I still don’t follow. Please give me an example of a physical law: the ones that I have in mind are descriptive. The phrase, “Law” only implies that the degree of certainty (as based on observable evidence)is higher than that of “theory” (never mind “hypothesis”).[sup]1[/sup]
This is worth repeating, in my view. If someone survived a botched execution, that would be a remarkable feat, albeit a scientifically plausible one.
[sup]1[/sup]The preceding definitions apply to the natural sciences: they certainly do not obtain in economics.
Descriptive, maybe. Explanatory, no. Laws do not explain anything. They are just observed properties of the universe. THEORIES explain things.
You have an erroneous understanding of the terminology. A law does not have any greater amount of certainty than a theory. In scientific terms (as opposed to the more vernacular use of the term), a “theory” is an explanation for an observed phenomenon or set of phenomena. The word does not mean “unproven.” No amount of proof can turn a theory into a law. A law is a WHAT, a theory is a WHY. The why can never become the what. The atom is a theory. It will never be a law. It is a law that objects fall at predictable rates of speed. It is a theory that they fall because of gravity. That doesn’t mean there is any uncertainty about the theory of gravity. Laws and theories are on equal rungs of certainty, they’re just on different ladders.
Thanks for the reply. Backgrond only: Answers.com provides us with the wikipedia entry as well as a definition of physical law by the Science and Technology Encyclopedia by McGraw Hill. Since wikipedia seems to match my view better, let’s look at the other one.
I think I’ll go along with, “Observed properties of the universe,” (or “Natural regularity”). And I appreciate DtC’s explanation of how Laws and theories differ in kind.
But saying whether physical laws were created, coded, drawn up by a committee or arose spontaneously from matter seems to me to be an exercise in metaphysics. Sure, Occam’s razor might guide some to one hypothesis or another. But I can’t see how any explanation regarding the origin of physical law could be definitively ruled out a priori or even on the basis of direct observation.
The only tools at our disposal for obtaining and evaluating empirical evidence depend for their reliability and validity on the laws of physics being as they are. Therefore one thing those tools are, by definition, going to be useless for is investigating the process by which those laws came into being. It’s like trying to remember back to before you were conscious and consciously recall becoming conscious. At best you’re going to get a thin early skim of data as it starts to work according to the laws of nature as they exist now.
Now, you might intuit an answer, or come to one philosophically, but that’s a different process entirely.
So Cherenkov radiation is caused by a miraculous occurrence? Maybe that explains the Transfiguration!
More seriously, haven’t some physicists speculated that C is not constant? Maybe one of them has said, “It’ll be a miracle if we’re right!” but I don’t think they meant that literally.
I don’t generally participate in theology threads, partly because I’m not interested in reverse witnessing (I’m an atheist), unless the OP expresses an interest in hearing both sides, and partly because I’ve never been able to identify a neutral set of criteria by which the issues can be advanced. I’m dropping into this thread only to object to Diogenes’ attempt to formulate such a critrion. The proposition has been offered that:
Well, no, this doesn’t work. To say miracles are scientifically impossible is only to say they are scientifically inexplicable. True enough, but theism argues there is another basis of explanation. To wit, God (by whatever name called). Or, stated another way, the argument is based on equivocation on the meaning of natural law. One meaning is natural law in the sense studied by science, e.g., physics and chemistry. Another, the one used by theists, is all of the above, plus God. So, call the first Natural Law and the latter Natural Law Plus. Miracles violate Natural Law, but not Natural Law Plus.
IOW, I disagree that one can define miracles out of existence. Even though I don’t believe they happen.
And like I keep saying “natural law plus” is a tautology. It’s saying something isn’t impossible if it isn’t impossible, but it doesn’t offer any reason why X isn’t impossible except to invent another impossibility. It’s like saying magic is possible if you have a magic wand. It’s not an explanation or an argument, it’s a tautology.
In some prior thread of this sort I posited that you can’t have it both ways:
"Oh, but what you’ve just described doesn’t require any reference to supernatural processes! It isn’t incompatible with the laws of the natural world, therefore I don’t see why you attribut it to <insert theistic term here> "
“C’mon, what you’ve just described is not compatible with the laws of the natural world, and therefore is impossible, and therefore unless you can introduce evidence or an explanation that takes it out of the realm of the incredulous, no properly skeptical person should believe that!”
Explicable things can be explained and inexplicable things can’t be explained, fancy that!
But you can’t rule out a meta-natural law under which a “miracle” is not impossible. And of course you can’t rule out that our understanding of natural laws is incomplete - time dilation would be a miracle to Newton.
But we might as well be arguing about the physiology of the angels who dance on the head of a pin - kind of pointless, until someone produces an angel.
The problem here, I think, is that “impossibility” is not a standard people are willing to attribute to any natural (or supernatural) phenomenon, even after serious contemplation. Yes, we’ll say that proving 2+2=5, or that an angle can be trisected with a compass and a straightedge is demonstrably impossible, but these are logical proofs of rigorously-defined abstractions, something which doesn’t seem to match up with the genuine epistemology of the natural world.
