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Series Code: AU
Program Code: AU000071S
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00:01 - Miracles are scientifically impossible, right?
00:04 That's at least what one of history's most 00:05 influential philosophers tried to convince everybody of, 00:09 and that's what we're gonna think about 00:11 on today's edition of Authentic. 00:14 [upbeat music] 00:35 Quite some time ago, 00:36 a regular listener asked me to talk about 00:38 the Scottish philosopher David Hume, 00:40 a man who became something of a poster boy 00:43 for 18th century atheism. 00:45 Even though it's not entirely clear 00:48 that David Hume completely abandoned his belief 00:51 in a personal God, 00:53 the way he wrote actually suggests 00:55 that he might have remained something of a theist 00:57 to the very end of his life, 00:59 which means he did believe in the existence of a God 01:02 who's personally involved in human history. 01:05 But of course, then again, 01:06 it's also possible that he knew he was writing 01:09 for a mostly theistic or God-believing audience, 01:12 and so he just adapted his writing style 01:14 to keep his audience. 01:16 But all that aside, 01:18 what I really want to focus on today 01:19 is Hume's attack on the possibility of miracles. 01:23 It's really one of his more famous works. 01:26 David Hume was a dedicated empiricist, 01:28 which means he wasn't gonna believe something 01:30 unless there was abundant proof. 01:33 An empiricist is somebody whose epistemology, 01:36 whose understanding of how we actually know things 01:40 is grounded in the evidence of our senses. 01:44 Mr. Hume was so insistent on empiricism, 01:46 on demanding proof for everything he was going to believe 01:49 that it actually led to some logical conundrums. 01:52 Maybe I'll dedicate another show 01:54 to those conundrums on another day 01:56 because I think some real problems emerged 01:59 from his theories about knowledge. 02:01 But for today, I just wanna focus on his rather short essay 02:05 that deals with miracles. 02:07 And maybe to kick the ball down the field, 02:10 I'll just read you an excerpt 02:11 I believe sums up his thinking about the subject. 02:14 Hume writes this. 02:16 "A Wise man, therefore, 02:18 proportions his belief to the evidence. 02:20 In such conclusions as are founded on 02:23 an infallible experience, 02:24 he expects the event with the last degree of assurance 02:27 and regards his past experience 02:29 as a full proof of the future existence of that event." 02:34 What he's basically describing 02:35 is what you and I might call the scientific method, 02:38 an approach to the world that was all the rage 02:41 during the enlightenment, 02:42 when Hume was busy writing all this stuff. 02:45 And of course, I happened to be 02:47 a big fan of the scientific method 02:49 because of all the good that came out of it. 02:51 It's a reliable approach that yields meaningful discovery. 02:55 I mean, if it wasn't for the scientific method, 02:58 we might still be be drilling holes 02:59 in people's skulls to let the demons out 03:01 when they had a migraine. 03:02 So, there's validity to what Hume is saying. 03:06 The very essence of a science experiment 03:08 is to determine whether or not something is repeatable, 03:11 whether or not you can make it happen again 03:13 under the very same circumstances. 03:16 So if Galileo drops a ball from the leaning tower of Pisa 03:20 and it falls to the ground, 03:21 and he does that 4 million times in a row 03:24 and gets the same result every single time, 03:27 then on the 4,000,001st time, 03:30 it's logical to predict that the ball 03:31 is going to drop to the ground in exactly the same way. 03:35 Hume is telling us that he believes that's how a wise person 03:39 makes all their decisions. 03:41 And for the most part, obviously, I'd have to agree. 03:44 It's usually a wise thing to go 03:47 with the weight of the evidence. 03:49 And of course in the case that your scientific experiments 03:53 do not produce 100% identical results, 03:57 then you have to go with the result that happens most often. 04:00 "In all cases," Hume writes, 04:02 "we must balance the opposite experiments, 04:05 where they are opposite, 04:06 and deduct the smaller number from the greater 04:08 in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence." 04:12 Again, it's the weight of the evidence. 