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The Case for Miracles

Page 26

by Lee Strobel


  11. Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 40.

  Chapter 3: Myths and Miracles

  1. John 21:25 reads, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

  2. Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 19.

  3. Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 1987), 61.

  4. The Gospel of Thomas, consisting of 114 sayings supposedly attributed to Jesus, has no actual link to the disciple by that name. It was written between AD 175 and 200—long after the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. See Lee Strobel, In Defense of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 23–67.

  5. See Strobel, In Defense of Jesus, 165–98.

  6. Tim Callahan, “Did Jesus Exist? What the Evidence Reveals,” Skeptic 19.1 (January 2014).

  7. First Corinthians 15:17 reads, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”

  8. Michael Shermer, Twitter post, August 31, 2016, 9:01 a.m., http://twitter.com/michaelshermer.

  9. Michael Shermer, “Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core,” Scientific American, October 1, 2014, www.scientificamerican.com/article/anomalous-events-that-can-shake-one-s-skepticism-to-the-core.

  Chapter 5: From Hume to Jesus

  1. See Matthew 11:21; Luke 10:13.

  2. See Matthew 11:4–6; Luke 7:22.

  3. See 1 Corinthians 15.

  4. For example, see Gary R. Habermas, “The Case for Christ’s Resurrection,” in To Everyone an Answer, ed. Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 180–98. According to Ulrich Wilckens, the creed “indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity” (Resurrection: Biblical Testimony to the Resurrection [Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1977], 2).

  5. See Geza Vermes, “The Jesus Notice of Josephus Re-examined,” Journal of Jewish Studies 38.1 (Spring 1987): 1–10; see also Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1981), 79.

  6. Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:144.

  7. Luke 11:20.

  8. Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 281.

  9. Larry Shapiro, The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 148, xiv–xv.

  10. For example, see David Johnson, Hume, Holism, and Miracles (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 76–78.

  11. See Mark J. Larson, “Three Centuries of Objections to Biblical Miracles,” Bibliotheca Sacra 160.637 (January 2003): 87.

  12. John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3.

  13. Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure, 5.

  14. Writes Earman, “In criticizing Hume’s argument against miracles, I have occasionally been subjected to a kind of reverse inquisition: since I attack Hume, must I not have some hidden agenda of Christian apologetics? I find such inquisitions profoundly distasteful since they deflect attention from the real issues. I am not averse, however, to laying my cards on the table. I find much that is valuable in the Judeo-Christian heritage, but I find nothing attractive, either intellectually or emotionally, in the theological doctrines of Christianity” (Hume’s Abject Failure, viii).

  15. Jeffrey Koperski, “Review of John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles,” Philosophia Christi 4.2 (2002): 558.

  16. Johnson, Hume, Holism, and Miracles, front flap.

  17. Johnson, Hume, Holism, and Miracles, 4.

  18. Keith Ward, “Believing in Miracles,” Zygon 37.3 (September 2002): 742.

  19. Jerry A. Coyne, Faith vs. Fact (New York: Viking, 2015), 124.

  20. For physicist Michael G. Strauss’s response to this contention, “Extraordinary Claims and Extraordinary Evidence,” Dr. Michael G. Strauss blog, May 21, 2017, www.michaelgstrauss.com/2017/05/extraordinary-claims-and-extraordinary.html.

  Chapter 6: A Tide of Miracles

  1. See Philip Yancey, “Jesus and Miracles,” Philip Yancey blog, August 20, 2015, www.philipyancey.com/Jesus-and-miracles, emphasis added.

  2. Gardner was a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and of the Association of Surgeons in East Africa. He served as an examiner to the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was ordained in the United Free Church of Scotland. See Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1986), back cover.

  3. Gardner, Healing Miracles, 202–5.

  4. Gardner, Healing Miracles, 206.

  5. Gardner, Healing Miracles, 165.

  6. See Harold P. Adolph, Today’s Decisions, Tomorrow’s Destiny (Spooner, WI: White Birch, 2006), 48–49; Scott J. Kolbaba, MD, Physicians’ Untold Stories (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2016), 115–22.

  7. “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

  8. Interestingly, the visiting minister, Wesley Steelberg Jr., had himself been healed of a heart condition when he had been given just hours to live; see Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 1:431–32.

  9. See Chauncey W. Crandall IV, MD, Raising the Dead: A Doctor Encounters the Miraculous (New York: FaithWords, 2010), 1–5.

  10. Crandall, Raising the Dead, 171–73.

  11. Robert A. Larmer, Dialogues on Miracle (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 117–19.

  12. See Matthew 12:9–14.

  13. J. P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the Spirit’s Power (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 168.

