Laws of Nature... emergent property of matter or immaterial rules imposed upon matter?

[abaddon]

I've noted an assumption in creationist posts for years. I didn't speak on it because I don't know physics well enough to go into it.

Here's the question: Are laws the descriptions of patterns in nature? Or are they forces that makes things "do stuff"? Or what?

I think it's both "patterns that emerge" and "forces that act on matter". I only had a couple introductory courses on physics so am unsure.

The way creationists write about laws, they tend to treat laws like ideas ruling over matter, as something distinct from matter. I've seen some creationists talk about them the same way they sometimes speak of rules of logic... something immaterial and prior even to the universe.

I figure the pull of gravity, for an example, is inherent to matter so the pattern or force isn't somehow "put there" to rule over matter... Rather, the force and the patterns it makes are matter's innate characteristics.

Please correct me in all my mistakes here. I have curiosity about the theist mind, but much more about science.

 

[beero1000]

A physical law is an (essentially) universally accepted scientific inference that a particular phenomenon will always occur (within a given general framework). They describe things that, as far as anyone has been able to tell, MUST happen to a given setup. They don't really make claims about why they happen, just that they do.

 

[fast]

Laws of nature exist independent of man. It's not something we've invented. It's some regularity we've discovered through observation and spoke of to describe and predict those regularities.

 

[bilby]

In common English, a law is a set of rules imposed by an authority.

In Physics, a Law is a description of the properties and behaviour of a part of reality.

In creationism, conflation of common and technical terms, to allow people to rationalize their unreasonable beliefs, is so banal and commonplace an error as to be barely worthy of mention.

Creationists LOVE talking about laws, because they want to demonstrate that there is an authority, and they either don't know or don't care that 'argument by conflation of dissimilar definitions' is fallacious. "If reality is subject to laws, then there must be a God to write those laws!"

Fucking numpties.

 

[Learner]

How quaint the notion that theists misinterpret the understanding of laws. Well the majority of theists don't mainly follow this notion but scientists who are "honestly curious" do believe it is a valid notion to investigate.

 

[rousseau]

In common English, a law is a set of rules imposed by an authority.

In Physics, a Law is a description of the properties and behaviour of a part of reality.

In creationism, conflation of common and technical terms, to allow people to rationalize their unreasonable beliefs, is so banal and commonplace an error as to be barely worthy of mention.

Creationists LOVE talking about laws, because they want to demonstrate that there is an authority, and they either don't know or don't care that 'argument by conflation of dissimilar definitions' is fallacious. "If reality is subject to laws, then there must be a God to write those laws!"

Fucking numpties.

Creationist - a person who hasn't discovered logic or the definition of 'fact' yet

 

[Learner]

In the early debates. Atheists used to use natural law as the baseline ruler for arguments against creation and would be quite successful. Quite odd really when scientists have no idea "why or how" the laws of nature work this way and they would have to be sure there is no invisible guiding hand.

You would have to determine you understand why before claiming "natural law" as your own .. taking and seperating any notion for creationists by using what is neutral as the tool of measure.

 

[bilby]

In the early debates. Atheists used to use natural law as the baseline ruler for arguments against creation and would be quite successful. Quite odd really when scientists have no idea "why or how" the laws of nature work this way and they would have to be sure there is no invisible guiding hand.

You would have to determine you understand why before claiming "natural law" as your own .. taking and seperating any notion for creationists by using what is neutral as the tool of measure.

There is no invisible guiding hand. There is no possible way for such a thing to interact with reality - we now know all of the ways in which matter interacts, and Gods are not one of them.

That's the end of the discussion - the only thing that remains to talk about is 'Why are so many people so poorly educated'? I mean, collectively, humans have spent a shitload of money to find out how reality works; and yet most humans remain totally in the dark, despite the answers now being known, published, and directly available to anyone with an Internet connection or a library card.

The Gods, as described by any major religions, past or present, are impossible, according to physics. That doesn't rule out something, that might be called a God by someone, having perhaps once existed; But it does rule out any God that can have prophets, or could interact with people, and it rules out substance dualism, and with it ghosts, souls, and an afterlife. So that's 99.9% of all of the Gods ever invented by humans.

 

[fromderinside]

Besides physical laws are the result of summarizing observed regularities in nature. Physical laws don't emerge. They are found through observation, experimentation, and result explanation all built on previous iterations of such behavior.

 

[PyramidHead]

Laws of nature exist independent of man. It's not something we've invented. It's some regularity we've discovered through observation and spoke of to describe and predict those regularities.