04:15 And the irony of this passage, from being perfectly honest, 04:18 is that I use a similar approach 04:20 when it comes to studying the Bible. 04:23 I'm convinced that the Bible presents itself 04:25 as a harmonized whole 04:27 in spite of the fact that the authors 04:29 of the various books of the Bible 04:31 lived centuries apart from each other, 04:33 and they were approaching their subject 04:35 from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. 04:39 So when you read the Bible, 04:41 trying to figure out what it says 04:42 about a particular subject, 04:44 say, for example, what happens when somebody dies, 04:48 what I need to do is read the entire book 04:50 and then consider the weight of the evidence. 04:54 And interestingly enough, 04:55 that's really what Hume was saying about life in general. 04:58 The smartest thing you can do is gather all the evidence 05:02 and place your confidence in the majority evidence. 05:05 So for example, if you have one or two bits of evidence 05:09 that appear to imply that the earth is flat, 05:12 but you have overwhelming evidence that it's a sphere, 05:15 the wise person's going to go with the sphere 05:18 because there's probably something wrong 05:20 with the understanding that comes 05:22 from the minority evidence. 05:24 Now, from that point, 05:26 Hume moves on to the problem of eyewitness testimony. 05:30 And this is really where Hume's distaste 05:32 for cause and effect comes into play. 05:34 He said, "You cannot prove that certain events 05:37 cause other events to happen." 05:39 "We only live under that impression," he said, 05:42 "because of our experience, 05:44 but there's no absolute proof 05:46 that cause and effect are actually real things. 05:48 It's just a matter of probability." 05:51 In his famous essay on miracles, this is how he puts it. 05:54 "It being a general maxim that no objects 05:57 have any discoverable connection together, 06:00 and that all the inferences, 06:01 which we can draw from one to the other, 06:03 are founded merely on our experience 06:05 of their constant and regular conjunction, 06:08 it is evident that we ought not to make 06:10 an exemption to this maxim in favor of human testimony, 06:13 whose connection with any event seems, in itself, 06:16 as little necessary as any other." 06:19 What he's saying is that eyewitness testimony 06:22 does not prove causality, 06:25 even if a thousand people witnessed the very same thing. 06:29 So for example, the Bible states 06:31 that more than 500 people saw Jesus back from the dead, 06:35 but from David Hume's perspective, 06:37 that wouldn't prove anything. 06:39 It doesn't prove that God somehow 06:41 violated the laws of nature 06:42 and raised a person from the dead. 06:45 What you should do, he argued, 06:47 is go by the weight of the evidence 06:49 from your own perspective. 06:51 And I understand why he thought that way. 06:54 Most of us know that dead people 06:56 do not generally come back to life. 06:58 I mean, I've witnessed hundreds of deaths 07:01 and not one single resurrection. 07:04 According to Hume, that's how you need 07:06 to judge the story of the Bible. 07:08 If I'm confronted with one story of a resurrection, 07:11 I need to go back to my own experience and say, 07:14 "That's not very likely." 07:15 And even if the eyewitnesses were highly reliable, 07:19 people we really, really, really trust, he still says 07:23 you should ignore what they say 07:25 and go with your own experience. 07:27 But then there's this hypothetical situation he brings up 07:31 that appears to contradict his stubborn insistence 07:34 on his show-me-the-proof approach. 07:36 He supposes that a person from the far north 07:39 travels down to the Indian subcontinent 07:41 and tells an Indian prince about frozen lakes and rivers. 07:45 And of course, the prince has never seen any such thing 07:48 because he lives in a much warmer climate. 07:51 And Hume suggests that the most rational course of action 07:54 would be for that prince to deny the reality of ice and snow 07:58 because he's never seen them. 08:00 Here's what David Hume writes. 08:02 "The inhabitants of Sumatra have always seen 08:05 water fluid in their own climate, 08:07 and the freezing of the rivers ought to be deemed a prodigy. 