Introduction
Cliffe Knechtle is the senior pastor of Grace Community Church in New Canaan Connecticut. For many years now he has spent time visiting college campuses all over the country where he engages in open air preaching and question and answer sessions with the students. You can watch these encounters on his website Givemeananswer.org or his YouTube channel.
During one of these encounters, he talks about six miracles that atheists must believe in for their world view to hold together. This seems like a strange assertion given that atheists tend to regard miracles as impossible. Regardless of this, Cliffe demonstrates that their worldview requires them.
In The Beginning…
The origin of the universe, and everything in it, is at the center of the debate between theists and atheists. Was it a product of natural forces governed by some force like gravity due to random chance over a long time or was it the work of an intelligent designer? Those of us who believe in the latter are understandably more comfortable considering the formation of the universe and creation of life by a divine being to be miraculous. However, much to their chagrin I’m sure, the atheist rejects the possibility of the miraculous while unwittingly relying on the miraculous to undergird their worldview.
1. Existence Comes from Non-existence
One of the results of Albert Einstein’s work on his theory of relativity is the understanding that the universe is a continuum of space, time, and matter. His theory also hinted that the universe had a beginning with space, time, and matter coming into existence simultaneously. However, he initially rejected this and added a constant to his formula to force it to conform to the acceptable theory of his day, namely that the universe is eternal. Yes, scientists still do this today. They manipulate their theories and data based on their current assumptions and beliefs, particularly to receive or maintain their reputations, their positions, or their grant monies.
Edwin Hubble, whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named after, finally put the eternal, static universe hypothesis to rest with his discovery of galaxies moving away from one another. This implied that the universe is expanding and therefore can theoretically be rewound to a single point. Thus, the Big Bang theory was born along with the understanding that the universe had a miraculous beginning.
Nothing
The notion that the universe is not eternal sent shockwaves and fear through the atheistic community. This idea echoes Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning (time) God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter).” The Kalam Cosmological Argument claims through logic that: 1) Everything that has a beginning has a cause. 2) The universe had a beginning, 3) Therefore, the universe had a cause. Further still, if all space, time, and matter came into existence simultaneously, then the cause must be outside the universe and must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial.
For the theist the answer is simple, God. The Biblical definition of God is spirit (immaterial), eternal (timeless), and omnipresent (spaceless). However, the atheist has a much tougher time. They have settled, for now, on “nothing”. In other words, everything in the universe came from nothing. There was eternally nothing, then suddenly there was something. That sounds quite miraculous.
Atheist Lawrence Krauss wrote a book called “A Universe from Nothing” in which he tries to explain the “nothing” that can cause the universe. Some of the reviews of the book describe his feeble attempts to work out exactly what “nothing” is. In the end, Krauss spends a lot of ink and paper explaining nothing (irony intended). However, he’s left with little choice. There are only two options: God and nothing. To the committed modern atheist, God simply won’t do, but God is the only reasonable answer because only nothing comes from nothing.
2. Order Comes from Chaos
The second miracle that atheist claim is that the order that is found in the universe and in life originated from the chaos of the Big Bang explosion. That is equivalent to blowing up a printing press and expecting to find a perfectly ordered and bound copy of War and Peace. It just doesn’t happen because it’s impossible. This is due to the second law of thermodynamics or what is commonly called the law of entropy.
When I studied Chemical Engineering at Purdue University, the first thing they taught us in the first classes were the laws of thermodynamics. They did this because they cannot be violated within the closed system of the universe. The law of entropy, (things tend toward chaos not toward order) is the second law.
For example, if you toss an open deck of cards off a balcony it will come to rest in a perfectly stacked and ordered pile a total of ZERO times. To do otherwise would be miraculous. Yet atheists would have you believe that the universe consistently violates this law by the fine tuning and order that we see all around us. Ironically, there is one way that the cards could end up in a perfectly ordered pile. That is if a PERSON with a MIND intervenes to arrange them that way.
3. Life Comes from Non-Life
The idea of life coming from non-life is in a word, miraculous. We have no scientific nor any experiential evidence that this is possible outside of the miraculous intervention of an intelligent mind. A mind more intelligent than our own as we are yet to be able to accomplish this. To even consider this possibility as a result of star dust colliding over vast amounts of time is an exercise in speculation and faith. Yet these are the lengths atheists will go to in order to avoid the obvious solution, God.
