The Narrow Bandwidth of Definition

There is a narrow bandwidth of definition in the natural world…that supports the scientific activity of biological taxonomic classification…that defines the essence of every living and non-living thing…which recognizes horizontally constraining definition lines below and above…describing the characteristics, architectural design, and lifestyle habits…of billions of unique and distinctive things in the natural world…a reality that is fatal to the theory of the open-ended boundaries of random change in Darwinian macroevolution, naturalistic materialism, and scientism.

The characteristics, architectural body designs, and lifestyle habits of an apple tree compared to the olive tree or to the rose bush…or the distinctive and unique characteristics that define the African elephant compared to a giraffe or a hippopotamus…not to mention a salmon fish or a falcon bird or a spider insect…all are part of unique and discontinuous, narrow bandwidths of definition that fall within their tight spaces of horizontal lines above and below that lock into place the essence of each and every living and non-living thing…that stay that way without any observable major changes… toward some future, hypothetical, currently unimaginable outcomes…beyond their essential characteristic definitions.

There is an extremely narrow and precise bandwidth of complex, specified, and coherently integrated information…of enormous quantity…front-loaded inside the seed of an apple tree…that tells the seed planted in the ground to burst upward through the surface of the ground and rise with incredible energy, momentum, and direction…to become a very specific type of tree producing a specific type of fruit…apples having nutrients, a sweet taste, and a pleasing aroma.

What tells the apple tree when to stop growing and when and how to start producing fruit…is again front-loaded within the informational package that uniquely and distinctly defines what it means to be an apple tree.

The compelling evidence of ordered and intelligible information integral to this reality of an apple tree…that argues through commonsense for the need for an intelligent designer God setting all of this in motion…along with billions of other brilliantly coordinated systems of information making up the vast diversity of living things in the natural world…seamlessly translates over into the narrow bandwidths of definition found in the biblical narrative stories of faith.

What is beyond humanistic explanation is how each biblical narrative story of faith could hone-in on its own unique mission-plan and outcome…between tightly spaced-apart top and bottom defining horizontal lines…while finding just the right mix of the supernatural and miraculous…while establishing and maintaining a delicate balance between belief and unbelief…a powerful process yet incomprehensible and undetectable to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.

When Jesus says to Thomas: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” (Jn. 20:29)…Jesus is not being critical of Thomas.

Jesus…in that very moment…is engaged in physically revealing Himself in His resurrected body…again to the disciples…this time while Thomas is not absent elsewhere but present amongst them.

Within the delicate balance between belief and unbelief…following the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…these physical appearances of Jesus to the disciples and to other select people…to the extent of the numerical limits as described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8…were more than adequate for the inauguration and empowerment of the early Christian church…as historically seen in hindsight.

But these physical appearances of Jesus after His resurrection…were also brilliantly and carefully moderated so as not to extend over into the area of  mass-public appearances…beyond that of the more than 500 disciples described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:6…into the public domain of undeniable, empirically observed reality…like isolated cases of the undeniable persuasiveness of the temporary blindness of Elymas the sorcerer in Acts 13, or the temporary loss of being able to speak for Zacharias in Luke 1, or the potential of Jesus praying to the Father for legions of angels to save Him from the upcoming ordeal of the cross.

All of these examples of visual, observed reality…along with all of the signs and wonders recorded in the Bible…would and did generate a type of faith that Thomas obtained when he examined the hands and the side of the resurrected Jesus (Jn. 20:28)…an empirical acknowledgment of the risen Christ that Thomas would need for the intense storms of opposition and persecution he and the other disciples would face in the immediate days and years to come.

The quality of being able to hear God’s voice in the Spirit…to understand our unique calling…and to be able to follow God’s lead within a narrow bandwidth that defines who and what we are and what we were created to become…derives its high-value because faith and trust is an invaluable part of personal relationships…and is not the same thing as the mere acknowledgment of visually observed events and occurrences…even divine miracles (Jn. 12:37).

Many Christians in the days ahead may need the empirical evidences of divine appearances of God and of angels…in dreams, visions, or visitations (Joel 2:28-29)…to boldly and confidently carry out their challenging missions…like Paul in Acts 23:11.

But the standard stock-in-trade of the Christian life is to commendably and admirably follow God in-the-Spirit…without physical, empirical evidence of His presence and participation in our lives.

The enormous importance of this reality of the delicate balance between belief and unbelief…is the two-fold coupling of the apologetic evidence this unfolds…of its divine origin and continued maintenance…along with the equally important inspirational value to the believing Christian of God’s masterful brilliance demonstrated in the tight definitions of the biblical narrative stories of faith…each as unique, distinctive, and having purposeful direction…as the unique informational packages contained within the seeds of apple, orange, olive, or fig trees.

Jesus actually says to the disciples that it is imperative that He go away…that He return to the Father in heaven…so that the Holy Spirit…the divine Third Person of the Trinity…invisible and un-seeable to human beings…can lead them…and us…into all truth (Jn. 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-15).

This reality of a walk with God through life…in the Spirit…applies to modern-day Christians as well as to the early Christian disciples in the first-century.

The ability to invent and to utilize a delicate balance between belief and unbelief…only has tangible application within real interactions with the living God…who is capable of initiating and sustaining personal relationships with His followers (Jer. 31:31-34)…through God-composed journeys of faith.

This distinctive feature of the biblical narrative stories of faith…balanced precisely within the narrow bandwidths that define the original and innovative storylines of the callings of the people of faith in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible…has no plausible explanation of origin coming from man-made religions having imaginary gods.

The Bible has this unique and distinctive component of a delicate balance between belief and unbelief…because the Bible is a divinely inspired composition…co-authored with human beings by the Creator God of the universe.

Any other explanation for its existence within the marketplace of ideas…is nonsensical.

From A Popular Defense of the Bible and Christianity.