08:10 But they never saw water in Muscovy during the winter, 08:13 and therefore they cannot reasonably be positive 08:16 what would there be the consequence." 08:19 A frozen river in India would seem like a miracle to people 08:21 who had never witnessed it before. 08:23 It would look like an event that violates 08:26 the laws of nature, at least the way they understood them. 08:30 And Hume argues that it isn't really a miracle, 08:32 it just looks like one 08:34 because the people who live their entire lives 08:37 in that warm climate 08:38 just haven't done the experiments with cold temperatures. 08:42 What they need to do, he says, 08:43 is send a search party to Russia 08:45 to add to their empirical database. 08:47 And at that point, 08:48 the ice will no longer seem like a miracle. 08:51 So, you can probably see where this is going 08:54 when it comes comes to the miracles of the Bible. 08:57 He's going to dismiss them as highly improbable 08:59 and probably not worth believing. 09:02 But now I've gotta take a break, 09:04 and there's a very high degree of probability 09:06 that I'll be right back after this. 09:12 [gentle music] 09:13 - [Announcer] Life can throw a lot at us. 09:15 Sometimes we don't have all the answers, 09:18 but that's where the Bible comes in. 09:21 It's our guide to a more fulfilling life. 09:24 Here at The Voice of Prophecy, 09:25 we've created the "Discover Bible Guides" 09:27 to be your guide to the Bible. 09:29 They're designed to be simple, easy to use, 09:31 and provide answers to many of life's toughest questions, 09:34 and they're absolutely free. 09:36 So jump online now or give us a call 09:39 and start your journey of discovery. 09:42 - In order for us to understand 09:44 why David Hume rejected the possibility of miracles, 09:47 we really need to understand his definition of a miracle, 09:51 which he explains like this. 09:53 He writes, "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, 09:57 and as firm and unalterable experience 09:59 has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, 10:03 from the very nature of the fact, 10:05 is as entire and as any argument from experience 10:08 that can possibly be imagined." 10:11 In other words, he says, if you haven't seen it happen, 10:15 then it probably isn't true. 10:17 And I'll give them credit where credit is due. 10:19 For a lot of life, that works. 10:22 If a human being dies, 10:23 you believe it because you've seen it before. 10:25 But if that same human being comes back to life, 10:28 then human might argue that it probably isn't true 10:30 because, well, you've never seen that before. 10:35 Let's just think about that for a minute. 10:37 I'm gonna borrow an example from a YouTube video 10:39 I was watching the other day, 10:41 so I can't claim any kind of original thinking here. 10:44 But for a really long, long time, 10:47 the scientific community denied the existence of meteorites, 10:51 something that you and I take for granted. 10:54 And why did they deny the existence of meteorites? 10:57 Well, they had never actually seen one. 11:00 And the idea that rocks can fall from the sky 11:02 seemed absolutely ludicrous. 11:05 Now, nevermind the fact 11:07 that countless people had already found them for centuries, 11:10 and they said, "Those are just laypeople. 11:11 They don't have scientific credibility." 11:14 Nevermind the fact that you can actually see meteors 11:17 flash across the sky on almost any given night, 11:19 and never mind the fact that people have actually 11:22 found them on the ground still warm 11:24 from their entry into the atmosphere. 11:27 If a scientist hadn't seen it with his or her own eyes, 11:30 then it couldn't possibly be true. 11:32 Why? 11:34 Because in their experience, rocks don't fall from the sky. 11:37 In fact, back at the beginning of the 19th century, 11:41 somebody was delivering a lecture 11:42 on the possibility of meteorites 11:44 to the French Academy of Science. 11:47 And the great scientist, Pierre Laplace, 11:49 who did not believe in meteorites, 11:52 apparently stood up in that meeting and shouted, 11:54 "We've had enough of such myths." 11:57 And why did he object so angrily? 11:59 It's because the evidence was coming 12:01 from the eyewitness testimony of mere lay people. 