  14. Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang, eds., Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, rev. ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 391.

  15. Jim Rutz, Megashift (Colorado Springs: Empowerment, 2005), 4.

  16. “I would like to use my rudimentary French by talking with her.” The French version looks better in print than when I stumbled through it aloud.

  Chapter 7: The Science of Miracles

  1. Paul Copan et al., eds., Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 621.

  2. Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (March 1997): 19.

  3. Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” 22; see also Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999).

  4. Matthew 11:4–5.

  5. Mark 1:44.

  6. Candy Gunther Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 7.

  7. Mary Jo Meadow and Richard D. Kahoe, Psychology of Religion: Religion in Individual Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 120.

  8. Jesus answered him: “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:7).

  9. Not to be confused with the Unification Church or Unitarian Universalism. For more on the Unity School of Christianity, visit www.unity.org.

  10. Ron Rhodes, The Challenge of the Cults and New Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 118.

  11. Ruth A. Tucker, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 189, emphasis added.

  12. See Ron Rhodes, ed., Christian Research Newsletter 5.2 (1994), www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-nwsl/web/crn0052a.html, emphasis added.

  13. See “Unity School of Christianity,” Probe, May 27, 1995, www.probe.org/unity-school-of-christianity. Used in this theological sense, the term cult is not meant to be derogatory or pejorative, and it does
not necessarily suggest an authoritarian, mind-controlling, abusive, or secretive sect. An expert on alternative religions, the late Walter Martin, defined a theological cult this way: “By ‘cult,’ we mean a group, religious in nature, which surrounds a leader or a group of teachings which either denies or misrepresents essential biblical doctrine” (The New Cults [Ventura, CA: Regal, 1980], 16). Another expert, Alan Gomes, defined cults as “a group of people who claim to be Christian, yet embrace a particular doctrinal system taught by an individual leader, group of leaders, or organization, which (system) denies (either explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the Christian faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible” (Unmasking the Cults [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995], 7). For a discussion on how cults should be defined, see Rhodes, Challenge of the Cults, 19–35.

  14. Quoting May Rowland, Silent Unity’s director from 1916 to 1971; see Neal Vahle, The Unity Movement: Its Evolution and Spiritual Teachings (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2002), 246–47.

  15. Charles Fillmore, Christian Healing (Lee’s Summit, MO: Unity School of Christianity, 1954), 162, quoted in Tucker, Another Gospel, 184–85.

  16. Myrtle Fillmore, Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters (Unity Village, MO: Unity Books, 1988), 106.

  17. “What Is Affirmative Prayer?” www.unity.org/prayer/what-affirmative-prayer, emphasis added.

  18. See James 5:14.

  19. “Religions,” World Factbook, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2122.html.

  20. Tim Stafford, Miracles: A Journalist Looks at Modern-Day Experiences of God’s Power (Bloomington, MN: Bethany House, 2012), 150–51.

  21. “Comparitive [sic] Examples of Noise Levels,” www.industrialnoise control.com/comparative-noise-examples.htm.

  22. “Understanding the Eye Chart,” www.pearsoneyecare.com/2013/06/30/understanding-the-eye-chart.

  23. Brown, Testing Prayer, 217.

  24. See Brown, Testing Prayer, 214.

  Chapter 8: Dreams and Visions

  1. Luke 13:22–29.

  2. See Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016). My friend Nabeel died of stomach cancer in 2017 at age thirty-four after writing bestselling books about Jesus and traveling the world to talk about his Christian faith.

  3. See Tom Doyle, Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? (Nashville: Nelson, 2012), 127.

  4. Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 162.

  5. Doyle, Dreams and Visions, v.

  6. Tom Doyle, Killing Christians: Living the Faith Where It’s Not Safe to Believe (Nashville: W Publishing, 2015), back cover.

  7. Doyle changes the names of the people he talks about in the Middle East to protect their identity and keep them from potential danger. The name Rachel at the end of this chapter is also fictitious to avoid conflict with her Muslim relatives.

  8. John 14:27.

  9. Doyle tells a more complete story about Noor in his Dreams and Visions, 3–12.

  10. Genesis 18:25.

  11. John 1:1.

  12. John 14:6.

  Chapter 9: The Astonishing Miracle of Creation

  1. Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 291.

  2. Genesis 1:1.

  3. In referring to creation as a “miracle,” I’m using the term in the broad sense of being an amazing event instigated by God. As Oxford professor John C. Lennox observes, “Strictly speaking, miracles concern events that are exceptions to recognized laws. As such they clearly presuppose the existence of the normal course of things. It follows, then, that it does not really make sense to think of the creation of the normal course of things as a miracle” (Gunning for God [Oxford: Lion, 2011], 167).

