What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?

Indeed, if by definition it is supernatural “outside of nature.”
I have been reading Surprised by Scripture (Wright) and he makes the point that ancient people did not divided it up that way, but would think of the “seen and the unseen.” Perhaps there is something to that.

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Why should you pray that we not “descend into arguments” about the meaning of a word, as if the meaning of words is irrelevant to the meaning of a text? You say it is a waste to speak to you about scientific evidence and it is also a waste to discuss the meaning of the Biblical evidence. In other words any discussion which might change your mind is out of bounds. It seems there is no ground upon which we can really discuss this question, which makes me wonder why you even ask. I truly believe you are sincere, but you have also made yourself immune to any possible evidence that you could be wrong. You ask for a level of proof that you know doesn’t exist, and believe this proves your point.

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Exactly. And despite declaring science out of bounds, Mike himself repeatedly brings up science, usually to misrepresent it as mere hearsay or mere retrospective interpretation of evidence.

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David, I think you are not understanding my questions. And it is very possible that I didn’t explain my questions in enough detail or even worded them poorly. So I’ll try giving it another shot.

I’m not doubting that God could and did act in very special ways to carry out his divine will in those amazing circumstances in the scriptures which we commonly call “miracles”. What I’m saying is that I have no way to know if God’s works in those instances did not involve natural processes which may be completely unknown to us.

Perhaps an example will help. After his resurrection, Jesus entered a room where the disciples were praying, even though the door(s) were closed. How did Jesus do that? Yes, we commonly say “It can’t be explained. It was a miracle. The Biblical text simply says that he was suddenly among them.” Yet some theologians have pointed to physics which only began to be understood in the last century. I remember textbooks which explained examples like a car parked in a locked garage but the next morning it is parked outside. The probability of this as a “natural” occurrence is some unfathomably small ratio which physicists calculate based on the number of atoms in the car and in the garage wall. I freely admit that I don’t understand all of the physics—yet, I am told that physicists claim that this can be a natural occurrence and not necessarily a supernatural one. So some Bible commentators have actually referred to this when wondering if God, as the One who understands all physics, utilized that “natural process” to accomplish what to us seems like an obviously supernatural feat.

I’ve heard other Christian physicists talk about the possibility that a ten-dimensional universe under a superstring theory might be the basis for some of Jesus’ miracles. Textbooks commonly use one of Einstein’s famous “mind experiments” to explain why a being who lives in the two-dimensional world of the flatlanders would witness what seem like the “supernatural” acts of a being who lives in the three-dimensional world which includes his “Flatlandia.” The being in the three-dimension world decides to poke a pencil into the two-dimension world—but all Mr. Flatlander sees is the sudden and mysterious appearance of a graphite point which grows larger to become a 1/4" wooden disk with a 3mm graphite disk in the middle of it. As the pencil is moved about at various angles to the Flatlandia plane, the circular disk suddenly becomes oval-shaped. How is that possible under Flatlandia physics? Then, just as suddenly, the disk/oval disappears from Flatlandia—because the being in the three-dimensional world withdrew the pencil so that it no longer intersects the Flatlandia plane. Mr. Flatlander has witnessed a miracle and assumes that the wooden-graphite disk has ceased to exist—but the three-dimensional world’s being is still holding that pencil! It hasn’t disappeared at all. Mr. Flatlandia tells his friends about the miraculous event he witnessed, yet nothing he observed is contrary to the physics of the three-dimensional world.

So what if a ten-dimensional view of the universe is a valid model and we limited humans are simply restricted to three-dimensions plus the time dimension? What if what the Bible calls demons are entities which can experience those ten-dimensions and therefore can at times intersect and interact with our three-dimensional plus time matter-energy “world” in ways similar to the being who pokes a pencil into Flatlandia? Would that be a natural or supernatural event?

What if “natural” in these contexts simply means the three-dimensions plus time world we know while the “complete” universe God created in Genesis 1:1 also includes dimensions which we can’t observe but within which angels were created to inhabit? Is it possible that the amazing miracles recorded in the scriptures have “natural explanations” under processes describable in a much larger and grander physics which is presently unknown to us? (What if what some call “the spirit world” of angels and demons is another part of the natural world which escapes our routine notice because it usually operates in other natural dimensions of the created universe?)

