>In everyday life people make their decisions (and even civil law cases
are
>decided) `on the balance of probabilities'. It would therefore be
sufficient
>for the Designer to only supply sufficient evidence that `on the balance
of
>probabilities' there is a Designer.
This is true, also in criminal law, but it is more likely evidence of
sloppy use - multiple definations - of words than a similarity between
the subjects of the words. 400 years ago there wasn't any natural,
theological, or legal, or philosophical difference between the phrases
"law of God, law of nature, civil law." Civil laws were enacted by the
"divine right of kings" and God imposed the "laws of nature" upon the
universe and anyone whose observations of natural relationships seemed to
contridict the Bible was declared a heretic.
For example, SEJ also wrote:
>First, even if this were true, it would not be an argument against
design.
>Science has had to work hard to find the laws hidden deep within nature.
>But no one says the laws can't exist because they are hard to find.
Indeed,
>that there are laws hidden deep within nature is part of the overall
>argument from design!
He is equating civil law passed by local governments to the physical
relationships which appear to "govern" this universe - using one word
for two dissimilar functions. In the bad old days, stating "Boyle's Law"
was equivalent to stating "A Godly relationship in the physical universe
discovered by Boyle." It is important to note that "quantum mechanics" is
not called "quantum laws." Scientists are no longer out to discover God's
secret laws but to determine physical relationships.
It sounds classier to refer to "Boyle's Law" than to Boyle's Best Guess"
but the phrases are equivalent. Nobel Prizes are won by upsetting
someone's previous best guess, not by overturning God's Law.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 18 2000 - 13:07:43 EDT