  4. Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 60–61.

  5. Robert Evans, “Key Scientist Sure ‘God Particle’ Will Be Found Soon,” Reuters Science News, April 7, 2008, www.reuters.com/article/us-science-particle-idUSL0765287220080407; see also Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi, God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? (New York: Dell, 1993). The precise origin of the nickname is, a little like the boson itself, difficult to pin down. But experimental physicist Lederman wrote, “This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the [expletive deleted] Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one . . .” (p. 22).

  6. See Ken Boa and Larry Moody, I’m Glad You Asked: In-Depth Answers to Difficult Questions about Christianity (Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 1995).

  7. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

  8. Cited in George Gamow, My World Line: An Informal Autobiography (New York: Viking, 1970), 44.

  9. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, rev. ed. (New York: Bantam, 1998), 146.

  10. See William Lane Craig and Kevin Harris, “The First Split Second of the Universe,” Reasonable Faith, March 15, 2016, www.reasonablefaith.org/the-first-split-second-of-the-universe.

  11. Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin.

  12. Michael Martin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 183.

  13. William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2010), 70–71.

  14. Craig, On Guard, 74.

  15. Strauss elaborated: “Some scientists say quantum fluctuations are ‘uncaused’ events. First, there are some interpretations of quantum mechanics that may be correct that still require all events to be caused, such as Bohm’s interpretation. Second, these ‘uncaused’ events obey the laws of physics, even if only probabilistically. Is an event that obeys precise laws ‘uncaused’? Third, these events still occur within our space-time fabric, so again, there is a required foundation for them to occur. Fourth, we really don’t know how to interpret the quantum mechanical wave function since all we can do is make measurements, and those measurements precisely follow known laws. It is the process of the wave function to the measurement, which we don’t know how it really works, that is used to claim uncaused events. These arguments are not irrefutable, but I think it is a real stretch to claim that an event that is bound by our space-time laws of physics and explained by mathematics we don’t unambiguously know how to interpret, is truly ‘uncaused.’”

  16. Craig, On Guard, 91–92.

  17. Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 176.

  Chapter 10: Our Miraculous Universe and Planet

  1. “Christopher Hitchens Makes a Shocking Confession,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9TMwfkDwIY.

  2. Cambridge astrophysicist Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, a Cambridge-educated postdoctoral researcher at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, responded to the claim that “fine-tuning has been debunked” by replying, “No, it hasn’t.” Barnes reviewed the scientific literature on the topic, summarizing the conclusions of more than two hundred published papers in the field. “On balance, the fine-tuning of the Universe for life has stood up well under the scrutiny of physicists,” they wrote. They added that it is “not the case” that “fine-tuning is the invention of a bunch of religious believers who hijacked physics to their own ends.” Rather, they said, “physics has tended to consolidate our understanding of fine-tuning” (A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos [Cambridge, UK: Camb
ridge University Press, 2016], 241–42).

  3. Credit to Daniel Bakken, a Christian apologist who has a degree in physics.

  4. Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 90.

  5. See Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Greatest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1995), 117.

  6. Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 344.

  7. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 203.

  8. Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe: Changing Ideas on the Nature of the Universe (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 252.

  9. Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000), 220. For an excellent discussion of the importance of plate tectonics, see pages 191–220.

  10. Hugh Ross, “Probability for Life on Earth,” Reasons to Believe, April 1, 2004, www.reasons.org/articles/probability-for-life-on-earth; see also Hugh Ross, Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016).

  11. See John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

  12. Quoted in Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, 355.

  13. Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 78.

  14. Quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 136.

  15. Quoted in Lewis and Barnes, A Fortunate Universe, preface material.

  16. John Horgan, “Cosmic Clowning: Stephen Hawking’s ‘New’ Theory of Everything Is the Same Old Crap,” Scientific American blog post, September 13, 2010, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/cosmic-clowning-stephen-hawkings-new-theory-of-everything-is-the-same-old-crap.

  17. “Besides,” Strauss added, “even if it turns out the multiverse idea is true, it would actually support the case for a creator.” Why? He explained: “Not only would the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem point toward a beginning that would need a creator, but the extra dimensions of string theory would require that any creator exist in multiple dimensions. That would mean he could easily perform miraculous acts in our four dimensions. In fact, a discovery of other universes or extra dimensions would, in some sense, increase the necessary magnitude of any creator. One could legitimately ask the question, ‘How many universes would an infinite God create?’”

 

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