Indeed, it is possible that some of the great conundrums of subatomic particle physics—which so often seem counter-intuitive to our daily experience of Newtonian physics—only begin to make sense as we begin to grasp a more complete science of physics which includes those other dimensions?

I had a friend who was completing his Ph.D. in physics back in the 1980’s and his dissertation involved string theory. I remember asking him why he thought the theory had strong explanatory powers. His immediate answer was “Even though we haven’t experimentally verified all aspects of it, it does such a beautiful job of making the math work. And in physics, mathematics has so often predicted exactly what we observe in nature just a few years later. I have a lot of trust in mathematics accurately describing and predicting what happens in the universe God created.”

I didn’t post about string theory in order to say it is the best model or even to imply that I understand much of the physics or mathematics of it. I simply use it as an example of how some theologians and philosophers have pointed out the ambiguities and potential fallacies of natural versus supernatural distinctions.

Thus you asked about Jesus walking on water. Is there a natural explanation for that miracle involving physics which God understands but I don’t? Recall my example of using superconducting electromagnets to levitate a metal object, whether that be a high-speed train in Japan or Elishah’s axe head. I’m simply saying that I don’t know of a way that I can distinguish natural events from supernatural events _other than as relative terms based upon the limitations of human observers at the time.

I hope that the above does a better job of clarifying what I’m asking and proposing. Thomas Edison used to be called “The Wizard of Menlo Park”. Yet, he never did anything “supernatural” as a fictional sorcerer in a famous Disney cartoon might do. Nevertheless, even today there are remote aboriginal peoples in some parts of the world who would consider much of what Thomas Edison accomplished to be “supernatural” and therefore genuine, supernatural sorcery. Is it possible that we are similarly limited in our human predicament and we simply cannot distinguish the supernatural from that which is physics arising from Genesis 1:1 which is far “grander” than what our minds comprehend?

I don’t know. And I don’t think anybody knows. But I’d love to read what others think about this.

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I’m baffled by this sentence because the website’s software notified me to indicate that this was a reply to my post—yet I’ve never ever assumed that “nothing can exist beyond nature”. Indeed, as a born-again evangelical Christ-follower, my belief in God is incompatible with such a claim. Who were you addressing in that post?

  1. I assume that there is a very important not missing in that statement.

  2. Of course, I entirely agree with such a statement (if amended as I described in #1) and that is my very point. We have no idea how Christ could accomplish various things “by merely speaking a word”----so we have no basis under which to say whether or not he utilized natural processes (including presently completely unknown natural processes) in doing those miracles. So we can entirely agree on that. The Bible simply tells us that Jesus acted and “even the winds and the sea obey him!” Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Master of all creation and all of the physics is known to him. It would not be surprising if God would use that knowledge of physics to accomplish his will, including for those events which refer to as miracles and supernatural acts.

After all, the Bible describes lots of situations where God used natural processes to do his will. For example, in the Noah pericope the Genesis text says that God used the natural processes of condensation/precipitation and gravity in order to bring rain and that the underground aquifers added to the flooding. (The Bible doesn’t say that God created vast quantities of water ex nihilo which didn’t previously exist. Yet, I’ve had a few Young Earth Creationist tell me that that is what happened. I’m not sure how they reached that conclusion.)

David, does that clarify matters? Are we in agreement? Or were you addressing someone else and there was a glitch in the notification?

@T_aquaticus

Then try to remember how I have presented it above.

You were trying to support your proposal (that theists define the supernatural so that it is excluded from science) by saying that nobody would notice an act of God.

This, of course, is not what is being described in my posting at all, wouldn’t you agree?

It is not just Theists who use this definition. Atheist and Agnostic scientists also use this definition!

You seem to be rather keen to have the definition mean “any event intentioned by God”. This is where you find postings asking about God Gravity vs Atheistic Gravity, and so forth.

@jpm

I think the only difference between now and then is that most of the ancient world thought rain was miraculous, while moderns do not include rain in that category.

Certainly the ancients would consider Samson’s magical hair as miraculous… because there wasn’t any other person on Earth who had figured out how to have that kind of hair.

And in my view, a talking donkey was also considered miraculous.

I believe I do understand. Let’s take this example you provided. This has to do with quantum tunneling (on steroids). It says that the wave function for the car has some infinitesimal but not identically zero value in places where classically the car cannot be, e.g., on the other side of the garage wall. That means there is an infinitesimal but not identically zero chance that the car can be observed there, collapsing the wave function. Now the probability of this happening I can’t compute, but I gurantee it is so small that if you make an observation every femtosecond, you would not expect this to happen during many multiples of the age of the universe. (And that is probably a math innumeracy, like saying McDonalds has sold more than 1 hamburger.)

