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And that's because we wouldn't get repeatability and predictability. Imagine trying to track courses for rockets in a world where the laws of physics can be interfered with by an unseen being. God's intervention would throw everything off. So either God isn't real, or God is as the Deists suppose - complete aloof, never intervening in anything. Both amount to the same thing, really. God is irrelevant to us.

Buffalo wrote:And that's because we wouldn't get repeatability and predictability. Imagine trying to track courses for rockets in a world where the laws of physics can be interfered with by an unseen being. God's intervention would throw everything off. So either God isn't real, or God is as the Deists suppose - complete aloof, never intervening in anything. Both amount to the same thing, really. God is irrelevant to us.

To me that is a little too extreme. Perhaps its better said that science wouldn't work if God regularly overrode the laws of nature. The occasional miracle wouldn't affect the reliability of science. Any reported miracle could just be labeled as currently unexplained or not reliable data since it can't be reproduced in the lab. And given the probablistic nature of quantum mechanics, almost anything is theoretically possible although it may be extremely unlikely to occur. So science is robust enough to handle the occasional freak occurance without breaking down. Its only if the miracles repeatedly happened in some regular fashion that science would be undermined.

Imagine a world where religion's warped view of science was actually real. We couldn't trust science to send rockets to space because is always changing, so we must trust in the lord. We build the rockets based on divine instruction, like nephi did, and pray the mission succeeds. If the rocket fails catastrophically and kills everyone on board, it was all part of god's plan.

Phillip wrote:

Buffalo wrote:And that's because we wouldn't get repeatability and predictability. Imagine trying to track courses for rockets in a world where the laws of physics can be interfered with by an unseen being. God's intervention would throw everything off. So either God isn't real, or God is as the Deists suppose - complete aloof, never intervening in anything. Both amount to the same thing, really. God is irrelevant to us.

To me that is a little too extreme. Perhaps its better said that science wouldn't work if God regularly overrode the laws of nature. The occasional miracle wouldn't affect the reliability of science. Any reported miracle could just be labeled as currently unexplained or not reliable data since it can't be reproduced in the lab. And given the probablistic nature of quantum mechanics, almost anything is theoretically possible although it may be extremely unlikely to occur. So science is robust enough to handle the occasional freak occurance without breaking down. Its only if the miracles repeatedly happened in some regular fashion that science would be undermined.

What would happen if, just once, the third law of motion broke down? Say, during a ballistics test?

And that's because we wouldn't get repeatability and predictability.

Why not? Why wouldn't God use natural processes to accomplish His work? Why would we always be able to detect such operations? Why don't we understand scientifically everything that goes on now?

bcspace wrote:

And that's because we wouldn't get repeatability and predictability.

Why not? Why wouldn't God use natural processes to accomplish His work? Why would we always be able to detect such operations? Why don't we understand scientifically everything that goes on now?

Is there a detectable difference between the situations that would lead us justifiably to make one or other of these two statements?

1. God uses natural processes to achieve X.

2. Natural processes bring about X.

Is there a detectable difference between the situations that would lead us justifiably to make one or other of these two statements?

Yes. But that comes by John 7:17.

bcspace wrote:

And that's because we wouldn't get repeatability and predictability.

Why not? Why wouldn't God use natural processes to accomplish His work? Why would we always be able to detect such operations? Why don't we understand scientifically everything that goes on now?

It amounts to the same thing - intervention would destroy predictability and repeatability, whether that intervention was natural or not.

bcspace wrote:Is there a detectable difference between the situations that would lead us justifiably to make one or other of these two statements?

Yes. But that comes by John 7:17.

Utter twaddle. You apologists need to step up your game. You're not debating evangelicals here.

Utter twaddle. You apologists need to step up your game. You're not debating evangelicals here.

I know. It's even less intellectually honest here.