Suppose I was a defense attorney, and in my closing argument I said something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution wants you to believe that my client murdered Mr. Smith. But the evidence has clearly shown that Mr. Smith actually died because a small explosion inside the chamber of a pistol sent a bullet flying at just the right angle to enter his heart, killing him.” Is that a convincing defense? Can I really say that if Mr. Smith was killed by a bullet, my client must be innocent?
That’s obviously absurd. The prosecutor in this case is not going to disagree that Mr. Smith was killed by a bullet entering his heart. The question is whether or not my client was the one who pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. The technical terms here are the proximate cause – the bullet entered Mr. Smith’s heart – and the ultimate cause – somebody shot him.
We can easily see how silly this is, and yet we sometimes think this way. I’ve been a science nerd for as long as I can remember; much longer than I’ve been a Bible nerd. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard somebody express the idea that if there’s a scientific explanation for something it can’t have been an act of God. I’ve heard that from atheists, of course, but I’ve also heard it many times from Christians, who use that argument to say that believers should reject some particular scientific theory. In each case it’s the same mistake. They’re confusing explanations that describe reality at different levels. The scientific model is the proximate cause; it’s like describing the bullet entering the heart. God is the shooter, the ultimate cause.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands (Psalm 19:1).
Scientists study God’s creation. Scientific models always remain within that creation; they never say “God did it” as an explanation for anything. This is called methodological naturalism, which just means that scientific methods have to remain grounded in what can be observed. Things that can’t be observed can be theorized, but only if they can be connected to observable nature. I have to be able to say, in effect, that if a certain thing that I can’t observe exists, then I will be able to make some particular measurement or observation of something that will be different than if this non-observable thing didn’t exist.
So why do all scientists, even those who are Christians, use methodological naturalism? Because it’s necessary. The minute I propose a supernatural explanation for anything, regardless of whether that explanation involves sorcery or miracles, the investigation ends. I can’t do any kind of test to learn more about whatever it is. I can’t even check to see if I’m right about it being supernatural, because supernatural causes don’t have to involve any of the natural processes or laws that science investigates. If they did, they wouldn’t be supernatural. If something truly is supernatural, the only thing we can say about it scientifically is that it doesn’t appear to fit any of the known natural processes. We can’t even rule out the possibility that some future scientific discovery will allow us to explain it in a way that is not supernatural after all.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4).
All of this applies both to believers in Christ and non-believers, but I’m aiming this article at believers because those are the people most likely to read it. Contrary to what you might see on the internet, there is no scientific theory that, if it’s true, will disprove God. Not even Darwinian evolution. To say that it can is to make a type of logical mistake called a category error. Rather, what science can often do, and do very well, is show us precisely how God did something.
But what about theories that invoke random chance, you ask? Well, what about them? God’s word says:
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord (Proverbs 16:33).
The “lot” this verse talks about worked something like dice. In Old Testament times (and a few times in the New Testament as well), it was used to determine God’s will. So whether something is purely by chance or by the hand of God depends on what level you look at. Are you talking about the proximate cause or the ultimate cause?
To understand why people make the kinds of mistakes I’ve been talking about, we have to look back into history. In Europe, in the late 16th century AD, early scientists were struck by the degree of regularity they saw in the natural world. This regularity came to be called natural or physical law, a phrase that simply means patterns that have never been known to vary. These scientists, for the most part, were not atheists, and they understood natural law to be simply the set of rules God had established for the universe.
At the same time these ideas were being developed, wind-up clocks were becoming popular all over Europe. To many people, this suggested the idea that the universe had been created to operate more-or-less independently most of the time, with God only intervening once in a while. These interventions would, of course, violate the laws of nature, and from that time on, that’s how the word “miracle” has typically been defined. Some thinkers even went so far as to deny that God ever intervenes; they argued that he created the universe and then just watched it from that point on. (An idea that is called deism). Others went further still, and suggested that the “machine” – the universe – might exist without a creator at all.