Now, like in the movie you might reply: “but you are saying, there is a chance!”.

And that is true. But we have to say that Jesus, in walking through a wall, if he did it through quantum tunneling, had a way to realize that microscopic probability on-demand–and that, I believe (again, just my opinion, I can’t prove this) qualifies as supernatural.

Perhaps we can meet somewhere in the middle. It might be that God lives in a physical realm that transcends our own, where other dimensions are not compactified (imagine more than one time dimension! Or try to!) and that what are miracles/supernatural to us are PHYSICS 101 in God’s realm. But they are inexplicable in our physics, in our realm–which is what I mean by supernatural.

A convenient set-up: Heads I win, tails you lose.

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No. I think I failed again to adequately explain my point. I presented the car in the garage example as an ANALOGY. I am not at all suggesting that this particular phenomenon in physics best explains how Jesus entered that room (although there are theologians who do propose something quite like that.) I’m simply saying that Jesus as master of all physics can draw upon natural processes unknown or virtually unknown to us to perform those Biblical miracles.

That said, that probably does put us together in a nice “middle ground” as you suggested.

Perhaps another example will help. Think about one of the various blind men who Jesus healed: Jesus made some mud from spittle and put it into his eye. Why did he choose that method when at other times he restored sight in other ways? I have no way to know. But I’m suggesting that it is possible that Jesus decided to use some “grit” produced by mixing spittle and dirt in order to abrasively remove a corneal growth (??) perhaps? An ophthalmologist could most likely come up with a much better speculation than mine. But I’m saying that just as a human problem-solver can draw upon whatever is at hand because he or she has a firm grasp of the science, so can God. Although it is very natural and easy for humans to explain everything miraculous in the Bible as God “poofing” things into the desired state, I think that that tendency is a cultural reflection of a “magical” view of the world which preceded the age of modern Science. I do know for certain that God accomplishes his will daily with all sorts of natural processes—so I’m inclined to think that God uses natural processes for many purposes which are beyond my knowledge as well.

I think I understand what you are saying—although the theologian in me bristles a bit at the idea of God “living” in a physical realm. I assume you mean that after God created the physical realm, he intersects with it through his omnipresence and he interacts with it due to his love for those he created in His Image. (Yes, I’m old enough to still use the capitalization of a past era.) Otherwise, a God who lives solely in the physical realm wouldn’t be transcendent. Yes, I think we are thinking similarly.

And one of my points is that by that perspective, today’s “supernatural” can be tomorrow’s “natural” as physics knowledge is advanced. So much of our modern world would be downright mind-blowing to my great great grandfather, as so much of our routine and casual technological interactions would surely be miraculous and even “supernatural” to my ancestor, such as: talking on the phone to a missionary on the other side of the planet in real time; witnessing international events through television; a machine telling me where to turn next as my horseless carriage takes me to meet with a brain surgeon several hours and 200 miles away! Even I feel like I’m living in a “supernatural” world at times, despite my having a better-than-average understanding of the science and engineering. For all I know, people may routinely walk across water in a generation or two but use well understood technology to do so. (It may be part of the “robosuit” which will allow an executive to “run” twenty miles to a workplace and thereby avoid automobile traffic. I read where UPS is starting to experiment with cargo lifting equipment which warehouse workers will basically wear, perhaps looking a bit like the polio leg braces I remember in the 1950’s. Such equipment will allow anyone to lift 500 lbs palettes just by reaching out with their hands and grabbing. Of course, we depend upon devices to harness the physics of accomplishing such things. But God is omniscient and can harness phenomena without depending upon metal and silicone.)

Yes, I’m hesitant to explain miracles by “magical poofing” after I notice how much God likes to use natural processes for doing amazing things and creating all sorts of new things, such as the natural ways God keeps on making new people. God could have poofed each Imago Dei human into existence by a “special creation”, creating each person directly from soil. Instead, God chose to use a lot of amazing natural processes which scientists have only begun to grasp in the last few centuries, everything from meiosis to the ATP cycle.

Indeed. If we don’t call this concept “supernatural” then we’ll have to find another name for it. That evidence doesn’t exist for something now doesn’t mean it never will. Things we consider supernatural now could be shown to be natural some day in the future. But what can science say about them now?

