If they were to be reducible to the laws of nature, nothing at all in this
universe is "naturalistic". God created it all and it all is a miracle. In
my opinion, the laws of nature are the miracles of God which occur everyday.
It is His decree which set up the laws of gravitation, the laws of
electromagnetism (or electroweak force). They are no more naturalistic than
is the turning of water into wine. We are simply jaded into thinking that
gravitation is naturalistic because we are used to it.
I am sure that there are a few people on the list who will remember way back
in the late 1970's when the game "Pong" first appeared in places where
pinballs had been previously. The nation went gaga over a screen with two
lines and a dot that moved. Simple game but everyone was mesmerized. Now,
no one wants to play it becaue we are now jaded and require more excitement.
So it is with the natural laws. We see the sun rise every morning and
forget what a miracle it is for this to occur. Momemtum (both angular and
linear) must be conserved, the laws of electromagnetism must be the same each
morning, and the laws of quantum mechanics must be the same.. While most of
us give a hearty ho-hum to the sun rise, the physics involved is miraculous.
Why should the laws be constant? Why should the physical constants be
constant? In a world built strictly by chance (as John Wheeler suggests see
Thornton, Misener and Wheeler, Gravitation, 1972, last chapter) the form of
the laws should be chosen by chance, the constants would be chosen by chance
and we would be very unlikely to be here. One thing is certain, the view of
naturalism is wrong.
John Turnbull wrote:
>>After having reread my original post, I can see how one might think that I
am a Theistic (or Deistic) evolutionist. I am not. The essence of my post
was to state that I don't expect chaos theory to solve the present problems
of self-organization in biological systems. I went on to state that even if
it is successful, it will explain evolution in a way that is NOT consistent
with the intent of classical naturalism, or as Phillip Johnson referes to it
as the Blind Watchmaker Thesis. <<
I did not think you were an evolutionist, but your statement did express
something that I have been very poor in explaining.
While I can't speak for Brian Harper who also responded to John's post, I
think he would probably agree that chaos theory will not explain life in the
way that the Blind Watchmaker wants. Someone had to DESIGN the phase spaces
of the nonlinear systems. That someone was God.
glenn