need to rely upon inference to uphold the concept of universal sustenance, for the doctrine is plainly stated in the Bible. Colossians 1:17 states that ‘He [Christ] is before all things, and by Him all things consist.’ The verb ‘is’ here signifies ‘exists’ and the clause that contains it therefore has a temporal meaning rather than denoting supremacy (although ‘before’ may well carry the additional meaning of pre-eminence, seeing that the whole passage is concerned with just that issue). Paul almost always uses the Greek word pro in its temporal sense, although Luke does use it in the sense of pre-eminence. Our Scripture therefore states that Christ pre-existed the material and, indeed, the angelic creation and ‘in Him’ all created things hold together. Everything derives its being and integrity from the presence and activity of the Second Person of the Trinity.

Earlier I said that all science can be reduced to law, and that law describes interaction. This interaction conveys just the same idea as the word ‘consists’, so that we may claim direct scriptural authority for the view that the entire physical world derives its being and behaviour from the present-tense activity of the triune God. The second reference I want to quote is Hebrews 1:3, where we read that Christ ‘upholds all things by the word of his power’. Just as the natural universe could be said to rest upon a framework of natural law, so equally it can be said to be upheld by the word of Christ’s power. Thus we may actually equate natural law (or rather the reality or principle that it imperfectly describes) with the word of divine power. We see again that the Bible explains something that science itself is not capable of explaining, namely the fundamental nature of scientific law. These laws of nature are none other than the direct commands of God, the instantaneous word of power that emanates from the creator Spirit, who alone is self-existent.

A third Scripture that is germane to our subject is Acts 17:28: ‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being.’ Living and moving are redolent of process, the processes of the natural world which is the sphere of scientific investigation. These natural processes, then, operate ‘in Him’, echoing the same truth as we have already emphasized, namely that the existence of God and the spiritual realm is fundamental to the physical universe. In the clause that follows: ‘In Him we … have our being’, it is not so much process that is represented, as existence itself. The very substance of created things is here attributed to the sustenance of God. Thus, both in its substance and its process, the material universe is derivative from the being and intent of God.

What we are doing here is to re-enunciate the idea of the immanence of God, a belief that Christians have always held. God is present in nature, though not to be equated with nature as the pantheist would maintain. God is not nature; He transcends nature, and the physical world is not part of God but merely His handiwork. Nevertheless we must avoid the opposite error from pantheism, namely, the mistake of placing God completely outside of His creation so that the latter becomes no more than a machine, having an existence independent of God. God is transcendent, but He is also immanent, present, at hand in His creation, for ‘in Him we live, and move, and have our being’. But we have gone even further than to say that God is present in nature. We have claimed scriptural authority for the view that God’s presence is a sustaining presence. The physical universe in all its manifestations exists because God wills it to exist, moment by moment. It is not a self-existent creation, but is upheld at every instant of time by the immediate word of His power. Applying these concepts, then, to our five principles we come to the following conclusions.                              ;

Firstly, scientific law has an underlying character, for it is the word of God’s power. Secondly, the idea that science is derivative from law follows very naturally from the doctrine of universal sustenance. Science must be derivative because the creation that it studies is itself derivative from the spiritual realm. Thirdly, science is rational because the things it studies are the products of the mind of God and it is for this reason, and this reason only, that science is comprehensible to man and accessible to human reason at all. Fourthly, I said that science is unified, and we now see this as an inevitable consequence of the fact that the world is the product of a single purposive mind, the mind of God. It is not surprising, then, that we find, increasingly as our knowledge grows, that the laws and rules by which the universe operates are unified parts of a single grand design. Fifthly, we saw that within certain limits, science is universal. There is no a priori reason why this should be the case, but it is an immediate and natural deduction from our doctrine of the sustenance of God in nature. The universal and omnipresent Creator, sustaining the entire universe by the word of His power, bestows an intrinsic universality upon the processes of nature. His rule is uniform throughout His vast domain. Finally, the whole doctrine of the universal sustenance of God leads on to the more human, less philosophical concept of the immediacy of God. His immediacy in science has been the burden of this chapter; in the next we shall look at His immediacy in miracle and providence.

“The discussions are proving popular online.  The first one has already had 6,400 downloads and the second one is already hot on its heels!

You can access both the shows at the Unbelievable Webpage http://www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable

The direct links for both shows are:

• Unbelievable? 26 Nov 2011 – What created the universe? Prof Edgar Andrews vs atheist Robert Stovold
• Unbelievable? 3 Dec 2011 – Did man make God, or did God make man?” Edgar Andrews vs Lewis Wolpert

Each debate lasts 60 minutes; the first centres on the origin of the universe and the second on the theme “Did God make man or did man make God?” Lewis Wolpert last debated at a big public affair with William Lane Craig during the latter’s lecture tour of UK.