Careful. If laws are descriptions, then they do not exist independent of describers. All we can say is: if there were no describers, reality would behave as it always has, in ways that would be described as lawlike by describers if they existed. But without describers (humans in this case) there are no descriptions, and thus no laws. This interpretation deflates the creationist claim that laws must be explained, as if they were a property of the universe itself.

 

[fast]

Laws of nature exist independent of man. It's not something we've invented. It's some regularity we've discovered through observation and spoke of to describe and predict those regularities.

Careful. If laws are descriptions, then they do not exist independent of describers. All we can say is: if there were no describers, reality would behave as it always has, in ways that would be described as lawlike by describers if they existed. But without describers (humans in this case) there are no descriptions, and thus no laws. This interpretation deflates the creationist claim that laws must be explained, as if they were a property of the universe itself.

Most laws are laws of man, but the point of the term, "laws of nature" is to reference laws inherent to nature.

 

[PyramidHead]

Careful. If laws are descriptions, then they do not exist independent of describers. All we can say is: if there were no describers, reality would behave as it always has, in ways that would be described as lawlike by describers if they existed. But without describers (humans in this case) there are no descriptions, and thus no laws. This interpretation deflates the creationist claim that laws must be explained, as if they were a property of the universe itself.

Most laws are laws of man, but the point of the term, "laws of nature" is to reference laws inherent to nature.

That distinction is a matter of whether the law is a prescriptive statement (don't murder anybody) or a descriptive statement (water boils at 100°C). Prescriptions and descriptions are both products of human brains. It's just nitpicking on my part; in the end, it's true that water boils at 100°C, whether we interpret that statement as an inherent property of water or a verbal elucidation of some observed pattern. I prefer to think of it the second way, because if you say laws are real things that are part of the universe, it's strange that we can't find them anywhere in the universe. I'm not saying reality depends on someone looking at it or anything so esoteric, just that the particular ways humans parse reality into sentences that capture aspects of it should not be mistaken for a fundamental underlying reality, which we don't have access to although we have good reason to suppose it exists.

 

[J842P]

Quite odd really when scientists have no idea "why or how" the laws of nature work this way and they would have to be sure there is no invisible guiding hand.

This is quite obviously false and can only be explained by ignorance. Science has produced many explanations (i.e. theories) that explain observable laws.

And I don't have to be any more sure that there is no invisible guiding hand any more than I have to be sure that there's really no invisible horses pulling the sun across the sky. It is enough to say that there is no evidence for it, and perhaps more importantly, no use for that hypothesis at all.

 

[ryan]

I have the theist's mind (seriously). Between my parents, Catholic school and church, I remember being completely convinced as a child that God exists and that he will test us as we get older.

And I don't think this belief will ever go away for 2 reasons. One is hope. I hope we all get to go to heaven and that everything will be great for an eternity. Two is uncertainty. I feel like we have the intelligence of ants compared to advanced aliens, so how are we so sure that our "laws" will not be broken a million more times? We aren't.

So a piece of me still fears God and probably always will.

 

[PyramidHead]

I have the theist's mind (seriously). Between my parents, Catholic school and church, I remember being completely convinced as a child that God exists and that he will test us as we get older.

And I don't think this belief will ever go away for 2 reasons. One is hope. I hope we all get to go to heaven and that everything will be great for an eternity.

I think your problem here is you're using the wrong word. What you describe is not a belief, but a wish.

 

[ryan]

I have the theist's mind (seriously). Between my parents, Catholic school and church, I remember being completely convinced as a child that God exists and that he will test us as we get older.

And I don't think this belief will ever go away for 2 reasons. One is hope. I hope we all get to go to heaven and that everything will be great for an eternity.

I think your problem here is you're using the wrong word. What you describe is not a belief, but a wish.

Yeah, maybe it all just comes down to (2), and "first impression" of the world as a child.

 

[fast]

Most laws are laws of man, but the point of the term, "laws of nature" is to reference laws inherent to nature.

That distinction is a matter of whether the law is a prescriptive statement (don't murder anybody) or a descriptive statement (water boils at 100°C). Prescriptions and descriptions are both products of human brains. It's just nitpicking on my part; in the end, it's true that water boils at 100°C, whether we interpret that statement as an inherent property of water or a verbal elucidation of some observed pattern. I prefer to think of it the second way, because if you say laws are real things that are part of the universe, it's strange that we can't find them anywhere in the universe. I'm not saying reality depends on someone looking at it or anything so esoteric, just that the particular ways humans parse reality into sentences that capture aspects of it should not be mistaken for a fundamental underlying reality, which we don't have access to although we have good reason to suppose it exists.

