Hutchinson has been holding forums with students for about 30 years about that relationship, and he recently compiled their most popular questions into a book, Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles? IVP Books. Plasma physics is the study of the fourth state of matter, which is an ionized gas.
Matter goes through stages as we raise its temperature—solid, liquid, gas, and then plasma. Plasma is a gas in which the electrons are stripped away from the nuclei, and therefore, it has all sorts of interesting electrical properties. I study plasma physics because we are interested in making fusion energy available at a human scale. Fusion is a kind of nuclear energy. It has certain potentially attractive properties in comparison with existing nuclear energy.
Science is based on the possibility of obtaining reproducible measurements or observations. Take human history, for example. So, there are realities that science cannot explore and cannot therefore explain. There are the anti-theist activists of today, sometimes called the new atheists, many of whom are scientists, who want to say that science disproves religion. Because many of the more fundamentalist strands of Christianity have also bought into scientism, in that they also believe we need some kind of scientific proof of God; otherwise, faith is somehow intellectually disreputable.
Your gift is doubled! Partner with us to reach more people for Christ. If you already have an account, Sign in. Some events recorded in Scripture seem to be clearly outside of the normal physical processes which govern our world. We do not know all the laws of nature and processes in the world, so it is possible that God worked many miracles within the bounds of the laws of nature that He created and sustained e.
But it is also the case that God works some miracles completely beyond the limitations of the laws of nature that He created e. Creation ex nihilo from nothing was a six-day week of supernatural activity by God beyond what we see today.
Since creation, God has imposed natural laws that He established and ordained during Creation Week, and continues to sustain Genesis —15, ; Colossians —17; Hebrews However, God is not bound by these same laws that He upholds for creation ; He transcends them and gives them their force. And although He usually allows things to occur naturally and can work miracles within that natural law such as miracles of timing , at times He acts in supernatural ways, which we also call miracles.
The notion that miracles are impossible because they would potentially go beyond the laws of nature is not a rational argument. It merely presupposes the very thing it is supposed to be proving and is thus arbitrary. When someone says miracles are impossible, they are claiming to have all knowledge and are placing themselves in a position to say miracles are impossible. Miracles are indeed rare events. Keep in mind that the world is trying to delete any hand of God in miracles and make them naturalistic.
The greatest miracle of all time was the Resurrection of Jesus from the grave. Over the years, skeptics have invented all kinds of naturalistic ways to get around the historical reality of the Resurrection, but each story falls flat. Instead, He simply passed out because of the pain and entered a coma-like state. The soldiers, thinking He was dead, gave His body over to be buried. However, in the natural coolness of the tomb Jesus revived, rolled away the stone, somehow managed to escape the notice of the guards, and appeared to His disciples claiming He had risen from the dead.
However, He soon succumbed to His wounds and was buried elsewhere while His disciples began perpetuating the story of a resurrection. A slight variation on this theory has Jesus purposefully deceiving others by receiving a drink on the Cross that caused Him to lose consciousness. Like all Christians, Evolutionary Creationists believe that the biblical miracles happened and that God can do miracles today.
The Cambridge evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris notes:. I am not surprised at those [New Testament miracles] reported, I am surprised that they are so few. What else would you expect when the Creator visits his Creation?
However, Evolutionary Creationists differ with other Christian positions on origins about the extent to which God performed miracles in natural history. Young Earth Creationists see God creating the Earth and life in six calendar days through a series of miracles.
Old Earth creationists accept the much longer time-scales of mainstream science, but argue that God intervened miraculously at certain points in this long history to create certain features of the natural world. Supporters of Intelligent Design believe that natural laws are not enough to explain the development of life, and appeal to interventions into nature by an outside intelligence such as the God of the Bible.
Evolutionary Creationists, on the other hand, emphasize that God has created throughout natural history using regular patterns that can be described scientifically. This is not because we are opposed in principle to the concept of miracles, but because science has proved extraordinarily capable of filling in the gaps in our knowledge. Also, Evolutionary Creationists generally argue that the context of natural history is not fitting for a miracle: since there were no people living millions of years ago, the theological purpose of signs and wonders would be lost.
Together, the biblical and scientific evidence points to a God who chose to use regular chains of cause and effect to bring about the world we see today. Since God is the creator and sustainer of all physical laws, he clearly has the freedom and ability to supersede those laws when he wishes.
Miracles are simply cases where God chooses to work outside his usual patterns. Join us to receive the latest articles, podcasts, videos, and more, and help us show how science and faith work hand in hand. Properly understood, evolution is a scientific theory about the development of life and is consistent with Christian theology.
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