Recently, I read a statistic that reported a “dramatic” increase “in belief in miracles … among those with graduate degrees.” The common understanding of “miracle” is “an effect or an extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural power.” So why are people of higher learning increasingly believing in “a supernatural power” to explain what seems naturally unexplainable? I believe that every human mind possesses an inherent capacity for God and cultural biases towards Him are being increasingly exposed.
Consider the foundational belief of the Christian faith, the miracle of the resurrected Christ. For a Christian, the questions are satisfied intellectually and experientially by the before and after events documented historically. For skeptics, the same evidence is unsatisfactory. It’s not that they do not have a capacity to accept the supernatural event of the Resurrection, but that they raise the bar to a level that supports a self-assured escape mechanism. Accountability to God is a path that is utterly dreaded by hardened skepticism and so it should be avoided at all cost. Yet the resurrected Christ continues to change people and so it’s not belief in the resurrection that is unacceptable to a natural mind, but the implications of that belief that has engendered cultural biases.
By questioning, I have found that determined skeptics of the Christian faith will accept that the fixed laws of science have no mindful origin. They simply came into existence by themselves. Probability theory marks this mathematical outcome as prohibitive. After believing in this irrational probability, they proceed to explain to me how life began in a puddle of mud and then leaped out onto the ground and produced human beings, male and female. With a straight face, they have no qualms whatsoever about believing these tenets of naturalism. Dictates of reason, however, are beginning to convict “those with graduate degrees.” Thinking people are realizing that if they eliminate bias in their thinking, they may pursue truth wherever it leads. Intellectual honesty is striking in the hearts and minds of people who are beginning to think deeply about the big questions of life.
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This erosion of bias is increasingly making room for honest investigation and feeding the inbred capacity for theism. In promoting his book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Justin Brierly appeared on a YouTube channel and commented:
The door is being open and God is back on the table and it’s not just in the cultural and historical stuff but in the sciences … People are opening up to some kind of force behind the Universe … away from determinism and materialism suddenly being taken very seriously. It feels like the pendulum is swinging towards something supernatural … or at least non-material conclusions (57:13-54).
The beauty of this shift is that it’s stimulating thought towards exploring God for oneself and to make up one’s own mind, particularly about Christian faith. Historically, cultural narratives have always eschewed an open-minded approach to God questions.
For example, many are unaware that the highly influential French philosopher of the post-war era, Albert Camus, was a sincerely serious inquirer of Christianity. In Western cultural consciousness, this pioneer of existentialist thought has always been projected as synonymous with atheism. Eric Metaxas has meticulously noted the intellectual journey of Camus, which included profound considerations for the Christian faith. In his book, Is Atheism Dead, Metaxas reveals startling insights about Camus that history has not emphasized.
Camus had befriended the pastor of American Church in Paris where he often attended and with whom he spent time. Camus said, “I want you to know that your sermons and our all too few conversations have meant a great deal to me.”[1] Metaxas remarked further:
Perhaps because of his intense privacy regarding such matters, the obituaries written about him did not reflect the journey he had been on to find God … So until now, most of the world has never heard that one of the world’s most public atheists had eventually found his atheism unsatisfactory and had turned toward God.[2]
I honestly believe that everyone possesses a compulsion towards God, and that is why the biblical writers said “do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 4:7). Cultural biases towards Christianity have been concocted in order to avoid the compelling journey back to our Maker. When thinking people exercise unfettered investigations, they often find that the Christian faith is not what was purported by cultural thought. The stereotypical caricaturing of the Christian faith is replaced by a reasonable worldview wherein reality makes sense philosophically, scientifically, and morally.
The Spirit is definitely moving people. At a minimum, even hardened skeptics are beginning to appreciate the “cultural values” of the Christian faith. They are also beginning to consider its metaphorical truths, but I would encourage them to go further and study sedulously about the Good News. A seeker may at least realize that cultural narratives have held many rational improbabilities and that in contrast the grace of God provides wonderfully profound personal meaning. The answer that one gives to the question (“What do you think about the Christ?” Matt. 22:42) will have enormous consequences.
1. Is Atheism Dead? (Washington, D. C.: Salem Books, 2021), 296.
2. Ibid, 299.
Marlon De Blasio is a cultural apologist, Christian writer and author of Discerning Culture. He lives in Toronto with his family. Follow him at MarlonDeBlasio@Twitter