12:04 So, in other words, if it doesn't happen in a lab, 12:07 then it doesn't happen at all. 12:09 The hostility of the scientific community 12:11 was so fierce at that time that some museums 12:14 actually got rid of their meteorite collections, 12:17 assuming it couldn't possibly be true. 12:20 And that's the biggest problem with Hume's approach. 12:23 He kind of made himself, in his own experience, 12:25 the final arbiter of truth. 12:27 Nevermind the fact that 500 people saw 12:30 Jesus come back from the dead. 12:32 They were somehow mistaken or deluded, he said, 12:35 or they were just lying in order to perpetuate their belief. 12:39 And he said that because he had never seen any such thing. 12:42 Now, I've gotta be honest. 12:44 On the one hand, I kind of admire his skepticism 12:47 because I'm a bit of a skeptic myself. 12:50 I want proof before I'm willing to consider 12:53 what you're trying to convince me of is true, 12:55 and I continue to believe that a healthy dose of skepticism 12:59 serves most of us very well. 13:01 I mean, we're living in a time when 13:03 people are buying wild conspiracy theories 13:05 because of some video they saw on the internet. 13:08 And I'm a little appalled at how easy it is 13:10 to convince some people of whackadoodle theories. 13:15 But then again, on the other hand, 13:17 am I really going to accept the idea 13:19 that because I've never seen something before, 13:21 it's not possible? 13:23 I mean, until we delved into the world of quantum mechanics, 13:26 we would've never believed it was possible 13:28 for particles to exist in two locations at once 13:31 because we'd never seen something like that before. 13:34 So is David Hume's insistence that we instantly dismiss 13:37 anything we don't understand 13:39 really the best approach for life? 13:42 I mean, just listen to what he says. 13:45 He tells the story of a clergy member 13:47 who heard about the miracle of a man with one leg 13:49 who rubbed holy oil on the stump 13:52 and suddenly grew a new leg. 13:54 David Hume doubted it just like I would. 13:57 Here's what he said about that clergy member's skepticism. 14:00 "He therefore concluded, like a just reasoner, 14:04 that such an evidence carried falsehood 14:06 upon the very face of it, 14:07 and that a miracle, supported by any human testimony, 14:10 was more properly a subject of derision than of argument." 14:16 But you know, I think it's here that David Hume 14:18 kinda gives his hand away 14:19 because the scientific method 14:21 does not demand that you ridicule new ideas. 14:24 And it leads me to believe that Hume 14:26 really doesn't want miracles to be true. 14:30 Now, whether or not 14:31 that particular story of the leg was true, 14:33 it doesn't really matter. 14:35 The American philosopher William James suggested 14:38 that you and I tend to ignore new ideas 14:40 that do not click with our current worldview, 14:42 or, to use his own analogy, those new ideas 14:45 don't cause an electrical connection with your brain 14:48 when you try to plug them in. 14:51 It's what most people would call confirmation bias. 14:54 When you accept the things you want to believe 14:56 and you reject everything else, 14:59 and every single one of us does that. 15:02 Now, of course, when it comes to miracles, 15:04 that can cut two ways. 15:05 I've seen secular people reject potential miracles 15:08 because they don't want them to be true. 15:10 But then again, I've seen well-meaning Christians 15:13 look for miracles where there are none 15:16 because they want it to be true. 15:18 And the problem is 15:20 that many of the biggest advancements in science 15:21 would've never happened if we rigidly followed 15:24 Hume's way of thinking. 15:27 Let's go back to people like Copernicus or Galileo, 15:29 people who insisted that the sun 15:31 was the center of the solar system. 15:33 The collective logic of the West at that time 15:36 stated otherwise. 15:37 It seemed obvious to most people 15:39 that the earth was the center of the system because 15:42 the sun rises on the eastern side of the sky in the morning, 15:45 crosses over our heads during the day, 15:47 and then sets in the west at night, every single day. 15:52 By all obvious appearances, 15:53 the sun appears to be orbiting the earth. 