by Lee Strobel
“Well, first, you can’t determine anything about who that God would be. It could be a committee of gods. It could be some god we don’t even know about. It’s not necessarily Yahweh.”
“Granted,” I said. “But not every argument makes every point.”
“Here’s the thing: we don’t have a consensus in science about what triggered the Big Bang. And what was there before that? Maybe there were multiple universes. Maybe a collapsing black hole creates a singularity that triggers a big bang. So the answer we have at the moment is, ‘We don’t know.’ To infer that therefore a miracle happened and that God did it—well, that doesn’t really answer the question of origins. We’d still need to get to the issue of where God came from.”
“Christians would say that by definition, ‘God is that which does not need a cause.’”
“Well, why can’t I just say the universe is that which does not need a cause? Why not stop the regress at the big bang and say that before that, the information is lost? We don’t know. Nobody knows. Christians take the regress one step further back and say, ‘God did it.’ In that case, I’d go one further step back and ask, ‘Where did God come from? Who created him?’ Why can’t there be a ‘God creator’? A god who makes gods? Maybe there was a super-intelligent designer that created the intelligent designer who created this world. People say you’ve got to stop the causal chain somewhere, but no, you don’t.”
He stopped for a minute, taking a swig from a cup of water. “Look, this is one of those areas where theists have some pretty good arguments,” he said—a concession that frankly surprised me. “But,” he added, “in the end, we can’t determine what happened. It’s okay to just say, ‘We don’t know.’”
“What about the fine-tuning of the universe?” I asked. “Christians stress that the numbers that govern the operation of the universe are calibrated so precisely that they’re on a razor’s edge. They’re convinced that a Creator is the best explanation. Why don’t you find this persuasive?”
“It’s a good argument,” Shermer conceded. “But look—what if there are multiple universes? Then we happen to be in one where the laws of nature are such that they give rise to people like us asking such questions.”
“Do you think the concept of a multiverse has some merit?” I asked.
“I’m told by my physicist friends that it’s a prediction based on how universes develop. If there are countless other universes with random laws and constants of nature, sooner or later one is going to be hospitable for life—and that’s ours. We hit the cosmic lottery. Now, we don’t know if there are multiple universes, but it’s a more plausible explanation than to say, ‘God did it.’”
I interrupted. “Isn’t that sort of a ‘science of the gaps’ argument—‘We don’t know, but we trust that science will someday tell us?’”
“It’s just that there is a gap,” he answered. “We may never know. We can’t get the information at the moment, and maybe we never will. One of the problems with a multiverse is that, in principle, we can’t interact with the other universes, and so getting scientific confirmation isn’t likely.
“Still,” he said, his tone adamant, “I prefer this hypothesis over the God theory.”
Spirituality and Immortality
I know that Shermer occasionally ponders spirituality and the afterlife, even if with humor. He once Tweeted, “I’m in no rush to get there, but being in hell could be interesting.” He attached photos of sixty-five celebrity atheists, with the caption: “Fear not hell, for if it exists, you shall find yourself in good company.”8
“What does spirituality mean for you?” I asked him.
“For me, it’s the doors that science has opened to the universe. There’s deep time—the almost incomprehensible age of the universe, our earth, our species, and so forth. The numbers are staggering. And the size of the universe—I’m in awe when I visit Mount Wilson and the other great observatories of the world. And, by the way, the cathedrals.”
That took me aback. “Cathedrals?”
“Yes, I’m equally awed by cathedrals. The cathedral in Cologne, Germany, where my wife is from, is incredible,” he said, referring to the High Cathedral of Saint Peter, a spectacular 515-foot twin-spire monument to Gothic architecture. “It’s amazing to stand inside it. Every time we go there, we light a candle.”
Now I was thoroughly intrigued. “You light candles? Seriously? Why?”
“Out of respect for the universe, for this world, for this life, and of course for the love my wife and I share. This is it, after all. There’s nothing more.”
“Does mortality worry you?”
“Not really.”
“Can you face it, honestly?”
“Yes, I think so. I’m not particularly concerned about it.”
“Do you hope for some sort of immortality?”
“Sure I do. I don’t get up every morning and say, ‘Oh, I hope I live forever.’ But sometimes, yes, I think about it.”
“What do you think of the idea of heaven?”
His expression soured. “Boring!” he declared. “Heaven forever? What? What am I supposed to do? Are there tennis courts? It sounds tiresome and intrusive. If you’re with an omniscient being, as the skeptic Christopher Hitchens said, it would be like a celestial North Korea. You’ve got a dictator knowing every one of your thoughts. Hey, my thoughts are private!
“There are a lot of problematic things when you think about it,” he added. “Where would I be? What would I do all day? Infinite love—what does that even mean? It’s truly inconceivable for a finite being to imagine eternity and infinity. For me, it’s so problematic that it’s probably not true.”
“Do you think there are instances where people, for psychological or moral reasons, ratchet up their skepticism when it comes to God?” I asked.
“Yeah, maybe. Probably.”
“What would it take for you to believe God exists?”
