by Lee Strobel
2. Which example of fine-tuning made the biggest impact on you and why?
3. Oxford’s Richard Swinburne said that when it comes to explaining the fine-tuning of the universe, it’s “the height of irrationality” to postulate a proliferation of other universes—for which there is no physical evidence—rather than to believe in the existence of one God. Do you agree? Why or why not?
4. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross said, “It is worth noting that Scripture speaks about the transcendent beginning of physical reality, including time itself (Genesis 1:1; John 1:3; Colossians 1:15–17; Hebrews 11:3); about continual cosmic expansion, or “stretching out” (Job 9:8; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22; 45:12; Jeremiah 10:12); about unchanging physical laws (Jeremiah 33:25), one of which is the pervasive law of decay (Ecclesiastes 1:3–11; Romans 8:20–22).” Take some time to look up the biblical references that intrigue you the most. How does science confirm what the Scriptures tell us about creation?
5. Science philosopher Tim Maudlin says there are just two plausible explanations for the universe’s fine-tuning: a multiverse or a designer. In your view, which explanation fits the overall evidence the best? What facts support your conclusion?
6. A common objection by skeptics is, “If God created the universe, then who created God?” How convincing are the answers offered by Michael Strauss and William Lane Craig? Why?
Chapter 11: The Miracle of the Resurrection
1. Have you ever watched TV programs on how investigators cracked old murder cases that others hadn’t been able to figure out? What are some of the essential skills a detective would need to successfully solve these “cold” cases? How might this expertise be relevant to determining whether Jesus really rose from the dead?
2. Detective J. Warner Wallace used the example of a stabbing victim to illustrate how presuppositions can deter detectives from pursuing the truth. How can preformed opinions influence whether a person is open to the possibility of miracles? Have you ever had a closed mind toward the miraculous? What happened?
3. When he was an atheist, Wallace’s evaluation of the four gospels convinced him that the writers intended to record what took place. Skeptic Michael Shermer believes the gospels are fanciful stories that were told to make a moral point. Now that you have read both their explanations, which viewpoint do you believe is best supported by the evidence and why?
4. Wallace said that when witnesses experience something that’s unique, unrepeated, and personally important or powerful, they are much more likely to remember it. Can you think of an example of this from your own life? How does this observation apply to the reliability of the gospels?
5. Investigating the historicity of the resurrection can be reduced to two issues: Was Jesus dead after his crucifixion, and was he reliably encountered alive again afterward? Do you believe Wallace sufficiently established both points? What facts did you find the most persuasive?
6. Wallace considered several popular challenges to the resurrection: that Jesus’ tomb was empty because his body was discarded and never buried; that the disciples conspired to lie about having seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion; that the disciples were having visions or hallucinations when they saw him; and that Jesus (according to the Qur’an) was never executed in the first place. Which of these challenges was strongest to you and why? How did Wallace answer the objection? How satisfied are you with his explanation?
7. Wallace said that after becoming convinced of Jesus’ identity, “the more I understood the true nature of Jesus, the more my true nature was exposed—and I didn’t like what I saw.” Can you relate to that uncomfortable experience? How?
Chapter 12: Embarrassed by the Supernatural
1. Have you ever had a seemingly supernatural experience you were reluctant to share because you didn’t want others to think you were a religious fanatic? Please tell the story. Even if you’ve never had that happen personally, can you understand why people might feel that way? What would be some possible reasons for their reluctance?
2. More than thirty years ago, two respected Christian thinkers wrote an article called “Embarrassed by God’s Presence,” in which they accused some churches of operating as if God didn’t really matter. “The central problem for our church, its theology, and its ethics is that it is simply atheistic,” they wrote. Do you think that assessment, though harsh, still holds today? How so? Have you seen examples of churches or individual Christians who affirm the doctrines of faith but who live as if God is irrelevant to them?
3. Do you agree with Roger Olson that some churches and Christians are not fully convinced that God is still supernaturally active? How might this be reflected in their lives and attitudes?
4. Said Olson, “The richer we get, the more education we attain, the less comfortable we are with the miraculous.” Do you agree or disagree? Olson said the quest for respectability prompts some Christians to feel embarrassed by the supernatural. “We are desperate to fit in,” he said. What do you think of this observation?
5. Pastor Bill Hybels talks about “the whispers of God”—gentle nudgings of the Holy Spirit through which God leads us. Hybels said these divine leadings are an integral part of his life. Can you describe an experience where you believe God was leading you?
6. Olson said that balance is important—not to be too credulous about the miraculous, while still being open to God’s supernatural activity. How might that balance play out in your own life? How can Christians safeguard against tipping too far toward skepticism or gullibility?
7. Olson describes an intriguing experience he had concerning a hymn. In the end, he concludes this may have been a coincidence, or it may have been God subtly sending him a message. Which do you think it was and why?
