by Lee Strobel
But when it came to specifically asking God for healing, how bold should I be? How strongly should I phrase my request? My unstated fear: What if I stick out my neck and beseech God for healing—and nothing happens? Was I copping out when I concluded my prayer with, “Your will be done”?
Ultimately, I prayed as authentically as I knew how and with as much faith as I could muster. I did explicitly ask God to supernaturally restore the health of all those gathered. But in the back of my mind, I wondered if he would really come through for them in this world. Selfishly, I fretted that my credibility was at stake.
After all, for every person who experiences a miracle like the one that happened to Duane Miller, whose voice was instantaneously restored after several years as he preached, there are many others whose healing won’t come until heaven.
In fact, the day Miller’s voice was miraculously cured, a thirty-two-year-old father of two children was sitting in that same congregation. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Despite the church’s fervent prayers, he died two weeks later.9
I couldn’t identify with some of my Pentecostal friends who cite Isaiah 53:5—“with his stripes we are healed”—to claim that if someone has sufficient faith in Jesus, then physical healing will surely flow in this life. Of course, that means the reverse would also be true—if they aren’t healed, then it’s somehow their fault for lacking faith. That’s untenable to me.
Miller is as perplexed as anyone why he was selected for such dramatic supernatural action. “I can’t give you ‘ten principles to prepare for God’s healing,’” he said. “It wasn’t my faith, it wasn’t my response, it wasn’t my obedience, I didn’t earn a thing. I just received His unearned favor.”10
Miracles versus Coincidence
Driving through downtown Houston, its streets choked with cars at rush hour, I inched toward a skyscraper where I was due for a meeting—and against all odds, I spotted a vacant parking space adjacent to the door.
A miracle, I mused—and maybe it was. Or maybe it wasn’t. The truth is that we often throw around that term too loosely.
I set my computer to search for the key word miracle among the news stories on the internet, and invariably all sorts of articles are snagged. Just today, there were such headlines as “Boat captain rescues ‘miracle’ cat thrown off bridge,” “Miracle on Water Street: A doctor witnesses crash, saves man’s life,” and “Miracle baby born the size of a tennis ball now home.” A football player was said to need a “miracle” to resuscitate his sagging career, and a diver who survived after hitting his head on the platform during a competition is called a “miracle man.”
What’s the best way to define the miraculous? Philosophers and theologians have offered various descriptions. Augustine was poetic, saying a miracle is “whatever appears that is difficult or unusual above the hope and power of them who wonder.” Scottish philosopher David Hume was skeptical: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” Oxford’s Richard Swinburne was straightforward, calling a miracle “an event of an extraordinary kind brought about by a god and of religious significance.”11
Personally, I’m partial to the definition offered by the late Richard L. Purtill, professor emeritus of philosophy at Western Washington University: “A miracle is an event (1) brought about by the power of God that is (2) a temporary (3) exception (4) to the ordinary course of nature (5) for the purpose of showing that God has acted in history.”12
To illustrate his definition, Purtill recounted how he had been prescribed nitroglycerine tablets for a heart condition. The pharmacist said something that stuck in his mind: if two pills taken in succession don’t relieve the pain, take a third but immediately call an ambulance.
Not long afterward, he awoke with chest pain. He took one pill and later another, but neither had an effect. He took a third. His wife offered to drive him to the hospital, but he asked her to call 911. She did, the paramedics arrived promptly, and his life was saved.
After he recovered, he had a flat tire on a car trip and his heart stopped while he was changing the tire. He fell unconscious, his head on the freeway. Two passing motorists stopped; both of them just happened to know CPR. One called the paramedics. Purtill’s heart was restarted, and his life was spared once more.
Although he said he’s grateful to God for the outcome, Purtill stressed that “there was nothing in the events to suggest any nonnatural causes. The pharmacist’s remarks, the training of the people who helped me, the medical technology are all things that seem to need no nonnatural explanation.”
Consequently, he doesn’t consider his preservation to be miraculous. On the other hand, he does believe as a Christian that “God was, as usual, hiding divine action in plain sight amid the ordinary course of events.”13
So some of what we casually classify as “miracles” really seem closer to fortunate “coincidences,” or God at work through routine processes. How can we tell them apart? For me, when I see something extraordinary that has spiritual overtones and is validated by an independent source or event, that’s when the “miracle” bell goes off in my mind.
In other words, a dream about a nebulous figure writing chemistry problems on a blackboard isn’t miraculous in itself. But if those equations are the very same problems that present themselves on an independently prepared examination the next day, that does seem miraculous—especially when the incident occurs after a prayer pleading for God’s help.
Spontaneous remissions do happen sometimes in serious illnesses, but they usually take place over a period of time and often do not endure. If a serious illness is instantly and permanently eradicated at the exact moment a prayer for healing is being offered—well, that tends to push the needle over into the “miracle” category for me.
More Than 94 Million “Miracles”
It’s not surprising that my former tribe of atheists deny the possibility of the miraculous, although it is startling how many of them are so vocally hostile to the concept.
