Article 28 of 40

Subject:      Re: Difficulties with "Miracles" - no quantum mechanics
From:         Sam Dodsworth <sam@aristos.demon.co.uk>
Date:         1997/02/10
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In article <p8WcwBA+uR+yEwWt@aslan.demon.co.uk>, Andrew Rilstone
<andrew@aslan.demon.co.uk> writes

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back with this one - good points need
good answers, and those take time to prepare. 
>
>If its true that believers in "the scientific worldview" believe that
>the laws of physics are the One Basic Thing, then I still don't think
>that this makes them supernaturalists in the sense that Lewis requires.
>Indeed, it seems to me that you are almost falling into a tautology. If
>one believes in anything at all, then one must by definition believe
>that something is the Ultimate Reality, the One Basic Thing: that Thing
>might be The Mind, it might be Mathematics or it might be The Universe
>as a Whole. (If you were to define God as "the greatest thing which
>exists" then it would be axiomatic that God must exist, although it
>might be hard to prove which thing he was.) Surely Lewis's whole point
>is that a Supernaturalist believes that the One Basic Thing is not part
>of the physical universe.
>
        Let's look again at Lewis' definition of Supernaturalism:

        "[The Supernaturalist] thinks that things fall into two classes. 
        in the first class we find either things or (more probably) One 
        Thing which is basic and original, which exists on its own. In
        the second we find things which are merely derivative from that 
        One Thing. The one basic Thing has caused all the other things 
        to be. It exists on its own; they exist because it exists. They 
        will cease to exist if it ever ceases to maintain them in 
        existence; they will be altered if it ever alters them."

        We could interpret the Naturalist position as a belief that the
universe itself is the One Basic Thing, but if Nature and the One Basic
Thing are isometric then it's difficult to describe one as being derived
from the other. This, for me, is the important part of Lewis'
definition: not so much that there is One Basic Thing, but that there
are things that are derived from it. This means that we don't have a
tautology: we can believe that Nature is derived from something more
fundamental or we can believe that Nature is basic in itself. It's my
belief that the scientific view of physical law is an example of the
former case, but more of that in a moment...

>I forget whether, in "Miracles" he specifically says that the
>Supernatural would related to the Universe rather as a Writer relates to
>his Book. You ask "How did this play begin?" and one man answers "Well,
>three witches came on and made a speech" and the other says "Well, a man
>named Shakespeare had an idea..." Physical laws do not have that sort of
>relationship to the universe. 
>
>I would have thought that most scientists believed that the self-
>existant thing was simply the universe as a whole. At any rate, I would
>seriously question the claim that "physical laws" exist prior to, and
>over and above the universe. Physical laws are descriptions of the ways
>in which we have observed matter behaving. I do not see how these laws,
>seperated from the phenomena which they describe, can be the Final
>Reality, let alone how they can be said to exist outside of the
>universe. 
>
        
        I don't share your view of science, although it's undoubtedly a
tricky question. It's true that physical laws are derived from our
observations, but there's more to the process than the simple
accumulation of rules of thumb. In particular, scientific laws are
expected to generalize and to have predictive power. 
        A "rule of thumb" system would tolerate exceptions without
having to modify its theories because there would be no theories in the
scientific sense, just a set of observed regularities. An exception
would be noted, but there would be no particular requirement to explain
it. Similarly, if physical law was regarded simply as a catalogue of
observed regularities then we would not use experiments to test our
theories: only to gather data and look for more regularities. The
failure (or success) of a particular experiment could just be a "special