Chapter 13: When Miracles Don’t Happen
1. Have you ever prayed fervently for God to perform a miracle in your life, but the miracle you requested never came? Describe the circumstances. How did you react? What emotions did you feel? How did this experience affect your view of God?
2. In struggling with his wife’s dementia, Douglas Groothuis has never questioned whether God exists, but at times he has questioned God’s goodness. Can you relate to that? If so, how did you grapple with your feelings? Groothuis added that pondering Jesus hanging on the cross for him “brings me back to spiritual sanity.” Why do you think that is?
3. Groothuis said, “We may not know what God is achieving in the short run, but given the credibility of Christianity and my forty years as a Christian, I am justified in believing there can be significance and purpose in suffering.” What kind of “significance and purpose” do you believe can be found in our suffering? What good might God draw from such experiences?
4. Groothuis said he is learning how to “suffer well.” What might that look like? How can a person lament without sinning? On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His lament was answered by his resurrection. Why is the resurrection of Jesus the ultimate answer for us as well?
5. Groothuis draws a distinction between meaningless suffering and inscrutable suffering. How would you describe the difference between them? Was this delineation helpful for you? In what way?
6. What did you think of the “prayer of relinquishment” that Groothuis prayed? When is it appropriate to offer such a prayer? When I asked Groothuis how this prayer changed his attitude toward healing, he said, “Rather than feeling like I’m always beating God with my fists, now I feel more like I’m resting in his arms.” Which of these feelings best describes you when the answer you’ve sought hasn’t come?
Conclusion: Reaching Your Verdict
1. Have you ever prayed aloud in the presence of someone who was sick? What thoughts ran through your mind as you did so? How boldly and confidently did you specifically ask God to heal him or her? Did you feel more comfortable praying for God to guide their doctor or work through their medication? Why?
2. Adrian Holloway pointed out that even Jesus didn’t heal people autom
atically; the disciples failed to cure an epileptic boy even after they had been given the authority to heal; and Paul was never relieved of his thorn in the flesh. Said Holloway, “So there are biblical reasons that we shouldn’t be surprised when everyone isn’t healed in each and every instance.” Does this help you with the question of why many people remain sick despite prayers for their healing? Why or why not?
3. Tricia Lott Williford, who was widowed with two young children, said, “Faith is not measured by our ability to manipulate God to get what we want. It is measured by our willingness to submit to what he wants.” What’s your take on her observation? How might this impact your own attitude when requested miracles don’t come?
4. For skeptic Harriet Hall, it would take a chicken who spoke English, learned to read, and beat a grandmaster in chess for her to “provisionally conclude” that something occurred that was “impossible to explain without appealing to supernatural forces.” Is that a reasonable place to set the bar of belief? What might motivate someone to demand that level of proof for the miraculous?
5. Lee Strobel’s conclusion is that “the case against miracles falls short.” Do you share his opinion? Describe why or why not. How about the case for miracles? After reading this book, are you convinced that God continues to supernaturally intervene in people’s lives? What was the most persuasive element for you in the case for miracles and why?
6. Michael Shermer believes that God—if he exists—won’t judge him harshly due to his efforts to lead a good life. But Romans 3:23 warns that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The Bible makes it clear that salvation cannot be earned by our good deeds, but must be received as a gift of grace through faith. Romans 6:23 explains, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Why is it difficult for people to receive this gift of forgiveness and eternal life? Have you taken that step? If not, why not do so now?
Notes
Quotes (pages 11–12)
1. “Thomas A. Edison on Immortality: The Great Inventor Declares Immortality of the Soul Improbable,” interview with Edward Marshall, Columbian Magazine 3.4 (January 1911).
2. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (New York: Norton, 1996), 139.
3. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam, 2010), 30.
4. C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 13.
5. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: New American Library, 1957), 34.
6. John C. Lennox, Miracles: Is Belief in the Supernatural Irrational? (Cambridge, MA: Veritas Forum, 2013), 25. This booklet contains the text of Lennox’s talk under the same title at a Veritas Forum at Harvard University in 2012.
7. Eric Metaxas, Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life (New York: Dutton, 2014), 16.
8. G. K. Chesterton, The Innocence of Father Brown (London: Cassell, 1911), 2.
Introduction: Investigating the Miraculous
1. See Anugrah Kumar, “Ben Carson Says God Helped Him Ace College Chemistry Exam by Giving Answers in a Dream,” Christian Post, May 9, 2015, www.christianpost.com/news/ben-carson-says-God-helped-him-ace-college-chemistry-exam-by-giving-answers-in-dream-138913.
2. Helen Roseveare, Living Faith (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1980), 44–45.
3. Miller tells his story in Speechless (Houston: Worldwide, 2017) and Out of the Silence (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996).
