The Problem with Christians

[AJW333]

OK, I am up to speed. You seem reluctant to acknowledge "laws" and prefer to talk about "models" just in case the law should suddenly up and change itself. I'm not sure whether you believe there are any concrete laws of nature at all. Do you think there are?

Considering gravity, if I was to observe a heavy rock just float off into the sky, would that be a violation of the law of gravity or would we have to change our "model" of how gravity works?

Thanks for watching the video.

In what way am I reluctant to say they are laws? Did you ignore everything I said about the difference between the actual law and our models? You are equivocating, and it's hard to know whether this is deliberate or accidental. The more times this is explained to you, the more likely it is you're simply being dishonest.

Not trying to be difficult, it's just the way you expressed yourself. At 4:20 on the video you said, "At no point do we say these are the laws of nature, we impose them on reality......reality could just change if it wanted.....that's all wrong now, you've got to do something else............you can informally say that what our theory of gravity is, is a law of nature but that's informal and not accurate."

 You then go on to say that the law (of gravity) is not the same as the model, that you are equivocating.

So when I listened to this, you appear somewhat reluctant to refer to the law of gravity, in preference to talking about the "theory of gravity" and "models of gravity." This seems odd to me given that there are laws of gravitation that are well accepted, reliable and testable.

Reality/nature works a certain way. However it works, those are the laws. It appears, so far, that many of those laws stay the same and can be usefully modelled. There is still no guarantee they will always stay the way they are, or that we haven't missed some detail which we will find out later.

Again, you're assuming our current models are perfect. You give science way too much credit.

Given that we use these "fallible models" to build supercomputers, rockets and nuclear power stations, It would appear that we have a pretty good handle on the laws of physics.

If you saw a heavy rock float away, that would potentially be evidence that our theory of gravity needs refining.

Or that there was evidence of supernatural activity

Of course, some guy just saying they have seen it is not evidence it has actually happened. It would need to be reproduced in order to be useful

. In general, the reliance on anecdotes that can't be tested betrays the desperation of theists to sneak in conclusions. But they are "only cheating themself". They don't need to convince me, after all. You're trying to imply it happens just one time, and that's supernatural. What it would be in that case is an unexplained event that doesn't fit our current models. Again, trying to call it supernatural is the argument from ignorance.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this isn't true. What I'm saying is that if something violates the laws of physics, like a rock floating off into space, then that qualifies as a supernatural event, not just something requiring some further modelling or redefining the law of gravity.