“How does the sun burn in space if there’s no oxygen in space, and fire needs oxygen?”
I looked at my six year-old son like he had just asked me how babies were made. Except, that is, I knew how babies are made, but I didn’t know how the sun burns in outer space when fire need oxygen.
As a homeschool dad, it was important for me to prove to myself that I couldn’t be stumped by a kid who had only a 50% success rate at flushing the toilet. Surely, I thought, I had the answer to this somewhere in my brain.
So, I looked at him and gave the best and most accurate answer that in that moment I could provide, “The sun burns by the power and glory of Jesus Christ, and is upheld by the Word of his power.”
He nodded and went back to scribbling, while I googled ‘nuclear fusion.’ I then filled him in on how Christ’s power uses nuclear fusion.
THE IMAGINARY LINE BETWEEN NATURE AND SUPER-NATURE
The terms "natural" and "supernatural" have long been used to categorize phenomena in our world, with the former suggesting things grounded in the material, observable universe, and the latter hinting at forces or entities beyond scientific grasp. But when we peel back the layers of these labels, a provocative truth emerges; from a scientific perspective, the difference between nature and super-nature is philosophical than empirical. In other words, there is no difference, except that of perspective. The things we understand are natural, and the things we don’t, are supernatural. Christians, as I’ll explain, shouldn’t have a problem with this definition.
Historically, phenomena once deemed supernatural—lightning, disease, the movement of celestial bodies—were demystified as we uncovered their underlying mechanisms. Thunder wasn’t the roar of gods but the rapid expansion of air heated by electricity. Germs, not curses, caused most plagues. What we call "natural" today is simply what we’ve managed to explain.
The supernatural, then, isn’t a separate realm immune to science—it’s a placeholder for the unexplained. If a ghost flickered into a lab and could be measured with thermal cameras or electromagnetic sensors, it would not be considered “supernatural phenomenon” any longer, but a natural phenomenon, scientifically explained. The boundary isn’t fixed; it’s a horizon that recedes as our tools and knowledge advance. In other words, the supernatural things of yesterday, are considered natural today.
You might have noticed that I’ve focused much attention at Insight to Incite on the advance of quantum computing, Artificial Super-Intelligence, and technological Singularity. My point in this particular post is that as these these things will soon provide light-years worth of advancement to human understanding about how our world works in coming months, and centuries of technological progress will soon be calculated only in months or years. We will soon begin to understand certain things about our supernatural world that before were considered not only mysterious, but mythical. And therefore, the Christian mindset must be prepared for it.
THIS IS GOD’S WORLD
From the youngest of ages, Christian households catechize their children to understand that the world belongs to God, and everything in it. As the children’s song says, “The mountains are his, the rivers are his, the stars are his handiwork too; my God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do.”
And so, we Christians have a creation-oriented view of the world. God made the world just as he says he did, in six literal days, by the power produced by the flexing of his anthropomorphic vocal chords. He created an aged world, one in which on the third day, he didn’t plant acorns, but produced fully-grown oak trees that have to be 40 years-old just to hit tree puberty, and shed acorns to reproduce. On this sixth day, God created a mature man, not an embryo who would have had no womb to dwell in, or a toddler who would have had no parent to tend to him in the garden.
And so, when the scientists come along and tell us the world is much older than the Bible tells us, we thank them for their opinion before promptly rejecting it as unlearned. In the same way that Jesus turned water into a fine, aged and alcoholic wine in the twinkling of an eye (which takes seven years to reach perfection), God created a world that was mature enough to sustain humanity, from oak trees large enough to lend their shade to crude oil being buried deep in the ground to fuel internal combustion engines.
In other words, although the process we call ‘science’ can tell us a lot of things, unlike the Word of God, the process is not infallible, and so neither are the results as we understand them. Just because we understand a thing or two about the created order - for example, how bats navigate using rodent sonar or birds and butterflies navigate journeys to the equator and back by sensing magneto-reception, doesn’t mean that they don’t find their way by supernatural power. It only means that God’s supernatural power employs the use of magneto-reception, and that God supernaturally put it in the Earth because he cares about the birds and butterflies.
Just because we understand that gravity exists, and a few things about how it works - for example, as Newton observed, what goes up must come down - doesn’t mean that gravity is not a supernatural law of a supernatural God that allows us to aim when we pee. These are all supernatural things, and naturalistic explanations for supernatural things are no less supernatural.
WHAT IS SUPER-NATURE?
The concept of “super-nature” is a slippery concept. If it means "beyond nature," what is nature? Most would say it’s the physical universe governed by laws like gravity or thermodynamics. Those “laws” are only human descriptions of what we’ve observed that God has done. If a "supernatural" event—like telekinesis or a deity rearranging stars—occurred consistently and predictably, science would catalog it, model it, and call it a new law. The label "supernatural" would evaporate, replaced by an expanded understanding of reality.
Before I move on, let me delineate between miracles of God, or as the New Testament refers to them, “signs, wonders, and mighty deeds,” and “ordinary supernaturality.” Miracles are often cited as supernatural hallmarks. A man walks on water, defying physics as we know it. If we could replicate the conditions—say, a hidden force altering surface tension or gravity—science wouldn’t shrug and call it magic; it would investigate the mechanism. Then, it would just be a puzzle to figure out. The supernatural only stays "super" until we crack its code. But in regard to genuine miracles (like Jesus walking on water) they are beyond the “ordinary supernatural.” They are God’s pausing or breaking of his own supernatural laws, to do something that is supernaturally out of the ordinary.
With miracles set aside in an altogether different category, we must grasp that “ordinary supernaturality” is around us all the time. Some of those supernatural things - like how hummingbirds fly or how black holes do what it is they do - are not considered supernatural by many, but they flatly are. No scientific explanations exist to satisfy our knowledge of the scientific laws these things seem to contradict.
But other supernatural things, also around us all the time, are considered mythical or magical, because the powers of scientific observation are not strong enough to measure or observe them. These would include things like demons and angels. There’s no reason to believe that celestial creatures, which the Bible says are around us, above us, and sometimes in us (well, hopefully not us, but definitely in some people) are supernatural by Biblical standards. No law of God’s creation is being broken by their activities. God is not suspending time or space for them to operate around us. Ergo, there is no logical reason to believe that these things could not be observed, proven, or studied by naturalistic means, if only we had the capacity and technology to do so.
This may seem fantastical, but consider that Christians have been caught off guard repeatedly throughout scientific history, as supernatural things we never thought could be observed through naturalistic means (like human conception) turned out to be quite visible by the microscope. But is not conception a supernatural feat of God, regardless of whether or not we can observe it with the right equipment? Of course human conception is supernatural, because God gives life, and just because we can watch him do so through a microscope, doesn’t mean it’s a detraction of God’s glory through the process. In fact, observing God’s supernaturality should only increase our faith.
So why would some Christians lose faith when aspects of supernatural things, like conception, become known? It’s because as I explained above, we have artificially conjoined the notions of supernaturality and mystery, presuming that supernatural things are only those that are mysterious. If these things lose their mystery, we presume wrongly, that they are no longer supernatural.
What I desire you to understand is that as Quantum Computing and Singularity soon begin to peel back the world’s mysteries, that you comprehend these are still God’s mysteries, but will then simply be God’s mysteries revealed. Knowing the process by which God does supernatural things, doesn’t mean they aren’t supernatural.
BACK TO QUANTUM MECHANICS
I want to revisit the article from six days ago, “Prepare Now: Microsoft Discovery Paves Way for Singularity, Quantum Computing.” In that article, I explained a new discovery announced by Microsoft - a new form of matter called the “Topological State” of matter.
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