4. Visit NuVoice Ministries at www.nuvoice.org.
5. See Joel Landau, “‘Mysterious Voice’ Led Utah Cops to Discover Child Who Survived for 14 Hours in Submerged Car after Mom Drowned,” New York Daily News, March 9, 2015, www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mysterious-voice-leads-police-baby-car-crash-article-1.2142732; Leonard Greene, “Baby Survives Being Trapped 14 Hours in Submerged Car,” New York Post, March 9, 2015, http://nypost.com/2015/03/09/baby-survives-14-hours-trapped-in-car-submerged-in-icy-river; Billy Hollowell, “Police Can’t Explain the Mysterious Voice That They Claim Led Them to the Baby Girl Trapped for 14 Hours in Frigid Waters,” The Blaze, March 10, 2015, www.theblaze.com/news/2015/03/10/police-cant-explain-the-mysterious-voice-that-they-claim-led-them-to-the-baby-girl-trapped-for-14-hours-in-frigid-waters.
6. Justin Brierley, “Derren Brown: The Miracle Maker Reveals His Christian Past,” Premier Christianity, September 2016, www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2016/September-2016/Derren-Brown-The-miracle-maker-reveals-his-Christian-past.
7. Nicholas Kristof, “Am I a Christian, Pastor Timothy Keller?” New York Times, December 23, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/opinion/sunday/pastor-am-i-a-christian.html.
8. For a good analysis of this issue, see John Piper, “Are Signs and Wonders for Today?” Desiring God, February 25, 1990, www.desiringgod.org/messages/are-signs-and-wonders-for-today.
9. Miller, Speechless, 122.
10. Miller, Speechless, 141.
11. For these and many other definitions and their citations, see Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), 134–36.
12. Richard L. Purtill, “Defining Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 72.
13. Purtill, “Defining Miracles,” 61–62.
14. Noah Berlatsky, “Is It Immoral to Believe in Miracles?” Religion Dispatches, December 22, 2016. www.religiondispatches.org/miracle-myth-review.
15. Timothy McGrew, “Do Miracles Really Violate the Laws of Science?” Slate, undated, www.slate.com/bigideas/are-miracles-possible/essays-and-opinions/timothy-mcgrew-opinion.
16. A random representative sample of 1,000 US adults completed this questionnaire. The sample error is +/-3.1 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. The response rate was 55 percent. The survey was conducted as the research for this book began in 2015.
17. Based on 2016 US government estimate of population over the age of eighteen at 249,454,440. See www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/.
18. Harriet Hall, “On Miracles,” Skeptic 19.3 (2014): 18.
19. This survey was conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary; see “Science or Miracle? Holiday Season Survey Reveals Physicians’ Views of Faith, Prayer and Miracles,” BusinessWire, December 20, 2004, www.businesswire.com/news/home/20041220005244/en/Science-Miracle-Holiday-Season-Survey-Reveals-Physicians.
20. See “Science or Miracle?”
Chapter 1: The Making of a Skeptic
1. Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Richard Dawkins to Atheist Rally: ‘Show Contempt’ for Faith,” USA Today, March 24, 2012, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2012/03/-atheists-richard-dawkins-reason-rally/1.
2. Another rendering: “I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or denounce human actions, but to understand them” (Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, trans. A. H. Gossett [1667; repr., London: Bell, 1883]), quoted in Michael Shermer, The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives (New York: Holt, 2008), xxiv.
3. Letter from Alfred Russel Wallace to brother-in-law Thomas Sims in 1861, quoted in James Marchant, ed., Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscence (1916; repr., New York: Qontro, 2010), 1:94.
4. All interviews are edited for conciseness, clarity, and content.
5. See Michael Shermer, How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, 2003), 4–5.
6. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain [1940; repr., New York: HarperCollins, 1996], 91).
7. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (Ne
w York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.
8. Today, Maureen, still a paraplegic, is married with two children.
Chapter 2: The Knockdown Argument
1. Huxley said, “They [believers] were quite sure they had attained a certain ‘gnosis’—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble” (Collected Essays [New York: Appleton, 1894], 237–38).
2. See Michael Shermer, The Believing Brain (New York: Holt, 2011), 2.
3. Jerry A. Coyne, Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (New York: Viking, 2015), 124.
4. Richard L. Purtill, “Defining Miracles,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 72.
5. I’m not related to forward Eric Strobel from Rochester, Minnesota, who played on that historic team.
6. Herbert Benson et al., “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: A Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer,” American Heart Journal 151.4 (April 2006): 934–42.
7. Quoted in Ernest C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 117.
8. William Edward Morris and Charlotte R. Brown, “David Hume,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume.
9. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, rev. ed. (New York: Holt, 2002), 45.
10. See David Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 2nd ed., ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1902), 116–17, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-enquiries-concerning-the-human-understanding-and-concerning-the-principles-of-morals.