RE: Signs of Scientism

I've just finished reading "China's Christian Millions" by Tony Lambert. In
it, he cites many examples of miraculous healing. It many cases, this
miraculous healing led to conversion. I'm not the one to question to
authenticity of these reports but it is quite possible that healing took
place in that part of the world to show God's glory, just like in NT times
miraculous healing took place to further the Kingdom. It may well be that,
on close inspection, the healing in China was not nearly as miraculous as
has been reported, but that's hardly the point.

As to the wine at Cana, if wine were found this year, believers would claim
that this was evidence of the power of Christ. Non-believers and sceptics
would argue that somebody had fiddled with the evidence. (what protocols
were used to preserve the sample and what is the effect of aging on wine?)
If the wine had been sealed in bottles with an authorized signature, there
would be a line up of tasters and, if it still tasted like good wine, there
would be demands for C-14 and O isotope ratio testing. Remember the fuss
over the Shroud of Turin. Remember Jesus' words in Luke 16: "They have
Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them." And "If they do not
listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone
rises from the dead."

But, never mind the wine at Cana. The biggest miracle that affects us all
was the Resurrection.

In the final analysis, it still all comes down to faith.

Chuck Vandergraaf

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Bill Hamilton
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:37 AM
To: David Opderbeck; George Murphy
Cc: Pim van Meurs; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: Signs of Scientism

--- David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems to me, then, that
> human beings in principle are capable at least sometimes of discerning or
> detecting that a "supernatural" event has occurred against the backdrop of
> "ordinary" or "natural" events. If that is true with respect to miracles
> such as the resurrection, why couldn't it be true for miraculous acts of
> creation?
>
It seems to me that the crucial missing component in detecting miraculous
aspects of creation is the presence of a human observer. As Dick pointed
out,
the miracles of the Bible were performed to convince witnesses of God's
sovereignty or that God had ordained a given prophet's message (I think we
should also add that some of them were performed in response to the prayers
of
the saints -- but again witnesses were a crucial part of the action)

But suppose we come upon the product of a miracle after it has happened.
Suppose for example we ome to the house where the wedding at Cana was held
and
find some of the wine that Jesus made from water. I presume it would look,
smell and taste like any other wine -- no discernable difference from
ordinary
wine.

Or take the big bang. By studying the expanding universe and detecting the
cosmic background radiation we can learn a great deal about it. But can we
detect (scientifically) that something miraculous was involved? Probably
not.

Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
586.986.1474 (work) 248.652.4148 (home) 248.303.8651 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

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Received on Thu Jan 19 14:54:39 2006