On Tue, 30 May 1995 17:52:22 -0700 you wrote:
>
>Stephen Jones wrote:
>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.
>
DP>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.)
Yes. As I understand it, the laws of nature are idealised generalities
we derive from statistical groupings around a mean. No experiment ever
confirms a law of nature exactly.
>
DP>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.
Yes. And even if we were watching, science would not understand it. It
would say "experimental error".
DP>I admit that God does seem pretty consistent with rocks, but in
>other areas He is definitely more capricious.
It does not follow that because we do not understand everything
that God does in nature, or why He dies it, that He is "capricious".
My dog probably thinks I am "capricious" too, when I do things for
reasons that he does not understand.
>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.
I do agree that science does not understand the laws of nature
perfectly, but I do not agree that this means God is inconsistent.
>Stephen further writes:
SJ>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.
DP>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).
Agreed. The problem is not science but scientists! <g> Scientists
are human and according to the Bible all humans are sinners hiding
from God (Gn 3:10, etc). Given a choice therefefore, scientists,
like the rest of us, will (unless God intervenes), adopt a world-view
that enables them to keep God hidden from sight.
DP>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).
Yes. If we are Christians, then we must give Christ the highest
priority, in everything, including our thought life:
2Cor 10:5 "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that
exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ"
This of course does not mean that science must be crunched into a
procrustean bed of any particular literalist interpretation of the
Bible. But neither should it be constricted by any particular
philosophy that assumes (in effect) that God does not exist. While
such a materialist-naturalist philosophy is comparatively harmless in
99% of the cases of "normal science", it is, if God does in fact
exist, wrong in cases of "origin science".
DP>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).
Agreed. In the end it is a contest of which master we will serve:
Mt 6:24 "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise
the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Thank you Dave.
Stephen