The story where Jesus walks on water is a huge target for critics of the Bible. The obvious impossibility of the feat makes the story easy to dismiss as myth. Today, I don’t want to defend or criticize the story in particular, but I’d rather address what I see as a problem with the way it is handled by the naysayers.
I once heard of a college professor who proclaimed that the story of Jesus walking on the water is easily explained in natural terms. (It’s always college professors, isn’t it? So the story is probably apocryphal.) He said that there was no need to believe there was anything supernatural about the event. He explained that a simple submerged platform could have been erected, which would have been invisible to the adoring crowds and would have made the illusion of water-walking quite convincing. He concluded that since building such a simple device was well within the capabilities of a first century carpenter, there was no reason to assume anything more mysterious. Occam’s razor. Q.E.D.
Anyone see the problem with that logic? If not, I suggest you go read the story as it is actually recorded and see if it works then. You see, Jesus didn’t walk on water in front of an adoring crowd. He did it mostly unseen except for his small inner circle of followers.
According to the story, Jesus sent his disciples on ahead to the next town while he went off to pray. As they were rowing to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, they encountered strong headwinds that slowed their progress to a crawl so that they were still struggling to make headway at three in the morning. It is hard to say exactly where they were, but since the sea is large, a trip across could be anywhere from 8 to 10 miles. Thus, we could reasonably assume that they were at least four miles away from shore. This is where they found Jesus as he walked out to meet them.
Now the whole submerged platform idea looks pretty silly doesn’t it? First, who in that era could build such a platform four miles from shore in waters 80 to 100 feet deep? I suppose the Romans could have done it given enough time and manpower, but it would hardly have been a secret and we’d still see the remnants today. Next, even if the disciples had been intending to do so, what are the chances that they could have found the submerged, invisible platform in, let’s say, 10 square miles of open water, in the dark, in a storm? Yet, they weren’t intending to find it, so their happening upon it by chance defies belief. Finally, without supernatural help, how did Jesus get to the platform? He left after the disciples and would have been battling the same headwinds. Did he swim? Did he row an Olympic racing shell out to the platform and scuttle it so that it wouldn’t be seen by the men in the boat? Ridiculous propositions, all of them.
Another hypothesis—this time with traceable sources—suggests that Jesus could have actually been walking on a thin layer of ice. Again, this is a problematic scenario, given all the detail in the story. To be fair, the scientists do not actually claim that this explains the Jesus story, or that anyone could have actually walked on the ice. They only conclude that there may have been very rare ice conditions in the area at the time, give or take 150 years.
Who knows? Maybe someone walked out onto an ice shelf 2000 years ago, inspiring the walk on water story. It is certain that Jesus never walked several miles out into the sea on a layer of ice. The scientists claim that the ice would have only extended out a short way from shore. What’s important is that the possibility of ice does not mean this story has a grain of truth, or that it is at all plausible. Given that, it is surprising to me that there are non-believers who point to this to prove that nothing supernatural was going on.
Here’s my main point. I use Doubtland to highlight bad arguments religious folks give for believing what they do. I want you to know I have no fear of highlighting bad arguments given by non-religious folks either. Sloppy thinking is sloppy thinking. If you give me crappy reason, I’m going to doubt you whether you agree with me or not.
I can’t tell you the number of complaints atheists and other non-believers have against the Bible, which, if examined in context of the actual book, are completely baseless and false. It drives me crazy. We don’t need to find a natural explanation for Jesus walking on water. If you’re a scientist, and atheist, a college professor, or anyone else who’s motivated to debunk the Bible, why expend any effort to explain away the story? Why not just say that it was all made up? Isn’t that the most plausible explanation?
Why give the book any more credibility than it has earned? We don’t know if what we have is a reliable translation of the original texts, or even if there was an original text. (What we have could be a mash-up of several “original” texts.) And even if we did, we don’t know who the authors were, whether they were reliable reporters, where they got their information or whether those sources were reliable. Until those questions are answered, there is no reason to treat the story as factual at all. And if it didn’t happen, no explanation is needed.
It is important to have good reasons for our beliefs. When you hear a crazy story, whether from the Bible or your imaginative four-year-old niece, there’s no point in creating another made-up story to explain it. Just say, “That’s interesting, but it doesn’t sound true.”