by AlmostAtheist 18 Replies latest jw friends
AlmostAthiest said: One such law is the "law of supply and demand". If there's a bunch of widgets on the market, the various suppliers have to battle with each other over price. If there's only a few, or they're sold by only one supplier, then they can charge whatever they want. The law shows that there will be a balance between supply and demand, held in place by price or quality or whatever. "Law", but no "law-giver".
Ya, but someone still had to make the widget, AA...........geesh!
AuldSoul, my fine and gentle Sir, ;-)
Don't get too hung up on the word "law" here. I only use it because the folks I'd like to reason with do. Here is their argument:
"The universe is guided by natural laws, so dependable and precise that astronomers can predict the positions of planets decades in advance. The existence of these laws implies a law-giver, does it not?"
The purpose of this thread is to answer that argument. No, the presence of an observable property about a system -- even if we call it a "law" -- doesn't mean that the property was placed there by an intelligence. As examples that I hope creationists could relate to, I offered the "law" of supply and demand. It is a "law" in the same sense that natural properties of the universe are "laws". (Or is NOT a law, in the same sense. Either way, they are the same idea.)
And I don't think I buy that if God created matter, he must also have created gravity. Perhaps he did, but he may have JUST created matter, with gravity being what happens when the matter clumped together. I write computer programs that are meant to do one thing, but in doing it also manage to do something else. (Usually something dreadful, but I digress...) I didn't design it that way, it's just a property of a system that does what it does. (A lightbulb also generates heat, for instance)
(And of course, it's possible God didn't create anything at all. Except beer, which is clearly of divine origin. I don't think anyone here would dispute that.)
Another "law": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns
>>I believe your argument is extremely valid. I like it, and I'll probably use it.
May you have more success than me, my friend. I like it too, but it's not found its mark on anyone I've used it with.
Dave
>>but someone still had to make the widget, AA.
Blast! Wouldn't there just HAVE to be a hole in an otherwise grand theory? Ah well, back to the drawing board... ;-)
Dave
"The Law of Sod", no one made up this law but ... shit happens.
The Society, as well as certain creationists, demand that laws are given by an intelligent designer (aka God) and thus every law must have a law giver. This is incorrect reasoning.
For example: The "Law of Large Numbers" is not a law that requires a lawgiver. It is a law that exist with or without God. Likewise, laws of probabilities and chance exist with or without God. That is, such mathematical "laws" do not require a lawgiver. Rather, they are properties or principles of math that humans discover and use, and name as laws.
The confusion: The Society and Young Earth Creationists are good at confusing terms, such as "laws." They play upon our common language instincts which normally associate such a term with something that humans design, and thus if it is something that humans did not design or create, then by God, God did it! This is true with the word "theory" where the Society and Young Earth Creationists play upon the word as used in "evolutionary theory" to imply a speculative educated guess. What they fail to disclose is that "theory" as used in science, describes the operating basis or principles or laws of a specific discipline. For example, electrical theory is actually less developed than evolutionary theory, yet we have no doubt that electricity exists and that we can allply its theories and create light, run motors, operate computers, etc.
What needs to happen: Many Christians simply see evolution, natural laws, etc. as part of God's tools that exist, in which he has superior knowledge and ability to utilize them for his own creative works. We do not have to argue about whether God invented these laws, or whether evolution is real. We accept such things as science reveals them to us. Young Earth Creationists and the JWs need to take a deep breath and take another look at the universe, and stop trying to debate science with such confusion and obfuscation.
Jim Whitney
A physical law, scientific law, or a law of nature is a scientific generalization based on empiricalobservations of physical behavior. They are typically conclusions based on repeated scientificexperiments over many years, and which have become accepted universally within the scientific community.
This is interesting, because on one hand, the evolutionist is quick to call for emperically scientific tested world they live in, and the other is the inability to have the origins of the evolutionist world, empirically tested.
I think we all realize no one was around to scientifically observe the primordial soup/or whatever grow from the speculated origins of chaos or whatever.
What needs to happen: is to start life in a lab an have it set to the empirical observation testing standards that allegedly apply to the evolutionist world.
Elderwho,
What needs to happen: is to start life in a lab an have it set to the empirical observation testing standards that allegedly apply to the evolutionist world.
And ... wait and observe such an experiment for 500,000,000 years. The evidence for evolution is abundant. While we do not have a videotape of the transitions between species, we do have the fossil record, and DNA, and the human genome project, as well as other evidence. The problems with evolution are not whtehr it happened, but how certain aspects could have happened at all. However, we do have the micro scale in which evolution is observed and repeated on a very rapid scale, i.g. micro-organisms that develop resistence to anti-biotics in just one generation.
Jim W.
Elderwho
set to the empirical observation testing standards that allegedly apply to the evolutionist world.
Arguably, that is the world in which we live. The only obstacle to observation is our limited times here.
S
Einstein said more than once that science formulated concept and "laws" in an attempt to give order to sensory experience. And that these concepts are "free creations" of the human mind. That means that the concepts used to describe nature are NOT inductively arrived at, but are "created" by the human mind!
Thus "laws of Nature" do not exist in nature! They are created by man to summarize and explain what he sees in nature!
--VM44