Very good book. In your opinion, what is the difference, if any, between religion and superstition?

Reply: Hi Louis

“Religion” may be superstition. But true religion is based upon a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ who said (speaking to His Father), “This is life eternal, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). If you want to know more I suggest you should read John’s Gospel in the New Testament.

Best regards, Edgar Andrews

From Louis

Thanks for your reply. I can think of millions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and animists who would disagree with you. Are all their beliefs superstitions?

Regards, Louis

Reply: Hi Louis

Yes, of course, you are right. Every religionist will believe that his/her beliefs (assuming them to be sincerely held) are the right ones. But you have to follow through the logic of the matter. We really only have three options …

1) Either one religion is true and all contradictory religions are false (to a greater or lesser extent) OR

2) All religions are in some sense true, in spite of their mutual contradictions, but simply approach God in different ways (multi-faith approach; post-modernism is also a variation on this theme) OR

3) All religions are false (atheism).

Obviously there are many who support each of these options but the only one that is worth pursuing is (1) … since (2) and (3) are, epistemologically-speaking, dead-ends. That doesn’t mean they are wrong; simply that they put an end to effective enquiry. So if we wish to pursue the matter, how can we ascertain which religion (if any) is the true one? My claim for the exclusive truth of Christianity resides in the Person and teaching of Jesus Christ, supplemented by the remarkable historical prophesies that accurately foretold His advent, life, death and resurrection in the Old Testament hundreds of years before the event.

I became a Christian by reading the New Testament, not through my upbringing, religious books or the persuasion of any other person. In effect I “met” Jesus Christ as a living Person in the pages of the NT and that personal knowledge of Christ has continued through nearly 60 years of life and experience. At the end of the day, no one can prove to us the truth of a religion; we can only prove it to ourselves.

With kind regards, Edgar Andrews

From Louis: Hello Edgar

Thanks for the prompt reply. I think that logic and faith are mutually exclusive (zero overlap). I have developed a theory that all religions evolved from superstitious fear of the unknown over the millennia of human development, and that, as we developed knowledge about our environment, those superstitions gradually faded away, but our fear of death remains as the main supporter of belief in an after-life, and thus , belief in the religions (superstitions!!) that promise us just that. This might relate to your chapter on “The god of the gaps”?

Best wishes, Louis

Reply: Hi Louis

We clearly disagree but I would just point out that my book was written to demonstrate the remarkable level of agreement between the teaching of the ancient Bible and the established findings of modern science (I give scientific reasons for not regarding neo-Darwinism as established science). And far from fading away, theism is growing in influence world-wide … as documented in the book “God is back; how the global rise of faith is changing the world” by John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge. At very least this growth in religious belief contradicts your thesis that what you regard as “superstition” is fading away. A theory must account for the facts! I won’t pursue this conversation any further but thanks for the discussion.

Best wishes, Edgar Andrews

Professor Hood is an atheist who believes that our brains are ‘hard-wired’ with a ‘supersense’. Good news? Apparently not. According to Hood, this ‘supersense’ seizes on erroneous childhood beliefs and produces adult superstitions and equally groundless religious beliefs.

In his book Supersense: From Superstition to Religion — The Brain Science of Belief he claims that pre-school children are already ‘deeply committed to a number of misconceptions’ and argues that ‘adult supernaturalism is the residue of childhood misconceptions that have not been truly disposed of’. Odd that most of us grow out of a belief in Father Christmas but that many grow into a belief in God — as did the writer of this article when, as a nineteen year old university science student, he read the New Testament for the first time.

Perhaps Hood’s belief in a ‘supersense’ is itself a hangover from the common fantasy among children that they possess secret or magical powers like the ability to fly. Either way, it is clear that Hood’s ‘childhood misconceptions’ come in two flavours — those we abandon (such as Father Christmas) and those we don’t (such as God). Could the simple explanation be that one sort is indeed false but the other true?

Is creation a childhood fantasy?

Children, says Hood, tend to ‘explain the natural world in terms of purpose’ —for example, trees exist to provide shade and the rain to quench our thirst. Hood also asserts that someone with Alzheimer’s disease returns ‘to the teleological [purpose driven] thinking of the seven-year-old’. He continues; ‘It is because most religions offer a story about origins and purpose that ‘creationism [i.e., belief in a Creator] fits so well with what seems natural at seven years old’.