Sentences are human dependent. The actual expressing of a sentence is human dependent. That which is expressed, however, is a statement, and though statements made by humans require human beings, a statement is often considered not to be much unlike a proposition which does not in any way shape or form require a human.

The sentence, "water boils at 100C" did not exist before humans come to exist, so such a sentence at such a time before man could never have been uttered, but the proposition that would have been expressed during a time when there were no humans had there been humans to express it is true independent of a human to express such a sentence--precisely because propositions are atemporal. Although the distinction between a sentence and a proposition is great, the divide between a proposition and a statement is less enough and similar enough to regard statements as propositions in this context.

 

[Learner]

There is no invisible guiding hand. There is no possible way for such a thing to interact with reality - we now know all of the ways in which matter interacts, and Gods are not one of them.

You can predict the interactions obviously by observations but you can't detect the "rules" or lack of a better word "cosmic DNA" instruction parameters - natural or otherwise that contain the distinct behaviors for any element in the universe.

That's the end of the discussion - the only thing that remains to talk about is 'Why are so many people so poorly educated'? I mean, collectively, humans have spent a shitload of money to find out how reality works; and yet most humans remain totally in the dark, despite the answers now being known, published, and directly available to anyone with an Internet connection or a library card.

I don't think we are there yet regarding scientific means but I wouldn't be surprised scientists would eventually get some sort of revelation as time goes on.

The Gods, as described by any major religions, past or present, are impossible, according to physics. That doesn't rule out something, that might be called a God by someone, having perhaps once existed; But it does rule out any God that can have prophets, or could interact with people, and it rules out substance dualism, and with it ghosts, souls, and an afterlife. So that's 99.9% of all of the Gods ever invented by humans.

If a large part of the gods were humanoid and were worshipped as deities you can't rule them out by physics apart from they were not really gods. These gods would in part still be true and historic.

 

[bilby]

You can predict the interactions obviously by observations but you can't detect the "rules" or lack of a better word "cosmic DNA" instruction parameters - natural or otherwise that contain the distinct behaviors for any element in the universe.

Er... Yes, you can. That's a description (albeit a rather crude and slightly muddled one) of what science IS.

Natural laws ARE those rules, as detected through careful observation.

That's the end of the discussion - the only thing that remains to talk about is 'Why are so many people so poorly educated'? I mean, collectively, humans have spent a shitload of money to find out how reality works; and yet most humans remain totally in the dark, despite the answers now being known, published, and directly available to anyone with an Internet connection or a library card.

I don't think we are there yet regarding scientific means but I wouldn't be surprised scientists would eventually get some sort of revelation as time goes on.

We are there; if you have fallen behind, then you may not be, but that's a problem with your personal level of education, not a problem for all of humanity.

The set of things that are known MASSIVELY outweighs any one person's knowledge; so you or I not knowing something is a poor guide to whether or not it is actually known to the scientific community. Physics is 'there' for all but the most extreme scales and energies. There cannot be any undiscovered forces at human scales, unless the Standard Model is wrong; and the Standard Model is one of the best tested theories in history. It might be wrong at cosmic scales, but it's not wrong enough at human scales for such things as gods, ghosts and an afterlife to be possible. That's what they spent all that money on particle accelerators for. To check. And they found that the model holds up under some truly extreme conditions.

The Gods, as described by any major religions, past or present, are impossible, according to physics. That doesn't rule out something, that might be called a God by someone, having perhaps once existed; But it does rule out any God that can have prophets, or could interact with people, and it rules out substance dualism, and with it ghosts, souls, and an afterlife. So that's 99.9% of all of the Gods ever invented by humans.

If a large part of the gods were humanoid and were worshipped as deities you can't rule them out by physics apart from they were not really gods. These gods would in part still be true and historic.

But they wouldn't be gods. So why would we care?

 

[Learner]

This is quite obviously false and can only be explained by ignorance. Science has produced many explanations (i.e. theories) that explain observable laws.

And I don't have to be any more sure that there is no invisible guiding hand any more than I have to be sure that there's really no invisible horses pulling the sun across the sky. It is enough to say that there is no evidence for it, and perhaps more importantly, no use for that hypothesis at all.

So by the laws observed does this indicate there is no such thing as guidance? Now this doesn't have to be that particular guiding hand mentioned previously for arguments sake, but there must be a universe instruction "code" telling/making all these elements to do only the things characteristic of each elements individual nature.

If you are proposing there isn't one then there should be no predictions or calculations and the elements of all matter that we know exists ... should be doing all kinds of things ...no regularity.