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Evidence for the Supernatural Posted August 3rd, 1996 Experience of the Supernatural A great deal of the confusion between Christians and skeptics has to do with the Christian experience of the
supernatural. Attention: All skeptics, agnostics, atheists and any other interested parties who are feeling in an indulgent mood regarding Christians seeking to reconcile revelation and reason - at least to the extent
they can be reconciled... I would like to pose a question. Let's see how far we can explore it before we must part company. Remember, the immediate attempt is communication, not conversion. It's my hope to communicate
a model for supernatural revelation that would be reasonable to a skeptic, although not necessarily personally persuasive - as most people require something beyond, " it's reasonable, it might even be true "
to accept a major change in their beliefs. Question: What is the experience of the supernatural, understood within the boundaries of reason alone? Given: Natural reality, where all events can (theoretically) be
explained through models of determinate or indeterminate causality. Step One: The Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that natural reality's ultimate destiny - from the standpoint of human participation in it - is
complete loss of energy and disintegration. Step Two: The biological concept which describes the involvement of biological organisms (including humanity) in this process is - necessarily - death. I'm going to go way
out on a limb and quote Stephen Hawking, with every reasonable expectation that I may be misunderstanding him: ...there remains the question: Why do we observe that the thermodynamic and cosmological arrows point in the same direction? Or in other words, why does disorder increase in the same direction of time as that in which the universe expands? If one believes that the universe will expand and then contract again, as the no boundary proposal seems to imply, this becomes a question of why we should be in the expanding phase rather than the contracting phase. One can answer this on the basis of the weak anthropic principle. Conditions in the contracting phase would not be suitable for the existence of intelligent beings who could ask the question: Why is disorder increasing in the same direction of time as that in which the universe is expanding? Stephen Hawking. _A Brief History of Time_. (New York: Bantam Books. 1988) (p.151) According to Hawking, by the time the universe had finished expanding and began to contract " all the stars will have burned out and the protons and neutrons in
them will probably have decayed into light particles and radiation. The universe would be in a state of almost complete disorder. " (Hawking, p.151) The significance of this for human life? However, a strong thermodynamic arrow is necessary for intelligent life to operate. In order to survive, human beings have to consume food, which is an ordered form of energy, and convert it into heat, which is a disordered form of energy. Thus, intelligent life could not exist in the contracting phase of the universe (Hawking, pp. 151 - 152). Step Three: Unlike other organisms, human beings live in two worlds - the unconscious, submerged world of the animal and a symbolic (primarily linguistic) world which
ponders questions of meaning, value and purpose. A world of subjective experience. Step Four: As the human animal ponders its fate, the biological concept of death expands to include the entirety of the physical
universe as well as the answer to ultimate (i.e. final) questions of meaning, value and purpose. A more experiential expression of these four steps might go something like this: Naturalistic Catechism:
Q. What is the ultimate destiny of everything I value and work for? A. Its ultimate destiny is death. Q. What is the ultimate destiny of everything humanity values and works for?
A. Its ultimate destiny is death. Q. What is the ultimate meaning of our experiences? A. There is no ultimate meaning to our experiences of life, joy, hope and love. The ultimate meaning of our experiences of
pain, anxiety, and despair is that they are a fore-taste of death. Q. What is the ultimate value in the universe. A. The ultimate value in the universe, the only enduring reality - from a human perspective, is
death.
Conclusion: We participate in a naturalistic reality which is destined for death, a reality in which there is no realistic hope. *** And so, I would like to suggest an answer to our original question...
Q. What is the experience of the supernatural, understood within the boundaries of reason alone? A. The experience of the supernatural is the paradoxical experience of life as the ultimate meaning, value and
purpose of humanity instead of death - despite all evidence to the contrary.
Such an experience is a claim for supernatural revelation, in that it cannot be conclusively defended on the basis of reason or empirical evidence from the natural realm. It is the same type of unsubstantiated
acceptance that a scientist practices when he or she accepts the concept of causality: it cannot be proved by reason or the evidence because it determines what *is* reasonable and what *is* evidence. It *does*,
however, differ from the unsubstantiated acceptance of the scientist in two specific ways: it is paradoxical and subjective. And it is these two ways, I believe, which cause the bulk of the science / Bible controversies.
The experience of the supernatural in the midst of natural reality is paradoxical, not in the sense of being self-contradictory or contrary to the facts of nature, but in its unexpected, counter-intuitive character.
