For most of us a "law of science" is simply a description or prediction that checks out.  But often we've gotten Christians through here who will ask "who do you think enforces those laws of science?"  Awkward.  I guess they're thinking science is like the old west, nothing behaves as it ought unless there is an adequate sheriff in town.  That leads to weird arguments about fine tuning, as though nothing has any inherent nature dictating how it reacts.  I guess if you think all creation is but the whim of an almighty omniguy, then any order we find must reflect the will of that guy.

They treat morality the same way.  Rather than merely describing predictable patterns of behavior, a fundy thinks there are moral laws which are what they are cuz God says so.  Here at least a non-fundy can agree there is a need for some enforcement and we address that need with a justice system.

Not all Christians are guilty of this sort of sloppy thinking but it sure would be nice to see fundies accept of a correct view of science before they reject it.[/rant]

Their god concept is proscriptive, that's the context in which they conceptualize these sorts of things...and so when they consider physical law, they imagine it to be similarly proscriptive...rather than descriptive - as they are-.....which, to them, -rationally- begs the question of just who or what -proscribes- them.

They're actually following through, in a completely reasonable fashion...it's just that they began with a mistaken assumption. Wrong for the right reasons.

Sure seems weird from this side of the divide.

Physical laws might seem to 'limit' God's purview, perhaps. If He were limited to a finite locus, and finite lightspeed, then He isn't as Almighty as He might otherwise be.

And whereas the Bible might have given mere humans all manner of 'heads up' regarding the actual properties of the universe, it didn't. We've noted before, churchy folks don't like surprises.

I generally see this from hard-core trolling types or YECs who haven't been trained to think that a word might have more than one definition. The trolls are gonna troll, it's how they roll. YECs generally are ineducable.

Gotta say that I generally agree, though it's not that they couldn't be educated, they'd just rather not be.  They -prefer- the context of their conceptualizations.  We see this all the time.

"But if there is no x, then bad men just get away with it!"

Yeah...............that's what happens, regardless of what we believe.

Fair enough. When I used to argue with theists, that willful ignorance was really annoying. I don't even discuss the silly religious stuff, for the most part. It is painful for me to see that much ignorance wrapped up in one skull, with no interest in learning why they are wrong, and I'm not just talking about gods.

The idea that laws of physics are somehow to be followed blindly by decree of some authority is pretty common outside of fundamentalist circles as well, simply because the way physics is often taught in school - as a collection of facts to be memorized rather than as the preliminary results of a scientific process.

(November 6, 2016 at 5:35 pm)Alex K Wrote: The idea that laws of physics are somehow to be followed blindly by decree of some authority is pretty common outside of fundamentalist circles as well, simply because the way physics is often taught in school - as a collection of facts to be memorized rather than as the preliminary results of a scientific process.

Now you're just depressing me.

IKR? I mean, I've heard that education has gone down the shitter, but I like to dismiss it as "golden age" rambling.  Meh, maybe it has.