“Well, that’s a difficult one. I guess if after I died, if I were actually someplace, sentient and conscious, I’d be thinking, Uh-oh!”
My eyebrows shot up. “It may be a little too late then.”
“I’m not too worried about that, because in my opinion, any god worthy of the title of omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving surely wouldn’t care whether I believe in him or not. I’m more of a works guy. If there’s a heaven, I would think getting in would be more based on what you’ve done, how you’ve comported yourself, the way you treated other people. Whatever justice system God has set up, it can’t be just carrot-and-stick, heaven-and-hell. That’s just so primitive.”
I said, “What if the entry-level standard of being good is giving your life completely to serving the poor, sacrificing everything, and living a wholly selfless existence? Would you measure up?”
“Well . . . ,” he started to say. He paused and then said, “Seriously, I don’t think that could be the standard.”
I noted that atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell famously said if he died and found himself in front of God, Russell would accuse him of not providing sufficient evidence for his existence. “What would you say if you died and came face-to-face with God?” I asked.
“I would say, ‘I used the brain you gave me, and I thought this through. I tried this, I tried that. I really believed, and then I didn’t. What did you expect? I did the best I could with the tools you granted me. I have free will. I chose. This is what I chose. I tried to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. Yes, I fell short many times, but I tried to apply the Golden Rule whenever I could.’”
His eyes locked with mine. “Personally,” he concluded, “I can’t believe that a good God—an all-powerful and loving God—would do anything bad to me for that.”
Cracking Open the Door
During the years I was an atheist, there were times I would doubt my doubts. It seemed too simple to attribute everything to random chance. Maybe, just maybe, there was more than the eye could see. An inexplicable coincidence, a g
limpse into the intricate complexity of nature, a moment of honest introspection—something would crack open the door to the possibility that a miracle-working Someone might exist.
“Tell me about what has challenged your skepticism,” I said.
“Well,” he replied with some hesitation, “there was that one incident.”
“The one with the transistor radio?”
He nodded. “That’s the one.”
I had seen his column about it in Scientific American. What attracted me was its subtitle, which read, “I just witnessed an event so mysterious that it shook my skepticism.”9
“That’s rather startling,” I said.
“Yes,” replied Shermer. “I didn’t write that subtitle, but I have to admit that this incident really did rock me back on my heels.”
“What happened?”
Shermer proceeded to describe how he and his German fiancée, Jennifer, decided to get married at the Beverly Hills courthouse and then have a celebration at his house.
“She was feeling pretty bad because she was alone. She had been raised by a single mom and her grandfather, whom she loved like a dad. He passed away when she was sixteen, and none of her family or friends were there for the wedding, so she was feeling kind of low.
“Before Jennifer had come to the US, she had shipped some personal items ahead. One was a transistor radio from the 1970s that had deep sentimental value to her. She and her grandfather would often listen to music from it when they were gardening or simply enjoying time together.
“I tried to fix the radio before she arrived, but nothing worked,” he said. “I put in new batteries; I checked the wires; I even hit it on the table—nothing. In the end, I threw it in the back of a desk in the bedroom, underneath an old fax machine, and it sat there for months.”
As the family gathered after the wedding, Jennifer said, “I really need a moment alone.” She was upset and crying. “I miss my grandfather,” she said. “I wish he was here.”
She and her new husband went into the back bedroom—and suddenly, they heard music. Beautiful, classical, romantic music. But where was it coming from?
“I thought, Did I leave my cell phone in here? No, it’s not the phone. Was it my laptop? No. Was it from the neighbors? No. It seemed like it was coming from the desk,” Shermer told me. “Jennifer shot me a startled look and said, ‘That can’t be what I think it is, can it?’
“Then she pulled out the drawer. Somehow that little radio had come on—and right then, with perfect timing, it was serenading Jennifer with music, just like it used to do when she was with her grandfather. We sat there in stunned silence for several minutes. Jennifer said with tears in her eyes, ‘My grandfather is here with us. I’m not alone.’”
I sat mesmerized by the story. “It was an emotional incident,” Shermer continued. “Jennifer felt like she was connected with her grandfather, as if he were right there in the room, right when she needed him the most. The radio played all night and into the next morning—and then it went dead again. To this day, it no longer works.”
It was the special timing of the incident that sent tremors through Shermer’s skepticism. “What should I make of this?” he said to me. “Was it some sort of divine message? Was her grandfather on some other plane, letting her know everything was all right on this important day? Was it merely a coincidental electronic anomaly? But if it was, how can it be explained? Why did the radio work for just that brief moment—at precisely the right time? It was . . . well, odd.”
“Did this incident crack open a door for you?” I asked.
“A little, yeah. Maybe a bit.”
He sighed and then added, “I don’t know everything. We don’t know everything. Maybe there’s another plane. It’s possible. This doesn’t prove any of that. It just makes you think, We should be humble before the universe.”
“Did you take the radio to an electronics expert to try to find an explanation?” I asked.
