Why? With God controlling the shuffling of the cards you could deal yourself royal flushes for a very long time if that was His will. Yes the results would indicate something is going on but you would be unable to determine how this is happening.
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I’m afraid I have to agree @Bill_II here. You could suspect or intuit agency, but there would be no way to demonstrate it. That’s where the Discovery Institute et al. have blown it.
The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
We know who is in control, and it’s not us. Even though there is a lot of evidence, it cannot be proven scientifically.
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You don’t need to apologize for sharing Pascal here, Jay!
In fact … try to imagine the possible scenarios where such a “requirement” was in place contra Jay’s assertion above. What would this require of God?
Scenario 1: God would have to somehow explicitly mark off those particular “set apart” works with an unmistakable signature. [Yes - the resurrection uniquely qualifies, but what is in sight here seems to be something repeatedly and routinely demonstrable and universally observable.] In other words, what is sought is something that, while part of the regularity of observable life, is nonetheless unmistakably God’s fingerprint. This would then require (or inevitably be followed with) a dichotomy between sacred and profane. I.e. this over here? … It’s holy ground. All the rest of the stuff over there? Nothing to see there … It’s not of God.
And that erroneous conclusion is, I suggest, the fatal demise of the above scenario for any thinking Christian.
Scenario 2: God must be a “bit player”, i.e. an unmistakable and visible participant within the created order. Here lies the wish of the skeptic … “well, if God really wants me to believe, all that is needed is God’s special appearance to me here and now.” And again … on the Christian view of things, Jesus himself fills this qualification. But given that even his contemporaries did not universally recognize any divinity about him, it is no surprise that even more historical removal will leave today’s skeptics unsatisfied. So they want the unmistakable appearance for present appraisal, and ratified by an otherwise impossible magic show …(think John Denver’s ‘Oh God’ movie.) So imagine that all this happens. What does this make of God? Again, God would be seen as the “bit player” within the order of things. Here is God now in this “courtroom” in front of us – meaning that God is apparently absent elsewhere. It is the charlatan god that is (rightly?) mocked by skeptics as the apparently deficient super-human. Strong - yes, but not nearly strong enough apparently as such a god is repeatedly arraigned on growing mountains of theodicy charges. The atheist may reply … “wait a minute! Don’t you brag on Jesus doing exactly these sorts of displays? Calming seas with a word… raising the dead… defeating death himself? How is all that any different?” To be sure; they have a point there, that is not entirely here answered. But I do offer a partial answer: Jesus also makes the bold claim that he has done nothing that would be above, or prohibited for any of his disciples to follow - and in fact they can be expected to do even greater works! (John 14:12 and surrounding verses). So in essence, I think Jesus is here inviting us all into his own full humanity in God. In some ways this nullifies or repudiates our need to cast about and “find God here” or “spot God there.” In fact Jesus warns us about those sorts of obsessions, and even predicts that charlatans will try to fulfill our obsession by putting on just such a show as we want. (beginning at Matthew 24:23).
This, I suggest, is the fatal answer given to this second desired scenario above. But in an important way, this answer makes things much worse for today’s would-be believers. It invites the skeptics to literally (and rightly!) challenge self-identified disciples with the request: “so where is the substance? You brag on Jesus doing all this great stuff … and he said we should be expecting more to follow, not less! So what’ve you got? Or are you going to hide behind your cessationism?”
And that is our encouragement and our fear. It may lay bare the enthusiasms for scientific grandstanding. But it replaces it with something much scarier for all of us self-identified Christians today. Maybe that is why we prefer to hang back and fuss over our scientific obsessions instead.
[To give believers more of their fair due … this ‘partial’ answer is, I think, made more complete by acknowledging that the sorts of things often demanded of believers and the spirit in which they are demanded (…‘prove to us…’) is exactly the sort of thing Jesus had a disdain for. When crowds got uppity in that way, he had a way of either putting them in their place, or fleeing their obsessive enthusiasms, or even … just getting himself killed. So while we believers like to make much of ‘spectacle Jesus’ calming seas and calling down angelic hordes to put the Romans in their place - (Oh wait! That last one turned out to be a demonic temptation, right?) … we only celebrate ‘spectacle Jesus’ at our own peril. Because he wasn’t about lording it over others; he was about calling others to follow in his very footsteps as he donned the towel and lovingly did the work of a slave. So both believer and skeptic alike share in unhealthy obsessions that Jesus, in the end, would not own. And that would be the more complete answer to offer here.]
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Hi Daniel,
You are making a form of Paley’s watchmaker argument where scientific observations are the watch. The problem with this approach, in my opinion, is that your analysis’ level of abstraction is too low. In other words, if you say, “Look at this protein synthesis mechanism! It’s proof of divine design!” then someone else can say that the mechanism arose by evolutionary dynamics.
In my opinion, it is much stronger to go up a level of abstraction and say that evolutionary dynamics are “the watch,” so to speak. That there can be evolutionary mechanisms at all is quite remarkable; this suggests God’s creation and providence throughout history, right up to the present moment.
Best,
Chris
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brilliant article. Whe this time of covid madness has passed I look forward to meeting Liam over a pint of choffee in London 
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looks like I cant message @LM77. Just wondered if we actually might have met on the Unbelievable conference in London in 2019 and I wondered if you were Tom Newman who I was looking for :-).
Hi Marvin. Thanks so much for the positive feedback. That article was a real outpouring of my soul and so is very close to my heart. I am thankful that you enjoyed it.
Alas, I don’t think we’ve met. As far as I can recall, I never attended Unbelievable in 2019. Perhaps it was my evil twin? He gets everywhere.
What part of London are you from?
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rural Bedfordshire, not London, and no worry about your evil twin. The chap was amused about my mix up of names and faces. Got a reputation to defend there, wearing my badge going home to know that its me when coming home
I liked your comments on the limitations of people like Calvin and Luther and their “feet of clay”. After all, as humans we have the right to get some things wrong and that we should be aware of that as not to idolise them.
The thing I would like to talk with you about is not about how to accept evolution, but how to explain evolution in a way that is coherent with the law and our Christian worldview, as it becomes so easy to accept once you explain to people how this comes together and where the problem in understanding either of the “two books” comes from.
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