I said that I see no reason why the actions of God would necessarily be unnoticed. If theists are proposing that specific observations are due to the actions of God and are conducive to scientific investigation, then I would like to hear about them. Otherwise, it seems they are pinning the blame for the absence of supernatural explanations in science on the wrong people.[quote=“gbrooks9, post:668, topic:36256”]
It is not just Theists who use this definition. Atheist and Agnostic scientists also use this definition!
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Since it is the theists making the claims about the supernatural it only makes sense to use their definition since it is their argument. It wouldn’t make much sense discussing something that no one believes in.[quote=“gbrooks9, post:668, topic:36256”]
You seem to be rather keen to have the definition mean “any event intentioned by God”. This is where you find postings asking about God Gravity vs Atheistic Gravity, and so forth.
[/quote]

God doesn’t intend to heal people, or raise people from the dead?

I should introduce you to the faculty of a university Philosophy department! It makes a lot of sense to discuss things with few or even nobody believes in. Indeed, the history of Western thought benefited greatly from such. (And depending upon how “real” one considers things like non-Euclidean geometry, the mathematicians would disagree with you as well. LOL. Does anyone “believe in” non-Euclidean geometry?)

[I do hope everyone interprets this post in the good humored way that it was intended!]

“That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all is truth beauty and is beauty truth, and does a falling tree in the forest make a sound if there’s no one there to hear it, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of 'em says, incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

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Maybe. I’m not a theologian, so I don’t know if I should bristle at the idea. But I do believe the eternal state will be physical, and that God will dwell among us, so I don’t believe he cannot exist in something called a physical realm. And I do believe the physics of the new heavens and earth will be entirely different-- with (for example) no pesky 2nd Law of Thermo as we know it–which leads to many interesting questions about how we will do things like eat and walk.

I’ll repeat myself in summary. I don’t think today’s miracles are tomorrows science in our cosmos. If so, they are not miracles. They may be natural (and in some sense they must be) in a different cosmos, but not in ours.

Finally, I’ll briefly repeat something I wrote in a post a couple of weeks ago. I never understood the sense that some scientifically minded have to relegate the miracles to mere signs with (ultimately) natural explanations. The reason, as I said, is that any theist–or even a deist–believes that, at some level, God created the universe. Even if was simply to make the non-universe pregnant with the quantum fluctuation that would become the big bang. If he can do that-- the mother of all miracles-- I never felt the need to expend too many cycles on the routine miracles.

@T_aquaticus, I’m guessing it has been a very very long time since you were a theist.

It doesn’t have to be this complicated:

  1. If God has arranged from the moment of creation for a Dinosaur killing rock to hit Earth, and if He did so by using only natural laws, obviously it is not “Miraculous Per Se”, right? While my parents were quick to say what a miracle I was when born, the fact God had “intended” my Birth is not usually sufficient to officially pronounce my birth a miracle.

  2. If God has arranged a rain storm, using the natural processes of the water cycle, is it miraculous? Sometimes Christians associate the provident arrival of rain to be miraculous. But in the context of our discussion here, this is really not what we are talking about…

  3. As for your final point (about God intending to heal people or raise them from the Dead) … healing could be done through the timely invention of antibiotics. Or it could be done by suspension of natural laws, right?

In contrast, Resurrection is usually not something that antibiotics can accomplish, right?

My only complaint about your initial posting on this topic was that you said the Theists you spoke with insisted that miracles had to be something un-noticed.

My point at that time was that this was something they say as an apologia for why we don’t see miracles… not as a defining principle of what makes something miraculous.

Now, let’s look at your leading sentence in your last post:

[A] “I said that I see no reason why the actions of God would necessarily be unnoticed.
[B.1] If theists are proposing that specific observations are due to the actions of God and
[B.2] are conducive to scientific investigation, then I would like to hear about them.”

I agree with your first sentence, section [A], completley. There is no reason to claim that a miraculous action must “necessarily be unnoticed”. Being “unnoticed” is not part of the definition of miraculous. I double-confirm that you and I agree on that.

But [B] is a much more complex and mixed bag of ideas: BioLogos supporters could, depending on the actions in question, consent with [B.1] - - that some actions of God are observable, presuming you mean non-lawful actions… meaning, for example, adding a flagellum to a one-celled creature where it might be argued such a flagellum is beyond the natural constraints of Evolutionary forces (irreducible complexity, etc. etc.).