So there we have it. If you believe in God and creation you just never grew up. Sad that the great scientist Michael Faraday who actually founded the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures not only believed in God and creation but was a Bible teacher of some distinction!

And what does the Bible tell us about creation? That ‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1) and that ‘the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things that are visible’ (Hebrews 11:3). That is, the universe was created ex nihilo (out of nothing) and not made from any pre-existent materials. And this agrees with modern scientific thinking! Less than a hundred years ago scientists thought that the universe had always existed and never had a beginning. As an undergraduate I heard the astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle argue in favour of his theory of ‘continuous creation’ which, if true, would explain how an expanding universe could have existed for ever.

But in 1916 Einstein’s general theory of relativity revolutionised scientific thinking about space and time and cosmologists have become increasingly aware that the universe, as the Bible says, had a beginning. (The ‘big bang’ model is a popular expression of this now-accepted truth). How is it, then, that Professor Hood can relegate a belief in creation to the dustbin of childhood fantasy? If the universe had a beginning then someone or something must have created it. And if it was not created by the all-powerful Spirit we call God, what was responsible for its origin?

Explaining away creation

The distinguished cosmologist Stephen Hawking thinks he has an answer. In a recent co-authored book, The Grand Design, he writes; ‘Because there is a law [of nature] like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing … A spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going’. Notice that Hawking agrees with the Bible that creation came ‘from nothing’ but he replaces God by gravity.

But this is complete nonsense. Hawking’s ‘explanation’ of creation-without-God requires that certain laws of nature (like the law of gravity) existed before the universe existed. But the laws of nature are nothing but our scientific descriptions of the way the universe works! How could they exist before there was any universe to describe — and thus be available to create that universe?

It’s rather like saying that a painting could exist before the canvas exists on which it is painted. Of course, we could argue that the painting does have a prior existence in the mind of the artist and that is correct. Thus the laws of nature could have existed in the mind of God before the universe was created. No problem there. But what is not possible is that these laws existed in the absence both of the universe they describe and of any mind in which they could reside. Yet this is exactly what Hawking is saying.

What is reality?

But let’s get back to the Christmas lectures. Another of Professor Hood’s claims is that our minds are easily deceived. Not only does our ‘supersense’ trick us into thinking like a seven-year-old but it is ‘what makes us truly human and explain[s] how you create your own version of reality, what makes your brain decide what information to trust and what to ignore’ (so reads a press release). This is why pickpockets are so easily able to distract us and why we sometimes have false memories. Professor Hood’s ‘goal is to explain how everybody’s brain creates its own version of reality and how we have less control over our own decisions and perceptions than we like to think’ (The Times, 30 July 2011, p.19).

He declares; ‘One thing I guarantee is that I will leave the audience wondering if they can ever trust their brain again’. That only applies to you and me, of course; Hood himself clearly believes he can trust his own brain and its theories. It used to be said that ‘sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ but this no longer applies in the brave new world of evolutionary psychology. The psychologist is right and all we seven-year-old adults just need to grow up.

This idea that we create ‘our own version of reality’ in our minds is becoming quite fashionable. In the book cited earlier Stephen Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow spend a whole chapter explaining that what we perceive as the real world ‘out there’ is actually a somewhat distorted model constructed in our own minds from the data input by our five senses. When we look at a red hat what are we actually seeing? All that enters our eyes are light rays of a certain wavelength and an intensity that varies from point to point on our retinas. The information gathered by the retina is converted into electrical nerve impulses (brainwaves) that travel to our brain and only there do they create the impression of a red hat. Conclusion? There’s really no such thing as a red hat.

The problem with all this is that if ‘reality’ is manufactured in our brains rather than being a genuine property of the world around us, whose reality is real? In Hood’s reality God doesn’t exist while in my reality he certainly does (because I know him as a Person). Furthermore, science itself has enormous problems if reality exists only in our minds. Why? Because science is based on the assumption that there is a reality — the natural world — that is external to ourselves, which we can study objectively and which obeys natural laws about which we can all agree.

Why, then, do people such as Professor Hood cast doubt on what our minds are telling us? Because they want to dismiss a belief in God as childhood fantasy or fevered imagination. If there is no reality outside of our own minds then God is a figment of our imagination. But just as science tells us that there is physical reality outside of our minds so also the Bible tells us that there is a spiritual reality ‘out there’ as well. Indeed, it tells us that ‘in him [God] we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). As a scientist I have found the Bible is true to experience, especially the experience of being reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. For me the Christmas message of a Saviour will always trump the Christmas lectures of a sceptical psychologist.