Science and Miracles

Can we believe in miracles without believing in science?

Well that’s a weird question. Usually we ask whether one can believe in both miracles and science at the same time, right? It’s either one or the other we think, but the Bible actually requires us to believe in both.

I started thinking about this after a parking lot outreach conversation with Haley and Nick, who like so many people don’t think science and religion can be compatible. But I would assert that not only are they compatible, they can’t exist without each other.

How do I figure? Well, in the Bible, most every time there is a miracle described that defies a scientific explanation, people respond with surprise and wonder. Why? Because people have always observed that there is order in our universe. What makes a miracle so surprising is that the usual pattern or order of things is broken. If there were no order, there would be no miracles.

If there were no order, there could also be no science, because science is simply an observation of what normally happens. We can have scientific laws and make predictions simply because there are patterns in nature.

Nick stated that he believes “in the Big Bang and all that”. But there is one thing we know that results from explosions. Chaos. Disorder. The opposite of what we find in the natural world. There are firmly established laws of nature that reveal a Lawgiver, and there is order that reveals an Orderer.

The world may create a false dichotomy that tries to make us believe that we must choose between science and miracles, between order and chaos. But the opening chapters of the Bible establish both.

The world began with chaos, being “formless and empty”. But then God began a process of creation that brought order as He brought divisions and boundaries between darkness and light, water and clouds, land and sea, animals and plants, male and female.

And God called man to help keep that order as Adam was to work and care for the garden. But Adam rebelled against that order as he rejected the distinction between the fruits that God allowed and that which was forbidden, bringing a certain amount of chaos back into God’s ordered universe.

Both miracles and science depend on God’s ordered universe. And both are found in the opening chapters of the Bible.