Henke 2022w

Lundahl (2022i): How does Mr. Lundahl Know What Christ’s Hair and Clothes Looked Like When He Supposedly Walked on Water or During His Purported Ascension? Was He There?

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022a), I gave the following definition of a supernatural act or miracle:

“I define a supernatural act or “magic” as a feat that violates the laws of chemistry and/or physics.”

Mr. Lundahl did not like this definition. In Lundahl (2022a), he references a section out of Lewis (1960, chapter 8,) to argue that miracles “add to” rather than violate the laws of nature.

“This was answered by C. S. Lewis in Miracles - a miracle is not a break away from natural physics, chemistry, or biology, but an addition to them.

A physicist - this is probably from chapter 8, "Miracles and the Laws of Nature" starting on p. 87 in the 2012 edition by William Collins, arguably reproducing C. S. Lewis' second, reworked, original edition - a physicist on a steamer is watching the pool balls roll on a table of pool. He can calculate the rolling period of the steamer to perfection (or simply detect it by a watch with split seconds), he can see the movements already ongoing, he can calculate how this will go on, very easily after some time - but he can't calculate whether someone will take up a queue and hit a ball with it. If someone does, the physicist's calculations have been broken, but the laws of movement haven't.”

In Henke (2022b), I replied to his comments:

“The pool (billiards) analogy from chapter 8 of Lewis (1960) and summarized by Lundahl (2022a) is totally ineffective in defending the existence of the supernatural. It only illustrates that a physicist would have difficulty making predictions about a pool game if a human (not a supernatural being) unexpectedly decided to hit one of the balls in the middle of the game. Although the conditions of the pool game might change, notice that Mr. Lundahl admits that no “laws of movement” were violated in this account. That’s because humans, and not God, demons, angels, or other supernatural agents, were playing in this game. When humans play pool, we’re stuck obeying the laws of physics. Now, if God exists, he, by definition, is not necessarily forced to obey natural laws. He supposedly created natural laws and if he can create natural laws, then supposedly he can make exceptions or undo them. God could play pool by either using his supernatural powers or he might simply restrict himself to using only natural laws. If he exists, he could do anything he wanted to. God could remove the effects of gravity from a pool ball and cause it to pass through the ceiling or allow the atoms of the ball to pass through the table, but humans can’t do these things.” [my emphasis]

Lundahl (2022i) then makes a response to the bolded section of my quotation:

“If God removes the gravity, the result does not violate any law of gravitation, it only involves a situation where they do not apply, because what they apply to, gravity, has been removed. However, the view of miracles proposed here is not that God removes gravity, but that He adds an action from outside gravity, in for instance miracles like the Ascension or the Walking on the Water in the Storm. Gravity not being removed is visible in Christ's clothes and hair remaining the ordinary direction.”

Not only does Lundahl (2022i) just assume that God exists, he then claims to know how God does miracles. Lundahl (2022i) further claims that “if God removes the gravity, the result does not violate the law of gravitation…” While God could perform a feat without violating any natural laws, if God “removes” gravity, that action would most certainly violate Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation (Orear 1967, p. 73; Henke 2022ai). The law of gravitation dictates that all mass in this universe is affected by gravity at all times and under all conditions. Why does Mr. Lundahl think that Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation is universal? As long as a mass is present, there’s no way to escape the effects of gravity. Yes, there are ways to counteract gravity with other forces, such as imaginary angels holding up Jesus’s feet so that he can walk on water, or as Lundahl (2022i) inarticulately says:

“You can counteract gravity simply by placing some agency other than gravity between the object and where gravity would lead it. To this point, it is irrelevant if the other agency is resistance of an object already as low as it can "fall" (like the ground), or of a body-part moved by freewill (a hand extended under a falling object), or aerodynamics (like in airplane wings), or the supernatural. In each case, gravity is counteracted. And in each case, the thing counteracting gravity is an agency other than gravity.”

But, an important part of the law of gravitation is that it always exists wherever there is mass and it cannot be shut off or “removed.” So, if God shuts off gravity at a location so that Jesus could walk on water or ascend into Heaven, then the law of gravitation no longer exists at that location as it always should. The law of gravitation is nullified and, thus, violated.

Rather than explaining in suitable detail how God could “remove” gravity and not violate Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation, Lundahl (2022i) instead claims that God “…adds an action from outside gravity” to allow Jesus to walk on water or ascend into heaven. Apparently, Lundahl (2022i) actually thinks that God would have used invisible forces or angels to hold up Christ rather than locally shutting off the law of gravitation. Supposedly, if we were there, we could confirm Mr. Lundahl’s proclamation on how God would act by noticing that Jesus’ clothes and hair remained under the influence of gravity and were unaffected by weightlessness.

This story is quite a delusion from Mr. Lundahl’s imagination. Getting back to reality. First of all, what evidence is there that Christ ever ascended or walked on water? Why should we believe the Bible? As I’ve stated before (e.g., Henke (2022b); Henke 2022t), because Mr. Lundahl and others have failed to provide any evidence of a miracle, what a miracle might be capable of doing is only limited by the human imagination. Assuming that Christ actually did these things, how does Mr. Lundahl know that Christ’s hair and clothes would be unaffected and would remain in the ordinary direction? Was Mr. Lundahl there to witness Christ’s ascension or walking on water? How does Mr. Lundahl know that God supposedly performed these miracles without violating the law of gravitation? Now, God or his angels could certainly pull Jesus along the water or into heaven without violating the law of gravitation, but how does Mr. Lundahl know that this must be true? That is, how does he know how God, if he exists, would perform a miracle? Lundahl (2022a) has no evidence that God must act in a way that must conform to Mr. Lundahl’s restrictions on how miracles might function. When a human being, like Mr. Lundahl, tells God how he must do miracles, he is questioning God’s omnipotence and authority. If God exists, I have no problem with him limiting his actions so that no natural laws are broken, or breaking the laws at any time and any way he wants. He could change Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation anyway he wants and even make the changes permanent if he so desires. God would own the Universe and could do anything he wants with it. Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022a), Lundahl (2022i) and his other essays, however, is telling an omnipotent God want he can and can’t do.

Reference:

Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2^nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.

Orear, J. 1967. Fundamental Physics, 2^nd ed., John Wiley & Sons: New York, 472pp.