That is to say, if someone sees news coverage of a train wreck on T.V. in which 99 people are killed but the 100th is " miraculously " rescued and says, " I believe that the rescue of that single person
exemplifies (not proves!) the rule of an all powerful, all merciful God over events ", there are no objective grounds with which to refute the person. And that, I'm afraid for any hardened skeptics who are still
with me here, is the best a Christian can do when asked to provide evidence. In the example given, the sole survivor of a train wreck which killed 99 others is the only evidence of God that a Christian can give. The
experience of the supernatural in the midst of natural reality is subjective, not in the sense that it is necessarily unreal or a fantasy (although it may well be), but in the sense that since it cannot be established
through reason or empirical (that is, objective) evidence in the natural realm, a reasonable human being may accept such a claim for revelation or reject based on their experience. One could reject it as part of a
general life principle of not accepting that which can not be objectively proved, but of course that life principle *itself* cannot be objectively proved. And one would have to wonder if scientific models of causality
could meet the criteria of " objective provability ". The Christian experience of the supernatural in the midst of natural reality differs from simple optimism (I would suggest) in its willingness to fully
accept the threat of death to any positive ultimate meaning, value and purpose as an actual threat. The ownership of this experience (and the recognition of its ownership over the believer) even long after the
particular occasion for it has passed, is the truly significant point of departure between believers and non-believers. Believers claim the experience is valid and non-believers claim it is illusory or that it is real
but can be reduced to the natural. And since neither claim can be broken through rational argumentation, that is as far as we can go through reason alone. But, aside from any questions skeptics may have with all this,
there is the additional question of believers: What (if anything) does any of this have to do with the Bible, the Church, and Jesus Christ? To re-state my definition of the experience of the supernatural:
The experience of the supernatural is the paradoxical experience of life as the ultimate meaning, value and purpose of humanity instead of death - despite all evidence to the contrary. The experience of the
supernatural in the midst of natural reality is paradoxical, not in the sense of being self-contradictory or contrary to the facts of nature, but in its unexpected, counter-intuitive character. The experience of
the supernatural in the midst of natural reality is subjective, not in the sense that it is necessarily unreal or a fantasy (although it may well be), but in the sense that since it cannot be established through
reason or empirical (that is, objective) evidence in the natural realm, a reasonable human being may accept such a claim for revelation or reject based on their experience.
And the example I gave was:
That is to say, if someone sees news coverage of a train wreck on T.V. in which 99 people are killed but the 100th is " miraculously " rescued and says, " I believe that the rescue of that single
person exemplifies (not proves!) the rule of an all powerful, all merciful God over events ", there are no objective grounds with which to refute the person.
To Continue: Supernatural Revelation, the Bible The Bible is a collection of documents, each
with its own individual history, written over the course of some two thousand years. These documents, individually and collectively, are written by ordinary human beings living in ordinary human cultures who used the
metaphors, ethical standards, and pre-scientific worldview of their time to express their experience. Which explains why their writings do not meet modern standards of scientific reporting or show any interest about
modern concerns such as " miracles vs. natural law ". And their experience, in the community of Israel and in the community of the Christian Church was pluralistic. Many different writers from many different
traditions were included in the canon (without much of an attempt at harmonization), which explains why one can find one verse in one section of the Bible which contradicts a verse in another section. Their inspired
status comes from the various communities which produced them and accepted them as adequate, authoritative witnesses to God's supernatural action in history. Action experienced as the triumph of life as the ultimate
meaning, value and purpose of humanity instead of death - despite all evidence to the contrary. And the documents use subjective and paradoxical language to express the subjective and paradoxical revelation they
witness to. Let's apply this way of taking the supernatural and the Bible, and use it to interpret a controversial example: the Resurrection of Christ. Many (though apparently not all) of the followers of Jesus had
the most unusual experience after his death. They had an experience of him as alive and empowering them to proclaim good news and to provide humble service (i.e. minister) to others. They used a metaphor available at
the time (resurrection) to express this experience. In some respects, it was an odd metaphor to use because its " home base " was a description of God's action at the end of history to raise all people as a
means of restoring justice (i.e. so death does not cheat either the good or the wicked of their just deserts). I am not sure it had ever been ascribed to an individual before (there are hints it may have been so
ascribed to John the Baptist, see Mark 6:14). In some cases this was described in the gospels as a physical manifestation (Lk 24:42 Jesus eats a piece of boiled fish). In other cases it was described as "
spiritual " with the risen Jesus walking through doors (John 20:19). The earliest written witnesses we have (and incidentally the only first person eye-witness testimony) are the writings of Paul. In I Cor 15:8
Paul says, " Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. " The only " potentially " objective evidence we have for what happened after the death of Christ is the development of
the church and the writing of the New Testament. The only subjective evidence we have for what happened after the death of Christ is our experience. While the language the early Christians used to describe their
experience of Jesus of Nazareth seems strange to me, when I study their culture and what they were trying to express through metaphors such as miracles, sacrifice, resurrection, prophecy, etc., I find that their
experience resonates with my experience. Jesus was the key, as they understood it, for recognizing God's victory over death in their ordinary, secular life in the world. And I suppose if I could convince myself that
what the early Christians meant when they proclaimed, " He rose! " could be adequately expressed in modern, naturalistic language by " Jesus lives on in the hearts and minds of those who truly believe
" I'd dispense with awkward beliefs in miracles and resurrection and have a much easier time of it. But I think they meant much more than that, and my experience in my ordinary life is evidence I can accept for
the validity of their testimony. END If any of you are still left, skeptic or believer, you are rugged indeed... I wish I could give you some type of reward, but maybe the end is its own reward!
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