> I do not believe that in
> the final analysis, that there are "laws of nature". I believe that
> what man calls "laws of nature" are a description of God's regular
> workings in and through nature. We call these things "laws", but
> where are they? We can't capture a law and put it on display. They
> seem to be mysteriously external to the cosmos. They are the way
> things work, but do we really know why?
Lloyd Eby wrote:
> I think that there is a certain amount of philosophical confusion in the
> view you are propounding. Does God always cause the rock to fall,
> according to the same mathematical principle(s) every time? The answer, so
> far as I know, seems to be yes. Thus there is a *law* operating in what we
> have come to call nature.
How do we know that every time a rock falls, it is according to the same
mathematical principles? At best we can say that every experiment seems
to confirm this to be so (but even then there are ambiguities as
we reject some experiments as in error and equip the data we do accept
with emperical `error bars'. Plus we have to factor in all sorts of
other fudges to do with non-linear phenomena such as friction.)
An infinitessimal number of falling rocks have their trajectories
evaluated scientifically. At best science can measure what God *tends*
to do *while* we are watching.
I admit that God does seem pretty consistent with rocks, but in other
areas He is definitely more capricious. For instance the weather. Now
science chalks this apparent inconsistency up to extremely sensitive
non-linear phenomena, but all that really says is that there are
phenomena for which the outcome is impossible to determine in advance.
Other areas of non-determinancy are in aspects of the social sciences
(aka fuzzy studies), medicine, traffic accidents, warfare, politics,
product marketing, love, procreation, scientific insight.
Stephen further writes:
> However, if we take that useful
> mechanistic model, make a metaphysical principle out of it, and try to
> fit our theology, the Bible and God to it, then I believe we make a
> potentially serious error.
The fact that we can have a mechanistic model is not incompatible with
the theology of the Bible. What *is* incompatible is ascribing some
essence of reality to that model. Science in fact does *not* ascribe
such a reality, though scientists often do for the same reasons that
the rest of us do also. Namely It is very convenient to be able to plan
out your existence, and that requires a certain constancy. We assume
that things will continue as they have (not necessarily a good
assumption to make (2 Peter 3:4).
I think the potential error is just as Stephen says.
We should *not* give the mechanistic model credence over the theological
one (i.e. that all things are subject to God -- James 4:13-16).
The converse is that we *should* give precedence to the theological
view over the mechanistic. We should recognize our dependence upon
God, acknowledging Him as sovereign and displaying gratitude (Rom 1:21,28).
--Dave Probert