“No, because this time I savored the experience more than the explanation. What’s important is the emotional meaning it had for Jennifer. And that would be my take-home message about miracles. Don’t worry about the mechanics. Did it make you feel better? If so, just take it at that. That’s good enough. In our scientific world, sometimes we think we need an excellent answer for everything. Of course, that’s fine, but some things you can never explain—and that’s okay.
“If it turned out after this life that there is some other plane of existence, I would be very happy about it. I like being conscious. Like most people, I’ll be sad when my time is up, because I enjoy life. Maybe it will continue on. I think probably not, but it would be nice to be pleasantly surprised.
“And if God is part of it, I’d welcome that.”
PART 2
The Case for Miracles
An Interview with Dr. Craig S. Keener
CHAPTER 4
From Skepticism to Belief
It all started as a footnote.
While working on his massive commentary on the book of Acts (yes, massive—comprising nearly 4,500 pages over four volumes), Dr. Craig Keener began writing a footnote about the miracles that are found in this New Testament account of the early Christian movement.
He observed that some modern readers discount the historicity of Acts because they dismiss the possibility of miracles, believing that the uniform experience of humankind is that the miraculous simply doesn’t occur. But are those claims reasonable?
Keener began researching. And writing. The footnote grew and grew. The more he discovered, the more convinced he became that miracles are more common than a lot of people think and are better documented than many skeptics claim. He wrestled with the arguments against miracles by David Hume; he traveled to Africa to investigate seemingly supernatural healings; he sifted Scripture; he unearthed examples of modern wonders, marvels, visions, and dreams.
Two years later, his book Miracles was published—again, an exhaustive scholarly undertaking, so sweeping that it covers two volumes and a staggering 1,172 pages. Scholar Ben Witherington III gushed that it is “perhaps the best book ever written on miracles in this or any age.” His comment prompted New Testament professor Craig Blomberg to declare, “The ‘perhaps’ is unnecessarily cautious.” Asked Richard Bauckham of Cambridge University, “So who’s afraid of David Hume now?”
Quite a footnote.
* * *
Driving back to my California hotel, fresh from my stimulating discussion with skeptic Michael Shermer, I thought about Keener’s volumes that were sitting on the shelf in my office back home.
Shermer had raised some troubling objections to the idea of the supernatural and whether we can ever be sure that something miraculous has occurred. He was self-assured and almost cocky at times. He dismissed Jesus’ purported miracles as the fanciful moralizing of the gospel writers. No apparent miracle, it seemed, could reach the high evidentiary bar he set.
To be honest, I expected nothing less from the editor of Skeptic magazine. Still, his critiques demanded answers.
I called a friend to get Craig Keener’s email address and then I tapped out a request for an interview. Ever the night owl, Keener sent his reply at three o’clock in the morning. Before long, I found myself flying to Lexington, Kentucky, and then driving twenty minutes to the two-stoplight town of Wilmore—well, okay, three stoplights, if you count the one that simply flashes all the time.
Apparently, I mused, lawsuit-happy atheists have yet to discover this hamlet of 1,638 households: its municipal water tower is topped with a giant white cross.
The Interview with Craig S. Keener, PhD
“I’m living proof that God doesn’t always perform miracles,” Keener said as he greeted me at his modest house in a neighborhood where the scent of burning autumn leaves hung in the air. “I’m still nearsighted and suffering from male pattern baldness—which is spreading!”
He ushered me downstairs to his office, where a cluttered desk was surrounded by twenty
-nine file cabinets, each neatly packed with research and other papers—including a collection of the whimsical cartoons he draws for recreation. An elliptical machine stood nearby.
At age fifty-six, Keener is tall and slim (he lists exercise as one of his hobbies), with his graying hair and beard closely cropped. He was wearing a blue knit shirt and jeans; halfway through our afternoon together, he kicked off his shoes and padded around in white socks. His casual and amiable demeanor belies what must be one of the most grueling and productive work schedules imaginable.
I Tweeted a photo of us together, with the caption, “Great time interviewing Craig Keener for a project. While we chatted, he wrote three new books.” With Keener’s reputation as a prodigious author, I knew that would garner some chuckles.
Just twenty-five years after receiving his doctorate, he has authored twenty-one books, but that only hints at his output. His award-winning four-volume Acts: An Exegetical Commentary is some three million words in length, densely packed with scholarly insight written with a pastor’s heart.
The monumental work stunned academics. Said Gary Burge of Wheaton College, “Keener is a scholar with gifts that come along once every century, and here we see them employed in full force. Words like encyclopedic, magisterial, and epic come to mind . . . Keener has a grasp of the ancient world like few scholars anywhere.”
Gregory E. Sterling of Yale Divinity School hailed it as “the most expansive treatment of Acts in modern scholarship.” I. Howard Marshall, the eminent New Testament professor from the University of Aberdeen, called it “a remarkable scholarly achievement.” To Darrell L. Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary, it’s “a rich gem”; to Samuel Byrskog of Lund University, it’s “a gold mine.”
That’s just the beginning. Keener’s curriculum vitae is the size of a small book. His two-volume Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, which is 620,000 words in length, is “arguably the best book ever on the subject of miracles,” according to noted biblical scholar Craig A. Evans of Houston Baptist University.
