Letters: Miracles more likely than alternatives

In Anna Katharine Mansfield’s April 14 column, “How Christians can support a president with a ‘truth’ problem,” she made a distinction between truths based on facts and truths based on experiences that mattered. She used the biblical story of Jesus feeding the multitude with just five loaves and two fishes to show a “truth” that is meaningful if not an actual fact.

Since I believe God created the world out of nothing, I have no problem believing the miracles in the Bible. That God created the world is a faith assumption. The Bible itself says so in Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

If God did not create the universe, then you must hypothesize either that matter and energy are eternal or that they just spontaneously appeared from nowhere. And since you cannot prove scientifically that they came into existence spontaneously, that also requires a faith assumption. To me it is easier to believe in an eternal God than to believe in eternal matter or energy, or a chance creation out of nothing.

This story was originally published April 25, 2017 at 5:26 PM with the headline "Letters: Miracles more likely than alternatives."