RE: In your opinion what causes christians to believe in Jesus
May 17, 2025 at 5:41 pm
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2025 at 7:34 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(May 17, 2025 at 5:17 pm)emjay Wrote: I'm not really sure I understand your objection. If a physical law predicts a given outcome in a given situation, and that given outcome occurs as a result of that law applied, then I have no problem in saying that that outcome was determined by the application of that law in that situation.
Right, but I would say you're making an explanatory or categorical leap that isn't warranted. Similar to confusing correlation with causation. When laws and theories predict something they aren't giving you an inference into causation. For the sake of illustration let's say we can accurately predict the rain about 75% of the times based on whether cows lay down. Clearly, the accuracy of the prediction is independent of the cause. We wouldn't say the cows determine the rain, just that the correlation allows us to make the prediction.
Physical laws don't determine what happens, they just summarize what we observe.