“For New Atheists and their fellow travelers . . . skepticism has become an evangelical endeavor,” said Noah Berlatsky, a contributing writer for The Atlantic. “It’s not enough to sit in the corner and quietly disbelieve; they must spread their disbelief at the point of rationalism’s sharp sword. Like an enlightened imperial conqueror, the skeptic will liberate you from the weight of tradition and superstition—whether you want to be liberated or not.”14
The late atheist Christopher Hitchens used his considerable wit and rhetorical flair to try to humiliate anyone who dared to publicly affirm that miracles have taken place. In debating Christians, he would ask, “Do you really believe that Jesus was born of a virgin? Do you really believe that he rose from the dead?”
If the Christian answered yes, Hitchens would declare with a dramatic flourish, “Ladies and gentlemen, my opponent has just demonstrated that science has done nothing for his worldview.”
Said Timothy McGrew, chairman of the philosophy department at Western Michigan University, “It is always a shrewd move to paint one’s adversary as an enemy of science, and Hitchens rarely let slip an opportunity for good theater. But good theater is not always good reasoning.”15
So where do most Americans stand on the topic of miracles? As I began researching this book, my curiosity prompted me to commission a national scientific survey, which was conducted by Barna Research.16 This is the first place the results have appeared.
Interestingly, half of US adults (51 percent) said they believe that the miracles of the Bible happened as they are described.
Asked whether miracles are possible today, two out of three Americans (67 percent) said yes, with only 15 percent saying no. Young adults were less likely (61 percent) to believe than Boomers (73 percent). Incidentally, Republicans were more likely to believe in modern miracles (74 percent) than Democrats (61 percent).
I was interested in what was generating the skepticism of those who don’t think miracles can occur these days. Forty-four percent didn’t
believe in the supernatural, while 20 percent were convinced that modern science has ruled out the possibility of miracles.
Most of all, I wanted to know how many people have had an experience that they can only explain as being a miracle of God.
As it turns out, nearly two out of five US adults (38 percent) said they have had such an experience—which means that an eye-popping 94,792,000 Americans are convinced that God has performed at least one miracle for them personally.17 That is an astonishing number!
Even weeding out instances that were actually “coincidences”—as many of those undoubtedly would be—that still leaves a surprising number of seemingly supernatural events.
However, the percentage decreased with education—41 percent of those with a high school diploma said they have had a divine intervention, compared to 29 percent of college graduates. The same was true for income levels, with more skepticism among the wealthy. In terms of ethnicity, more than half of Hispanics and blacks affirmed such an experience, compared to a third of whites.
Unsurprisingly, the number soared to nearly 78 percent among evangelical Christians. Perhaps many of them wouldn’t even be believers had they not experienced God in a remarkable way.
Although skeptic Harriet Hall dismissed supernatural reports as being “more common from the uncivilized and uneducated,”18 a 2004 survey showed that 55 percent of US physicians have seen results in their patients that they would consider miraculous.19 That’s coming from highly educated professionals trained in medicine and working on the front lines of serving the sick and injured.
Three-quarters of the 1,100 doctors surveyed are convinced that miracles can occur today—a percentage that’s actually higher than that of the US population in general. So maybe it’s not surprising that six out of ten physicians said they pray for their patients individually.20
Hitting the Road Again
The big issue, however, is whether belief in supernatural occurrences is based on mistake, misunderstanding, fraud, legend, rumor, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, the placebo effect—or reality.
In other words, does a miracle-performing God actually exist, and has he left his fingerprints all over supernatural events throughout history down to the present age? Is he even available to intervene in your life today?
That’s what I set out to determine in writing this book. While I’m a committed Christian whose convictions are widely known, I was truly interested in testing the strength of the case for miracles.
“Here we go again,” Leslie muttered with a smile when she saw me stuffing clothes into my suitcase.
Yes, I was hitting the road to conduct face-to-face research with leading authorities so I could tap into their lifetime of experience and expertise. That has been the methodology in most of my books: seeking out experts I can cross-examine in digging for truth.
I figured there was no better place to start than to interview the most famous doubter in the country—Dr. Michael Shermer, founder and editor of Skeptic magazine.
I zipped my luggage closed and grabbed my boarding pass for Los Angeles. My goal in questioning Shermer was simple: I wanted him to build the strongest possible case against miracles. After all, if it’s rational to believe in the miraculous, then that case surely should be able to stand up to his challenges.
In the end, I’ll ask you to render a verdict on whether or not it does.
PART 1
The Case against Miracles
An Interview with Dr. Michael Shermer
CHAPTER 1
The Making of a Skeptic
This was not a place where I would typically hang out. There I was, a committed Christian, sitting at a conference table in the offices of Skeptic magazine, inside a two-bedroom wooden house in a residential neighborhood just north of Los Angeles.
Framed covers of the iconoclastic periodical ringed the walls. Busts of Darwin and Einstein perched atop a redbrick fireplace. Crowded shelves teeming with books and snarky trinkets jammed every spare inch of space. There was a bar of “Wash Away Your Sins” soap, promising to reduce guilt by 98.9 percent. The label of a beer bottle acquired on a trip to Utah read, “Polygamy Porter: Why Stop at Just One?”