To a large degree, the ways in which modern people tend to think about God and nature and miracles come from these 16th century early scientists. Thus, most people, if they think about it, would define a “miracle” as a violation of the laws of nature. Now, this is not what the Biblical words translated as “miracle” actually mean. In fact, this whole metaphor of the universe as a machine that runs mostly by itself, like a big machine, with God only “intervening” once in a while, comes from a time long after the Bible was written. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong, though. Metaphors are never precisely wrong or right; rather they are helpful, or not, in understanding certain things.
The metaphor of the universe as a machine actually does help us understand the relationship between the creation and the Creator. The physical universe is not a manifestation of God; rather, God is separate from his creation. Sufficiently separate that he can assume human form and become a part of his universe (John 1:10). But, as Proverbs 16:33 reminds us, the machine metaphor does not tell the whole story. It obscures the fact that God fully controls the natural world, not just occasionally, but all the time. Including those parts that appear, to us, to be “random.”
In Matthew 17 we see a very strange story:
After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”
“Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes – from their own children or from others?”
“From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours” (Matthew 17:24-27).
If a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, this example doesn’t seem to fit. Many fish strike at shiny objects, so finding a fish with a coin inside could have a perfectly natural explanation. But for Jesus to tell Peter that the first fish he catches will have a coin of a particular type seems to indicate that something not entirely natural is going on. A miracle then? Perhaps. It depends on what you consider a miracle to be.
In our English Bibles, the word “miracle” is used to translate several different Hebrew and Greek words, all referring to wondrous or powerful works. The common element for miracles in the Bible, however, is not that they violate some kind of natural law, but that they are signs of God’s presence or his activity. And being signs, they must necessarily stand out from everything else that is going on. They must be noticeable. God is always working in creation (John 5:17), but most of the time we can’t see it. God’s ordinary work is the everyday operation of the universe. It’s only when he does something out of the ordinary that his hand is visible.
And I think our habits as believers actually show that we do, to some extent, understand that God is at work in “normal” events as well as in miracles. We pray for the weather, even if we accept that it is produced by natural processes involving sunlight and water. We give thanks when we recover from illness, or when an injury turns out to be less severe than we initially thought. We pray for safety on car trips. Deep down, we understand that the world of matter and energy and physical laws is controlled by God, not just occasionally, but all the time. And yet, many of us still get the idea that a scientific explanation somehow means that God is not involved.
Now, in all this, I won’t deny that some scientific models do appear to conflict with some ways of understanding Scripture. And please notice that I phrased that sentence carefully. It is our understanding of Scripture that sometimes seems to conflict with our understanding of nature (which is what a scientific theory is). That’s a subject for another article. All I have room to say here is that those conflicts must be approached with humility; the science might be wrong, but we might also be wrong about what we think God’s word is really saying. It’s even possible that both might be wrong.
The bottom line here is that none of us automatically thinks biblically about either God or nature. We all have false ideas from our background, and from our culture, that get in the way. So how do we get past those false ideas? I suggest three things. First of all, spend time in God’s word, and in prayer. There is no other way to learn how to think correctly about God than by spending time in his presence, listening to what he has said, and what he continues to say, about himself.
My second suggestion is to examine your own thinking. What assumptions are you making? We all make assumptions; without them it’s impossible to think very deeply about anything at all. But assumptions become dangerous when we aren’t aware of them.
And third, go outside. Take a walk. Look around at the sky, and the birds, and the grass, and the trees, and the mountains, and whatever else you can see in God’s creation. Or go for a walk at night and look at the stars. Don’t just glance and move on; really look. See the shapes and the colors and the beauty. And then thank God for making them. I can testify from my own experience that the more I thank God for the ordinary things in nature, the easier it is to remember that he controls nature.
A mature faith is not threatened by scientific explanations. “All truth is God’s truth,” as the saying goes. If we’re not afraid to look clearly, we might even find that a scientific understanding of the natural world can increase our wonder at the God who created it all.