But I don’t believe many BioLogos supporters would agree with [B.2], under any circumstances, if we are talking about the category of God’s actions that are miraculous. (Note: After all, what would be the point of studying those actions by God that harness natural processes in a lawful way, right? That’s just Science!). We Theists here are fairly unanimous about the idea that a miraculous performance by the Almighty is not something that Science is geared to explain, understand, or even analyze.

Perhaps you could be more precise in the use of the term “Theist”. For this entire discussion, you have been lumping all Theists in together, no matter what sub-issue was in play. We’re all theists here. And YEC’s are all theists too. So obviously - - you are missing differences if you continue to use ‘Theist’ as your basic premise.

How are we doing so far? Am I tweezing the different strands of hair in a way that you find helpful to your discussion?

Terry Pratchett is a great example of someone with a poor grasp of what philosophers actually do—or at least, he didn’t appear to demonstrate a sound grasp—and he helped reinforce the same cliched false stereotypes about philosophers and philosophy that lots of people already assume. That’s a great quotation illustrating what I mean!

I’m certainly not the best person to defend philosophers but I’m often amazed by the absolute nonsense about philosophy which Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and some other popular writers/speakers spew on a regular basis. Krauss especially seems to be determined to bury himself even deeper in nutty claims about why philosophers aren’t needed any more—at least not in his world of science! Daniel Dennett absolutely destroyed him on that one. At least Dawkins has shown some signs of retreating with his tail between his legs after he realized that people like Dennett understand philosophy and Dawkins and Krauss do not. I vaguely recall Neil Degrasse Tyson laying a similar goose egg a while back. I don’t know why there has been such an outbreak of outspoken anti-theists pontificating far outside of their fields of expertise to where even their academic colleagues have had to reprimand them sharply. It reminds me of a similar “I have a dogmatic opinion about everything” attitude that has been far too common among some famous evangelical bloggers for a long time. (I’ll resist the temptation to start a new thread on that.)

Are you saying that meteors falling from the sky, the birth of a child, and the invention of antibiotics are supernatural events?

Here is what I originally said:

“In fact, many theists have told me that God wouldn’t make his actions known so that we wouldn’t be forced believe in God. When asked for a discernible and empirical example of God acting in the universe around us I usually don’t get an answer.”

What I was saying is that theists have told me God wouldn’t act in a way that made it obvious that God was doing it.

I am unaware of anyone observing God putting a flagellum on a bacterium. Who has observed this?[quote=“gbrooks9, post:678, topic:36256”]
Perhaps you could be more precise in the use of the term “Theist”. For this entire discussion, you have been lumping all Theists in together, no matter what sub-issue was in play. We’re all theists here. And YEC’s are all theists too. So obviously - - you are missing differences if you continue to use ‘Theist’ as your basic premise.
[/quote]

We must also remember that Christians are not the only ones who claim that their god is responsible for supernatural events in our universe. I am trying to keep this as open as possible.

To quote yourself in a previous post:

“[I do hope everyone interprets this post in the good humored way that it was intended!]”–Socratic.Fanatic

I apologize for any misunderstanding. Sarcasm has a poor record of being faithfully transmitted across the internet.:wink:

That is fascinating! I suppose it should be a separate thread but I would love to learn about the reasons for your position. How did you reach that conclusion?

I never thought of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as something “pesky”. Indeed, without it my car wouldn’t run and I wouldn’t be able to operate at all! There’s also the problem of getting enough traction under my feet such that I don’t slide all of the time like I’m walking on ice. (At my age, I’m very thankful for that!) Of course, I’m not claiming that ice will be a problem after Christ sets up his Kingdom on earth but you’ve got me thinking of implications.

Seriously, I would love to see that discussed in its own thread. I do think that many of us believe that we will experience unfamiliar physics in the New Heaven and the New Earth. (However, I have no way to know if that unfamiliar physics will be something new or just something I’ve not experienced before.) But I admit to being baffled at how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics relates to Christ’s kingdom. Tell me! I love these kinds of topics.

This topic brings to mind several Young Earth Creationist friends who have told me that the the 2nd LOT did not apply before the fall of Adam. That is absolutely mind-blowing to me, so I’m curious if that belief is related at all to what you are saying about our eternity with Christ. I’d love to hear more. Thanks!