15:56 But suddenly we had some people insisting 15:58 that the opposite is true. 16:00 The earth is orbiting the sun and not the other way around. 16:04 Now, the common sense of the day 16:05 would suggest that Copernicus was wrong 16:07 because we'd been living with a different model 16:10 for a really long time. 16:12 And honestly, it was a useful model, the old one, 16:15 because it was regular and predictable. 16:17 The math actually worked, 16:19 and it was useful for things like navigation. 16:22 Almost all of our everyday experience 16:24 appeared to contradict Copernicus. 16:26 And so from Hume's perspective, 16:29 we probably should have just ignored him or made fun of him 16:32 as a lot of people did. 16:34 Now, to be fair to Hume, 16:36 he would argue that the Copernican model 16:38 was not a violation of the laws of nature. 16:41 It was just a deeper understanding of them. 16:44 Miracles, however, must be rejected, he said, 16:47 because they clearly violate those laws. 16:49 The only way you should ever accept a miracle, he said, 16:53 is if the falsification of that miracle 16:55 seems even more absurd than the miracle itself. 16:59 But you know, under all of that is this assumption 17:03 that the creator would be bound by the laws 17:05 of the physical universe, 17:06 and God would never be able to suspend those laws 17:08 or override them. 17:10 But why would that be true? 17:12 The Book of Genesis makes it quite clear 17:14 that God is distinct from his creation, 17:16 and it talks about something theologians might call 17:19 fiat creation. 17:20 God created the universe by speaking it into existence. 17:24 He didn't have to wrangle with pre-existent materials. 17:27 He simply thought and spoke the entire universe 17:30 into existence, 17:31 and that's a really important concept. 17:33 It's one of the things that makes the Genesis account 17:35 much different than pagan mythology. 17:38 You'll notice there's no origin story for God in the Bible, 17:42 and his existence is not dependent on the material universe. 17:45 It shows us that space and time were God's invention, 17:48 and he is not bound by the laws of nature. 17:52 So, why couldn't God raise somebody from the dead? 17:56 Whether or not that's possible 17:58 does not rely on David Hume's assumptions. 18:00 I would have to argue, 18:02 especially in light of Hume's analogy 18:03 of the Indian prince who struggled to believe 18:05 in the existence of ice, 18:07 that just because you've never seen it, 18:09 that doesn't mean it isn't out there somewhere, 18:12 and it doesn't mean that somebody else's eyewitness report 18:14 is necessarily ridiculous or false. 18:18 I'll be right back after this. 18:23 - [Announcer] Dragons, beasts, cryptic statues, 18:28 Bible prophecy can be incredibly vivid and confusing. 18:32 If you've ever read Daniel or Revelation 18:34 and come away scratching your head, you're not alone. 18:37 Our free focus on prophecy guides are designed to help you 18:41 unlock the mysteries of the Bible 18:43 and deepen your understanding of God's plan 18:45 for you and our world. 18:47 Study online or request them by mail, 18:49 and start bringing prophecy into focus today. 18:53 - So now let me tell you about one of my own encounters 18:56 with the seemingly miraculous 18:58 so that we can just think about this a little bit more. 19:01 About two decades ago, I was working in South Asia, 19:04 and we had something like 25,000 people 19:07 attending a series of lectures that I was presenting. 19:11 And knowing that I was a Christian minister, 19:13 hundreds of people would line up 19:14 after I was finished talking, 19:16 hoping I would just pray for them. 19:18 And some nights I would be standing there for hours. 19:21 Now, there was one evening where a mother approached me 19:24 with her little boy who appeared to be, 19:26 I don't know, about 10 or 12. 19:28 His face was tragically disfigured. 19:29 One of his eyes was significantly lower than the other, 19:33 and the eyeball itself was diseased 19:35 and obviously non-functional. 19:37 It was tragic. It was awful. 19:40 So she asked that I would pray for her boy, 19:42 and of course I did it. 19:43 I mean, I was happy to do that. 19:46 Then, the next night, 19:47 the same woman approached me with another boy 19:49 who also appeared to be about 10 or 12 years of age, 19:52 but this boy looked perfectly healthy, 19:55 and she noticed that I was kind of missing the point. 