Richard Dawkins
Famed atheist Richard Dawkins, in a moment of candor, made such an admission in his interview with Ben Stein. Dawkins claimed that we cannot know how the universe began nor how life began. Yet, in a moment I’m sure he would like to get back, he admits that life on our planet might show evidence of intelligent design rather than springing from random chance from a cold lifeless universe.
However, he quickly gives himself an out by speculating that it might be some advanced alien species that seeded our planet. Unfortunately for him, this only pushes the problem back one step which he admitted. The alien life also needs an explanation. This demonstrates that even the most committed intellectual atheists understand that their worldview is incapable of adequately explaining what we see in the universe.
4. The Personal Comes from the Non-Personal
What is the person? When I die I, the person, am gone but my body remains. You can see it but clearly you are not seeing me for I am no longer there. So, the person that is “me” must be more than just my body. The body is the sum total of the material that makes up “me”, yet when I die the material body is left behind and I am no longer there. Therefore, there must be a part of me that is immaterial that is beyond the matter that constitutes my body. This is not possible from the materialistic atheistic point of view that there is only matter, yet we all know it to be true.
The immaterial person who is “me” doesn’t come from only the material body on its own. It would require a miracle. To the atheist we are all just made of star dust that formed our planet and then us. No scientist worth his/her salt can give a coherent explanation of how star dust bumping into star dust can give rise to unique immaterial personhood. Yet we know unique personhood exists from our own lives and the people we know and love.
By the way, what is the chemical formula for love? That’s an absurd question because it is a category error. Chemical formulas only work for matter not the immaterial. Love, reason, hatred, and the like are all immaterial, yet we know them to objectively exist and to be very real. The personal could only logically be created by a personal being. It is, in a world filled with material, miraculous.
5. Reason Comes from Non-Reason
Reason is closely related to the personal. It’s another one of those immaterial realities that we know to exist because we use it every day. Our ability to think, understand, and form judgements are all outside the realm of the material.
When I think of a pink elephant you might be able to measure electrical impulses in my brain, but you can’t open my skull and see the pink elephant that I am thinking of. It only exists in the realm of the immaterial. When an artist creates a painting, the idea of the painting first exists in the immaterial world of the mind before it is manifest through the intelligent design of the artist into the physical world. The rise of reason from material that can’t think or make decisions would be a miracle. It is beyond any natural explanation.
Logic
Logic is closely related to reason in that it seems to originate in the immaterial world instead of the material one. Some try to argue that logic is solely a product of the human mind. However, this idea can be put to rest with one question. Before human beings existed would the logical statement “There are no human beings on earth” be true? The answer is “yes”.
However, if there are no human beings and this is logically true, then logic can’t originate from the human mind. It must come from somewhere else outside the human mind. There is no atheistic answer to this because material does not create immaterial logic. The answer is it originates with an immaterial mind that predates and is above the human mind.
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6. Morality Comes from Matter
Objective morality arising strictly from matter (remember, to the atheist, we are all star dust) would be miraculous. Morality is another one of these immaterial concepts. Matter can only explain what IS. It can’t explain what OUGHT to be. Science can only tell us what is possible. It only tells us whether or not we can, not whether or not we should (Ian Malcom – Jurassic Park).
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Matter has no moral explanatory power. Describing an asteroid smashing into the surface of the moon as “immoral” would be an absurd waste of time. It would, again, be a category error. For moral reasoning we must go to a higher source. Objective morality requires something above even the human mind. If we as humans get to be the sole arbiter of morality, then it is reduced to nothing more than our opinion or preference.
Even worse, it would default to the strongest among us…might makes right. But we inherently know better. There are some things that really are objectively wrong. Therefore, the best conclusion is that morality originates in a mind higher than our own, namely God.
Conclusion
It’s common in our society today to see atheism as being on the side of rationality and science and religion as being based on faith or superstition. However, when one looks deeply into both, you realize that both rely on faith and the miraculous. Our worldviews only hold together when certain underlying assumptions are met. The atheistic position that all is matter and the miraculous isn’t possible simply doesn’t hold up. They claim that their material-only worldview is on the side of reason, which is a non-material reality.
The atheist position is that miracles aren’t possible. Yet they rely on the miraculous to build their case. It turns out that the best, most reasonable answer to the problem of origins is a timeless, spaceless, immaterial, powerful, and personal mind. The living God of the Bible fits this description much better than the lifeless god of nothing and chance that the atheist worships.
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Blessings,
2 thoughts on “6 Miracles Atheists Believe”
I enjoyed this one! I need to remember all of these for my next conversation with an atheist. The elephant in my brain was really cool.
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