“Highly improbable”–a small but non-zero chance of an event occurring or a phenomenon existing–is the most that anyone will say. Science itself shies away from declaring things “impossible” because the history of science includes examples of respected scientists declaring that something was “absolutely true” which later turned out to be false, or that a phenomenon once declared “impossible” was later found to be possible. Even QM refuses to rule out any phenomenon–there is a finite but infinitesimal probability you’ll dissolve into energetic photons the instant you read this sentence–and this philosophical underpinning to QM I think has been culturally absorbed as a general suspicion of absolutes.
Therefore, I don’t believe that by invoking “natural law plus” people are merely substituting one impossible phenomenon (the existence and omnipotence of God) for another (bodily resurrection). Rather, they are substituting one highly unlikely event for another. These events–since they have a small but non-zero probability–are comparable in terms of which is “more likely”.
I believe then, in the calculus of nearly-impossible events, most would concede that the existence of God is more likely than the presumption that a natural, scientific explanation exists for the resurrection of a man confirmed to be dead for three days.
Believing neither is true is definitely an option, but the OP asked why people *who do believe the resurrection occured * believe it, not why a person should believe it.
I guess I’m not doing a good job of explaining myself. I’ll drop the word "impossible,’ for the moment and say that the point I’m trying to make is that I think the God hypothesis is an illogical justification for a positive belief that a “miracle” (i.e. a literal suspension or violation of physical laws) has definitely occured. I won’t try to argue the contention that a possible God can perform a possible miracle. I’m saying that a possible God is not a logical reason to believe that a miracle must have occurred.
That I agree with. A possible God at most only says that a miracle might have occurred. In fact, one might believe in various supernatural things which would be other reasons why miraculous like events might have occurred. But evidence of a miracle is necessary, but not sufficient, for us to say it occurred, since even with this evidence we’d have to rule out natural explanations.
The argument for miracles by believers seems to go along these lines:
It’s described in the Bible, so there is strong evidence.
God exists, so it might have happened.
I can’t think of alternative natural explanations, so it must have happened.
You’ve time and time again demonstrated problems with 1. We’ve had plenty of threads about the problems of God’s existence. 3 seems to be addressed by those who believe in 1 at least, and can’t buy a real miracle. Velikovsky or History Channel crud about the real Moses are examples.
This hits it right on the head. The evidence of a miraculous event–scant or problematic as it is–is still positive evidence. Arguing that the miracle didn’t happen puts one in the classic position of trying to prove a negative, and I think people are less inclined to support an argument like that.
OTOH, if it was commonplace today for people to claim a miracle occurred, and the debunking of miracles was part of one’s daily experience, the average person might be more inclined to take miraculous claims as “false until proven true”, rather than the other way around. But even then, I bet it would take only one miraculous event that cannot be proven to be completely natural for people to revert to a default “true until proven false” philosophy regarding hard-to-debunk miracles.
It seems obvious to me that there is still much left to discover, explain, and understand. I was reading your posts as “Since we currently don’t understand how this could possibly happen, it must not have happened”
Diogenes, I too agree that Post #132 is a valid argument. I would change only one thing, restating a sentence in the middle: “the God hypothesis is not a logical justification for a positive belief that a ‘miracle’ … has occured.” Maybe it’s just a quibble, but I think “illogical” connotes (although I don’t think it’s your intended meaning here) that the God hypothesis is incoherent. I’ve seen attempts to prove that, but none I found persuasive.
I can’t remember the passage, but there’s a part in the Bible that made a good point to me. It basically says, “go ask the people around if you want to know about this story. There are many still with us.”
If the gospel stories were written within even 60 years of the crucifixion, there would be people around (some) who were alive at the time and knew what the stories being told were. The church believes that the gospels were written with the lifespans of people who literally were there, meaning that it would be like trying to tell someone now that the Shoah didn’t happen. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone with a camp tattoo who could squash that story, and fast.
Even if that were true (although they wouldn’t remember anything if they were zero years old, so would have to be considerably older than 60, and I’m not sure if people lived that long back then), how does that prove the stories are true?
Well if it were 60 a.d., and we had some living eyewitnesses, you might have a point. But since it’s 2007, I don’t see how it’s analagous.
If all we knew about the holocaust was that the story appeared in some anonymous 2000 year old writings written 60 years after the fact, that were mutually contradictory and probably elaborated, and no contemporaneous corroborating evidence, I’d be skeptical about that too. There’s much more evidence for the holocaust than that.
What’s more, I would definitely believe someone who lived through the holocaust, but if they claimed that miracles occured and people rose from the dead, I’d have a hard time with that.
Hey, the OP asked for people’s personal beliefs, and then it degenerated into the standard SDMB argument.
The real reason (besides the one I gave or others gave that is “logical”), is that it’s based a bit on personal revelation. If you don’t want to believe it, you’ll find many reasons not to. If you’ve been touched by God, you’ll want to.
I realize that this is not a scientific reason to believe, but it’s not a scientific subject.
