“The odds of that happening are 0. It’s just not possible. It would violate the laws of nature.”
That was the answer given by a person in a space travel video I watched recently. He had been asked to estimate the odds that he would wake up the next morning on Mars. Since, at least as I write this, no human being has yet set foot on Mars, let alone slept there, and since no known human technology can transport someone between planets overnight, his response seems perfectly reasonable.
But is it accurate? Most of us, I suspect, would say it is. But some would disagree.
Chief among the naysayers would be those who embrace and promote a field of study known as quantum mechanics. A fundamental dogma of quantum theory is that no one can ever say with absolute certainty that something can or can’t happen. That’s because, in their worldview, uncertainty is built into the subatomic fabric of the universe.
In practical terms, that means we can never say never. We can only speak in terms of likelihood and probabilities. Confined within the canon of quantum physics, the most emphatic statement we could make is that waking up on Mars tomorrow morning would be a low-probability event.
Of course, if that were true the same could and indeed must be said about Jesus’ resurrection.
For the better part of the last 2,000 years, standard arguments used to deny the reality of Jesus’ resurrection have included claims that no one has seen someone come back to life after he has died and been buried; that the resurrection of the body would violate that laws of nature; and that, therefore, Jesus’ resurrection never could have happened.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong – at least according to the best thinking cutting edge of today’s science has on offer. While I would find it fun to watch atheistic physicists become enmeshed in the web they have spun, that possibility raises a red flag for Christians: We should never succumb to the temptation of using any science – past, present, or future – to validate any article of our Christian faith. Galileo helps us remember why.
Galileo’s story actually began around 150 A.D., when Ptolemy taught that the earth was an immovable mass located at the center of the universe and that all celestial bodies, including the planets of our solar system, revolved around it. In the following millennium, Ptolemy’s scientific theory became Roman Catholic Church doctrine.
In 1530, Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which proposed replacing Ptolemy’s geocentric model with one in which the planets orbited a central sun. A century later, Galileo wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World – Ptolemaic and Copernican, in which he sided with Copernicus and, for his troubles, was convicted of heresy. Three hundred years after that, Pope John Paul II announced that the Inquisition’s decision concerning Galileo was mistaken.
Science is a wonderful gift from God to his human creation. I’m grateful for things like electricity and antibiotics. I’m intrigued by the possibility of traveling to Mars. But God’s people need to keep in mind that truth isn’t true because science says it’s so. Scientific “truth” is constantly changing. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings” (Heb. 13:8-9).
I doubt I’ll get to see the first human footprint on Mars. But I do not doubt the day will come when I will be seated at a banquet table in heaven. My certainty about heaven doesn’t rest on what science says. Rather my assurance is rooted in the reality that the Lord is risen. He is risen indeed.
