OT miracles nothing but natural phenomena?!


I wrote the piece below in response to a friend who remarked that maybe the OT miracles were simply an outcome of naturally occuring phenomena, and there's nothing truly 'miraculous' about them at all.  This friend of mine, like many of ours I'm sure, tends to believe that the twin gods of technology and nature have firmly replaced the God of which the Bible speaks and our lives (hopefully!) 'elaborate'!

Of course, Christians would 'beg to differ'...*smile*
 

My friend begins:

"Ok, maybe Sodom and Gomorrah got hit by a meteor shower.  Maybe the parting of the red sea was caused by a very close comet/meteor (you know how the moon and it's gravitational field causes low/high tides right?)...The explanation that technology was the cause of all those 'miracles' is physically more digestable than Moses holding out his hand."

So a meteor shower whacked S&G at just the right time when the Bible said it would, and it just HAPPENED to hit the two cities being judged?  (Did a meteor shower cause Lot's wife to become a pillar of salt too?)
And a meteor hit the red sea at the exact moment that Moses held up his staff?  And the waters remained divided just long enough for the Israelites to cross (as if someone was 'holding back' the waves), but then closed at - again - the precise moments[!] when the Egyptians were in the middle of the sea?!

Duhhh!!

Did that meteor have a peculiar affection for the Israelites or somethin'?
Or are you suggesting that Moses could so accurately predict a meteor crashing down?!  And even if he could, how did the meteor hit the water such that the waves were WAITING for the Israelites to cross the sea?

Or MAYBE Moses and gang actually could control the waves in ways which not even modern technology can do now, right?  Now THAT would explain everything, wouldn't it?!

And all the 10 plagues inflicted upon Egypt happened one after another so nicely and just when Moses said they would?

What kind of natural phenomena produced darkness for three days?  A 3-day eclipse of the sun?
What kind of discriminatory disease strikes only the first born of every family which does NOT have lamb's blood painted on its front door?  Lamb-genitis? ;>)
What kind of natural phenomena do you know of which even RESEMBLES a pillar of fire which follows a selected group of people through the desert?!  And granted that maybe the pillar of cloud could be 'explained' by a tornado, what kind of tornado keeps pace with a chosen group of nomads and THEN transforms itself into fire at night?!

(I think you get the idea...)

Even if you can explain all of these events through natural phenomena alone WITHOUT any super-natural intervention (and I don't see how you can!), you still cannot explain the precision and timing involved in the miracles.

Do these explanations really sound 'physically digestable' to you?  To me, they sound a lot like desperate attempts to explain away God's actions in history...

It's kinda obvious that you've already PRE-SUPPOSED that divine miracles could NOT have happened, and then proceeded to concoct your explanations from there.  Notice how much 'faith' is needed to actually believe these conclusions of yours...
 

Conclusion:  Explaining away Biblical miracles by appealing to natural phenomena alone just doesn't work!
 

AL


Back to Main Page