In a sense, I was visiting the anti-church, a shrine to the science and reason that—in the view of many skeptics, anyway—squeeze out the legitimacy of faith in God.
There was a time when I might have been a writer for this free-thinking journal. But that was years ago, during my atheist era, when I enjoyed nothing more than poking fun at Christians who clung to the teachings of first-century Middle Eastern sheepherders. At that time in my life, I would have relished a pilgrimage to this sanctuary of skepticism.
These days, I’m convinced that science and history—indeed, reason itself—actually support the Christian worldview. My atheism has been turned upside down and inside out, if not miraculously, then unexpectedly and decisively.
Today I came to these offices to meet face-to-face with my polar opposite: someone whose journey has taken him from faith to doubt, turning him from a proselytizer for Jesus into an apologist for disbelief.
In short, a skeptic’s skeptic.
After I waited for a few minutes, sixty-one-year-old Michael Shermer, diminutive and wiry, came bounding into the room, fresh from his regular Thursday bicycle ride with two dozen friends. Today he rode fifty miles on his carbon fiber German cycle, which weighs a scant fifteen pounds. The workout was a down payment on the two hundred or so miles he bikes each week.
“It’s a little addictive,” he concedes with a smile.
Wearing a black T-shirt, black pants, and sandals, Shermer sits down adjacent to me at the conference table and flips up the screen of his laptop. He has a warm handshake and an infectious smile. His graying hair is receding, but he’s full of a teenager’s energy and enthusiasm.
Shermer seems to check all the boxes of the stereotypical Californian. Exercise enthusiast? Yes, he has even published two books on bicycling. Careful diet? Yes, he eats chicken or fish only once a week. “Rarely red meat,” he said. Electric car? Of course: “I haven’t been in a gas station in more than a year.” Politically, he’s liberal on social issues, though conservative fiscally.
Shermer used to live in this 1,062-square-foot house, which was built in 1941 and is surrounded by a tall wooden fence. Now it’s the home of his 35,000-circulation Skeptic magazine and the Skeptic Society—nonprofit ventures he founded in 1992. Four employees work here; the garage serves as the mailroom. Two other employees live in Canada, publishing a Skeptic magazine for kids.
Shermer’s office is narrow and lined with posters promoting his various debates, including “Does God Exist?” and “Can Science and Religion Reconcile?” In photos on the wall, he’s smiling alongside atheist Richard Dawkins of Oxford and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard.
We pause to take a selfie of ourselves smiling together. He later posts it on Twitter, though I’m doubtful it will end up on his wall.
Both Strange and True?
I told Shermer I had sought him out for two reasons. First, I appreciated his reputation as someone wary of religion and yet generally free from the mocking tone employed by some of the more militant anti-theists. Yes, that includes his friend Dawkins, who once encouraged fellow atheists to “ridicule and show contempt” for religious beliefs and sacraments.1
In contrast, Shermer likes the approach of Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who said in 1667, “I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”2
Second, I was looking for someone who could present the best possible case against the miraculous, free from emotion and backed with studies and reasoned arguments. “I want your best stuff,” I said.
As the interview was about to begin, I glanced over my shoulder. Dangling from a nail was a pair of boxing gloves—A good sign, I thought, because I sincerely wanted him to hit me with his strongest objections to miracles.
&nb
sp; I made it clear: I was not here to debate him. I didn’t fly all the way to California for an argument. I wanted to listen and learn, to dialogue and discuss. I didn’t see why the faithful and the faithless couldn’t sit down and talk rationally, even about a topic that in its very nature transcends mere rationality. Besides, I wanted to hear Shermer’s story directly from him. What could I learn from someone who has taken the opposite path from the one I took?
Certainly I couldn’t find a better skeptic than Michael Brant Shermer, whose curriculum vitae goes on for nearly thirty pages. He earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology and biology at Pepperdine University, his master’s degree in experimental psychology at California State University, and his doctorate in the history of science at Claremont Graduate University. His dissertation was on nineteenth-century British evolutionary thinker Alfred Russel Wallace, who declared himself in 1861 to be “an utter disbeliever in almost all . . . [of] the most sacred truths.”3
Shermer is a columnist for Scientific American, writing under the banner “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye.” At Chapman University in Orange, California, Shermer teaches a course on critical thinking, aptly titled Skepticism 101. He has authored more than a dozen books, including How We Believe, The Science of Good and Evil, Why Darwin Matters, The Believing Brain, The Moral Arc, and his latest: Heavens on Earth.
He has spoken at more than a hundred colleges and universities, including Harvard (three times), Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is widely published in popular and academic publications (for example, “How to Be Open-Minded without Your Brains Falling Out” in the fall 2002 edition of Journal of Thought). He has appeared on numerous television programs and was a producer and cohost of “Exploring the Unknown” on the Fox Family Channel. His TED Talks include one that’s titled “Why People Believe Strange Things.”