Lesson 2: Can Prayer Override Scientific Law?

A. CRITICS’ POINTS

1. If God overrode the mechanical ecological system of the universe, an unknown number of cause and effect “accidents” would produce chaos.

2. Miracles are only a myth to perpetuate Christianity.

3. The observers were wrong in their perception, or the writers embellished the stories.

4. Argue that certain supernatural miracles in the Bible couldn’t happen.

 Jesus and Peter walking on water (Matt. 14:22-36)

 Raising the dead

 Fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah

 Raining bread daily from heaven, i.e., manna

 Feeding 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish

 Giving sight to a blind man

 Turning water into wine

B. BEGINNING TO ANSWER THE CRITICS

1. The best answer is to look at the assumption of critics. They reject the supernatural, and hold to naturalism.

2. The naturalist looks at the universe as a closed box. Everything that exists and everything that happens, has its existence inside the box.

3. Carl Sagan, the naturalist and astronomer said, “The cosmos is all that is, or ever has been, or ever will be.”

4. A naturalist has to reject the supernatural. If he doesn’t he begins to move away from his natural worldview.

5. He cannot be consistent and hold both naturalism and supernaturalism at the same time.

C. QUESTIONS FROM A BRICK WALL FOR CRITICS

1. “What are these bricks? There must be a brick maker!”

2. Each brick is technically not a brick, but each one is an atom.

3. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are described by electrostatic attraction.

4. Where did these bricks come from? If you are a naturalist or evolutionist, “natural causes” or “random selection.”

5. If you are a supernaturalist, “All things were created through Him (Christ) and apart from Him, not one thing was created” (John 1:3).

6. Questions from the critics: “Why doesn’t the electrons, protons, or neutrons speed up faster, or go slower? Or, why doesn’t one of them fly off on its own accord?”

a. The naturalist: It must cause a nuclear fusion, or nuclear explosion.

b. The supernaturalist: “By Him (Christ) all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). God’s law is the controlling force that keeps the movement of the particles in perpetual motion.

7. What is law? Law is an extension of person and power of God, and is the energy that controls the universe.

a. If there are laws, who is the law maker?

b. Since there is life within the atom, where did life come from? Life means energy or power. God is life, and He has put His life or power in His creation.

c. Since there is energy of life, where did energy come from?

8. You can’t say creation is God, which is Pantheism. We don’t believe that God is matter; we believe God is a powerful person. And we see the Creator in His creation.

9. Scientists have failed to demonstrate or identify the origin of life (organic matter). How can nothing become something?

10. The naturalist (limited by his box) will not admit that something outside the box jumped into the box to start what he calls evolution.

D. PARABLE OF THE BRICK WALL

1. The wall is beautiful with arches and all kinds of beautiful windows.

2. Since the wall has a design what is the source of beauty and design? There must be an intelligent Designer.

3. A naturalist answers the laws of evolution as a process by which everything evolved from a lower, simpler form to a higher or more complex or better state.

4. The intricate inter-dependability of every aspect of nature to another suggests God had a design in mind and creation happened suddenly.

E. LESSONS FROM STAR WARS

1. George Lucas, the originator of Star Wars. “May the force be with you.” The force was an unseen, yet powerful energy.

2. Lucas said to the naturalist thinking in his box, there is a force outside your thinking. A force outside the naturalist’s box could be used by people in the box.

3. Lucas is only an illustration of our approach to critics.

F. TOWARD AN ANSWER

God who is the Source that originates laws, can create a higher law, or suspend His laws, or bring natural forces together to answer prayer that seems to break naturalistic laws.

1. God does not break laws because law is an extension of the nature and purpose of God, and is the power by which He controls His universe.

2. Since God cannot change (Mal. 3:6), then His laws do not change.

3. The law of gravity is overridden in a man-made decompression chamber. If man-made machines can override the law of gravity, why cannot God do the same thing?

4. “A miracle is an interference of the laws of nature for divine purposes.” ~C. S. Lewis