19:57 And she said, "You don't recognize him, do you? 20:00 You don't recognize my boy." 20:02 And then she told me it was the same boy 20:05 whose eye had been healed overnight. 20:09 Now, personally, I've seen enough of that kind of thing 20:12 over the years that I no longer doubt that it's possible. 20:15 Experience has taught me that sometimes it happens. 20:19 But at the same time, 20:20 given the number of religious hucksters 20:22 who dominate the airwaves here in America, 20:24 healing people for money, well, I'm also skeptical. 20:28 And there are all kinds of plausible explanations 20:31 for what I saw that night. 20:32 Maybe she had twin boys. 20:34 Maybe she brought me the healthy boy to deceive me, 20:37 or maybe I misunderstood what the translator was telling me. 20:41 But then I've got to ask myself, 20:44 why in the world would that mother try to deceive me? 20:47 Conversion from Hinduism to Christianity 20:49 is not just frowned upon in that particular location. 20:52 It was completely illegal. 20:55 I could go to prison if somebody thought 20:57 I had a role in somebody's choice 20:59 to become a Christian believer. 21:01 So what would be the point of trying to fool me 21:04 with a miracle? 21:05 And of course, you could probably think of reasons. 21:09 I mean, maybe she was looking for fame and publicity, 21:11 which might give her a ticket out of her poverty. 21:14 But logic tells me she didn't have a reason 21:18 to lie about this. 21:20 It's not like she was motivated 21:21 to affirm my Christian faith. 21:23 If anything, most of the people I met 21:25 didn't want to believe the claims of the Bible. 21:28 So if I'm gonna ask myself what's most probable 21:31 after years and years of thinking about this, 21:34 I'd lean in the direction of believing her. 21:37 And yes, I might be suffering from confirmation bias, 21:41 but let me tell you this. 21:43 I don't suffer from confirmation bias 21:46 any more than David Hume did. 21:48 And just because he didn't see something, 21:50 that doesn't make it untrue. 21:53 I mean, just ask yourself, how many generations 21:55 have denied the possibility of human flight? 21:58 We all know you and I are heavier than air. 22:00 And prior to the Wright Brothers, 22:02 we had a uniform experience with gravity. 22:05 Men who jumped off of high places hit the ground and died. 22:10 Of course, Hume would tell us 22:12 we're only being skeptical about flying 22:14 because we had not yet expanded our understanding 22:16 of the universe. 22:18 But then I might be tempted to reply by saying 22:21 that the only reason he did not appear to believe 22:23 in a God who intervenes in the affairs of this world 22:26 is because he had not yet expanded 22:28 his understanding of the universe 22:30 to include a supreme being. 22:32 And oddly enough, a lot of highly qualified people today 22:36 are starting to wonder if there didn't have to be 22:38 some kind of sentient being 22:40 who started this universe in motion 22:42 because the laws of physics now appear 22:45 to demand such a thing. 22:48 What we have in the pages of the Bible 22:50 is 1,500 years of testimony from people who said 22:53 they interacted with something or somebody 22:56 that transcends our everyday experience. 22:59 And one theme that shows up in this book 23:01 over, and over, and over, and over 23:03 is the idea that we cannot fully comprehend 23:06 what lies beyond our personal experience, 23:09 and I'm thinking about that moment 23:11 when Job finished questioning God, 23:13 and God took a turn questioning Job. 23:16 This is found in Job chapter 38, it says, 23:19 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, 23:22 "Who is this who darkens counsel 23:25 by words without knowledge?" 23:26 Now prepare yourself like a man. 23:28 I will question you and you shall answer me. 23:32 Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? 23:35 Tell me if you have understanding. 23:37 "who determined its measurements? 23:39 Surely you know. 23:41 Or who stretched the line upon it 23:43 to what were its foundations fastened? 