Over
the years, there have been many attempts by secular sources to
ascribe natural explanations to certain miracles in the Bible. A few
notable examples surround the 10 Plagues of Egypt (Exodus 7-11) and
the Parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). In 1957, Greta Hort, a Dutch
physicist published a “chain reaction” theory explaining how a
massive amount of red algae and red clay in the Nile turned it “to
blood,” which drove out the frogs, killed livestock, bred
mosquitoes, and caused all the other plagues described in Exodus. A
similar phenomenon occurs occasionally when describing New Testament
events. For example, a few people attempt to explain the darkness at
Jesus' crucifixion as an eclipse (an impossibility since the Passover
occurs at the time of a full moon).
A few,
well-meaning Christians have adopted Hort's explanation (and other,
similar explanations) as “scientific evidence” supporting the
Biblical account. However, the vast majority of these explanations
are rejected by mainstream Christians. The 10 Plagues of Egypt were
not natural events that merely coincided with God's judgment. They
were supernatural events, intended not only to bring God's wrath on
the Egyptians but also to demonstrate God's Lordship over nature and
His superiority over the false gods of the Egyptians. The Egyptians
worshiped the Nile; God turned the Nile to blood. The Egyptians
worshiped the sun; God turned the sun black for three days.
This
desire to appeal to natural explanations for miraculous events is
curious. When a passage obviously refers to a miraculous event, why
would any Christian seek a natural explanation instead? It's
precisely because such an event defies a natural explanation that we
know it's the work of God. If God only performed His miracles in the
guise of a natural event, then God would be completely
indistinguishable from dumb luck. He would seem to me to be a god of
coincidences – a charlatan who exploits rare but mundane events as
examples of his “power.”
Like
I've said, the vast majority of these natural explanations are
rejected by mainstream Christians. However, one natural explanation
still endures and is accepted by a sizable percentage of Christians.
It is the natural explanation of our origins. Why is it that many of
the same Christians who reject ideas like Hort's, will embrace the
Big Bang and evolutionary views of people like Hawking and Dawkins?
It's a sort of special pleading. They will believe that Jesus
literally turned water to wine but they refuse to believe God
literally spoke and the universe appeared. It almost seems that they
have too low an opinion of God where He is able to do “little”
miracles in an instant but creating the universe must have taken
billions of years!
What
makes it especially odd is that Hort's views seem more plausible than
the far fetched ideas like the Big Bang which proposes everything
came from nothing. If I were to believe any natural explanation for
a miracle, I'm sure I would be far more apt to believe the credible
explanations. God creating life is far more credible and scientific
than life simple appearing from a random mix of nonliving chemicals.
What's odder still is how these Christians will reject the
explanations that fit well with a plain reading of the text (like red
algae and clay turning the Nile blood-red) but then resort to a
tortured reading of the text to make it fit the natural explanation
(like “day one” in Genesis 1 really means “billions of years”).
Why
should I believe that some passages of the Bible describe miracles
while other passages are merely fantastic descriptions of natural
events? Why should I believe that the Hebrew children, who could
understand that the parting of the Red Sea was a supernatural act of
God, couldn't have also understood “millions of years” if God
explained it to them? Why should I believe the supernatural
explanation that God raised Jesus from the dead after 3 days and not
the supernatural explanation that God created the world in 6 days?
It all seems rather arbitrary to me. When critics pull tricks like
this, I accuse them of special pleading. When Christians do it, I
also call it special pleading.
No comments:
Post a Comment