Does Science Explain Everything? (Part One) • Part Two
by Gary DeMar

The December 1996 issue of Popular Mechanics (PM) carried an article that claimed that “science” has solved a number of ancient Bible mysteries. Miracles are out, mechanical explanations are in. According to the people at PM there has to be a “scientific” explanation for the “stories’ implausible aspects.” Implausibility is the operating presupposition of the anti-supernaturalistic worldview of modern science and the editors at PM: “Technology and a better understanding of natural processes may explain how these seemingly impossible events occurred.”1

The folks at PM do not come out and say it, but the Bible is assumed to be a compilation of myths and superstitions that are naturally a part of the pre-scientific ancient era. There are staggering theological consequences for those who follow this operating presupposition. If the biblical writers do not give an accurate assessment of historical events, then their judgment in all matters must be considered suspect. There is no neutrality on this issue. PM concludes that the biblical authors could not tell the difference between a miracle and a phenomenon of nature.2 This is nothing more than chronological snobbery, the assumption that something is false or unscientific just because it is old. Modern man, looking down the corridors of more than 2000 years of history and with high-tech instruments, is supposedly in a much better position to evaluate these events than those who were actually eyewitnesses. “Now—with the help of high-tech methods including radar imaging, computer simulation and chemical analysis—scientists are becoming convinced that there may be another dimension to these miraculous tales.”3 These are the same people who can’t explain how the pyramids were built.

Following anti-supernatural presuppositions, the author of “Bible Mysteries” offers what he believes are rationalistic and scientific explanations for what were once considered miraculous events by well intentioned religionists who wanted people to believe in God.

Noah and the Ark

The first supposed miracle that has a purely scientific explanation is the story of Noah’s Ark. PM admits that an ark with the same dimensions as Noah’s Ark “was found not on Mount Ararat but on a remote site about 20 miles away.”4 Since it was not found on what is today Mount Ararat in Turkey, PM concludes that the vessel is not Noah’s Ark. A careful reading of the biblical text will show that the ark “rested upon the mountains of Ararat” (Gen. 8:4). In biblical times Ararat was a range of mountains, not unlike our Appalachian or Rocky Mountains. Twenty miles is not a great distance when considering that a mountain range might cover a thousand miles.

But how do scientists explain this huge ship-like structure so high in the mountains? “[It could have been] an astronomical event causing gravitational pull in the ocean waters that forced the boat into the mountains,” David Fasold, a shipwreck specialist, hypothesizes. And they say Christians believe in miracles.

Lot's Wife is Turned into a Pillar of Salt

The Dead Sea is the lowest body of water on earth (1,344 feet below the mean level of the world's oceans). The biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were located in the Dead Sea region. Scientists theorize that the twin cities of depravity were “destroyed by an earthquake that toppled buildings and liquified the rocks and soil underneath the cities.”5 Other cities have been lost through liquification: the town of Helice in ancient Greece in 37 B.C., thousands of miles of area in China in 1921, and most recently, a section of Valdez, Alaska, in the 1950s. In a similar way, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, probably through volcanic activity which liquefied the surrounding salt and bitumen (asphalt) mines.

But what of Lot’s wife? Did she turn into a pillar of salt? Yes and no. The text does not demand that Lot’s wife be transformed into salt through and through in the same way that those who looked at the snaked-haired Medusa were turned to stone. As Lot’s wife “looked back,” she got caught in the spray of molten salt and was encased in the mixture,“and she became a pillar of salt” (Gen. 19:26). Henry Morris writes:

One possibility is that the explosions in the region threw great quantities of its salt deposits into the air, and that some of these fell on her and buried her under a great pile of salt. Another is that she was buried by volcanic ash or other materials and that, gradually, over the following years, her body became petrified, “becoming salt” in fashion similar to that experienced by the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum when they were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.6

The miracle was that God did it at the time He said He would, for the purpose of ridding the region of the degrading influence of the Sodomites. PM dismisses the notion of divine intervention, offering no explanation as to how only Lot and his family knew to escape the impending destruction.

Read Part Two of this article...

2. Fillon, “Science Solves Ancient Mysteries of the Bible,” 40.

3. Fillon, “Science Solves Ancient Mysteries of the Bible,” 39.

4. Fillon, “Science Solves Ancient Mysteries of the Bible,” 40.

5. Fillon, “Science Solves Ancient Mysteries of the Bible,” 41.

6. Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), 356.