23:45 Or who laid its cornerstone 23:46 when the morning stars sang together 23:48 and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" 23:53 Of course, a critic might point out 23:54 it's a little convenient to suggest 23:56 that we just need faith to approach an incomprehensible God. 24:01 But then again, if there was an omniscient god, 24:04 of course he'd be somewhat incomprehensible. 24:08 And I guess what I'm driving at is this. 24:10 David Hume seems to have made himself 24:12 the final arbiter of truth, 24:14 and that's an approach with all kinds of problems. 24:17 There's a reason that epistemology 24:19 continues to be studied today 24:20 because we don't really know how we know things 24:23 or how we can know them for sure. 24:26 And Hume's insistence that a transcendent god 24:29 would have to live by the rules 24:30 of the physical universe he created. 24:32 Well, Hume is putting God in a category 24:35 that the Bible does not appropriate to Him. 24:37 Now, I realize I'm probably not convincing 24:39 some people of anything. 24:41 And given the rather lengthy effort 24:42 that Hume put into his philosophy, 24:44 there's no way I'll do this subject justice, 24:46 but I will say this. 24:48 It seems to me that Hume was inventing 24:50 his own definition for what God needs to be. 24:53 And when that didn't look right, 24:55 he shoots down that definition. 24:58 I'll be right back after this. 25:02 [gentle music] 25:03 - [Announcer] Here at The Voice of Prophecy, 25:05 we're committed to creating top quality programming 25:07 for the whole family, like our audio adventure series, 25:10 "Discovery Mountain." 25:11 "Discovery Mountain" is a Bible-based program 25:14 for kids of all ages and backgrounds. 25:16 Your family will enjoy the faith-building stories 25:19 from this small mountain summer camp, Penn Town. 25:22 With 24 seasonal episodes every year 25:24 and fresh content every week, 25:26 there's always a new adventure just on the horizon. 25:33 - I think we're gonna have to come back 25:34 to David Hume some other day 25:35 because he's been really influential 25:38 and I've barely scratched the surface, 25:40 but maybe for now let me just say this. 25:42 If there's one thing that most skeptics have in common, 25:45 it's their insistence on defining 25:47 what God needs to be from their perspective, 25:50 and then blowing that straw man apart. 25:52 For example, some skeptics insist 25:54 that God should never ever take a life, 25:57 even though he's the author of life 25:58 and presumably gets to define such rules. 26:01 Or they might insist that if God is real, 26:03 he's morally bound to intervene 26:05 before anything bad ever happens, every single time. 26:09 Even though, if he does exist, 26:11 you'd think he'd be the one who gets to define 26:14 what is moral and what is not. 26:16 So maybe today, I'll just leave you 26:18 with a bit of an apparent paradox, 26:19 which seems appropriate for today's show. 26:22 There are two opposite ideas that are held in tension 26:25 all the way through the Bible. 26:26 On the one hand, we're told that we can never 26:28 truly know God. 26:30 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth," 26:32 God says, in Isaiah 59, 26:34 "so are my ways higher than your ways 26:37 and my thoughts than your thoughts." 26:40 But then on the other hand, the Book of Jeremiah says this. 26:43 Thus says the Lord, 26:44 "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. 26:46 Let not the mighty man glory in his might, 26:48 nor let the rich man glory in his riches. 26:51 But let him who glories glory in this, 26:53 that he understands and knows me, 26:55 that I am the Lord exercising lovingkindness, 26:58 judgment, and righteousness in the earth." 27:02 If God is real, that would mean that you and I 27:04 will always struggle to explain Him. 27:07 Because after all, if we fully comprehended God, 27:10 that would mean we had become God. 27:13 But then at the same time, He invites you to know Him. 27:16 And what he specifically says 27:18 is that you can know his character. 27:21 God doesn't have to part the Red Sea 27:23 or bring back the dead to convince me. 27:25 He doesn't have to suspend the laws of nature 27:27 to reveal himself. 27:28 And I challenge you to pick up a Bible for yourself 27:31 and have a look at what it says about who He is. 27:35 I'm Shawn Boonstra. 27:36 This has been "Authentic." 27:38 Thanks for joining me. 27:39 [upbeat music] |
Revised 2023-03-16