belief in a Creator that gives us a satisfactory ground for believing in the uniformity of nature in the first place . In denying that there is a Creator the atheists are kicking away the basis of their own argument! As C. S. Lewis puts it:
If all that exists in Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us — like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform. It can be trusted only if quite a different metaphysic is true. If the deepest thing in reality, the Fact which is the source of all other facthood, is a thing in some degree like ourselves — if it is a Rational Spirit and we derive our rational spirituality from It —then indeed our conviction can be trusted. Our repugnance to disorder is derived from Nature’s Creator and ours. 37
Thus, excluding the possibility of miracle, and making nature and its processes an absolute in the name of science, removes all grounds for trusting in the rationality of science in the first place. On the other hand, regarding nature as only part of a greater reality, which includes nature’s intelligent Creator God, gives a rational justification for belief in the orderliness of nature, a conviction that led to the rise of modern science.
Secondly, however, if one admits the existence of a Creator in order to account for the uniformity of nature, the door is inevitably open for that same Creator to intervene in the course of nature. There is no such thing as a tame Creator, who cannot, or must not, or dare not get actively involved in the universe which he has created. So miracles may occur.
I stress once more that one can agree with Hume that “uniform experience” shows that resurrection by means of a natural mechanism is extremely improbable, and we may rule it out. But Christians do not claim that Jesus rose by some natural mechanism. They claim something totally different — that God raised him from the dead. And if there is a God, why should that be judged impossible?
This paves the way for a consideration of the resurrection from the perspective of history, as Wolfhart Pannenberg makes clear: “As long as historiography does not begin with a narrow concept of reality according to which ‘dead men do not rise’, it is not clear why historiography should not in principle be able to speak about Jesus’ resurrection as the explanation that is best established of such events as the disciples’ experiences of the appearances and the discovery of the empty tomb.” 38
In this chapter we have been considering essentially a priori reasons 39 for which Hume and others have rejected miracles. However, we have seen that it is not science that rules out miracles. Surely, then, the open-minded attitude demanded by reason is to proceed now to investigate the evidence, to establish the facts, and be prepared to follow where that process leads; even if it entails alterations to our preconceived ideas. So let us do precisely that — and challenge the New Atheists to leave Hume behind and follow us. We shall never know whether or not there is a mouse in the attic unless we actually go and look!
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
If all that exists in Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us — like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform. It can be trusted only if quite a different metaphysic is true. If the deepest thing in reality, the Fact which is the source of all other facthood, is a thing in some degree like ourselves — if it is a Rational Spirit and we derive our rational spirituality from It —then indeed our conviction can be trusted. Our repugnance to disorder is derived from Nature’s Creator and ours. 37
Thus, excluding the possibility of miracle, and making nature and its processes an absolute in the name of science, removes all grounds for trusting in the rationality of science in the first place. On the other hand, regarding nature as only part of a greater reality, which includes nature’s intelligent Creator God, gives a rational justification for belief in the orderliness of nature, a conviction that led to the rise of modern science.
Secondly, however, if one admits the existence of a Creator in order to account for the uniformity of nature, the door is inevitably open for that same Creator to intervene in the course of nature. There is no such thing as a tame Creator, who cannot, or must not, or dare not get actively involved in the universe which he has created. So miracles may occur.
I stress once more that one can agree with Hume that “uniform experience” shows that resurrection by means of a natural mechanism is extremely improbable, and we may rule it out. But Christians do not claim that Jesus rose by some natural mechanism. They claim something totally different — that God raised him from the dead. And if there is a God, why should that be judged impossible?
This paves the way for a consideration of the resurrection from the perspective of history, as Wolfhart Pannenberg makes clear: “As long as historiography does not begin with a narrow concept of reality according to which ‘dead men do not rise’, it is not clear why historiography should not in principle be able to speak about Jesus’ resurrection as the explanation that is best established of such events as the disciples’ experiences of the appearances and the discovery of the empty tomb.” 38
In this chapter we have been considering essentially a priori reasons 39 for which Hume and others have rejected miracles. However, we have seen that it is not science that rules out miracles. Surely, then, the open-minded attitude demanded by reason is to proceed now to investigate the evidence, to establish the facts, and be prepared to follow where that process leads; even if it entails alterations to our preconceived ideas. So let us do precisely that — and challenge the New Atheists to leave Hume behind and follow us. We shall never know whether or not there is a mouse in the attic unless we actually go and look!
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
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