The Lawgiver is the biblical Creator God
by John Hartnett
Where does knowledge1 come
from? From research and inquiry? It seems an obvious question, but is it really?
It is only obvious if we realize what the unstated assumptions are that go with
it. Why do men study science anyway? Why do they believe it a fruitful activity
at all? The answer must be founded on the belief that the laws of nature, which
they are attempting to discover, are the same today as they were yesterday, and
will be the same again tomorrow. What is the justification for this?
Photo wikipedia
Michael Faraday
If we look back 500 years we see a list of names of well-known philosophers and
scientists: Tycho Brahe, Nicolas Copernicus,
Galileo Galilei, Gottfried Leibnitz,
Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci,
Johannes Kepler, Carolus Linnaeus, John Dalton, Christian Huygens,
Robert Hooke, Michael Faraday, Joseph Henry, James Joule, Louis Pasteur, William Thompson (aka Lord Kelvin),
James Clerk Maxwell, John Strutt (aka Lord Rayleigh), John Ambrose Fleming, to only name a few. These men all believed in the truth of the Bible, so much so
they believed that the laws governing nature that we study in the laboratory can
be extrapolated to the universe and apply both in the past and the future. We know
this by the very nature of the scientific endeavours they were involved in.
If they studied the cosmos, e.g. planets in the solar system, they believed that
what they observed had some order to it—some law by which the planets moved.
This eventually led Newton to discover the universal law of gravitation, which ‘tells’
a planet how to move around the Sun. But the law that was discovered was
then used to predict the future positions of the planets and it was found to be
very reliable. If they studied microbes, for example, they believed that the experiments
they performed one day would be repeatable the next and the results could be consistently
interpreted.
The assumptions behind science
Ultimately this idea has led to what we now call the ‘Scientific Method’—the
notion that an experiment can be repeated and the result will be the same if the
conditions are identical. On top of this is the idea that a theory must make predictions
that are testable and if a prediction fails then the theory is found to be wrong
and must be discarded or modified. This leads to the whole subject of the philosophy
of science, which is a subject on its own, but the main point to be taken from this
is that scientists in both the past and the present rely implicitly on the idea.
Photo wikipedia
Leonardo da Vinci,
Explicitly, science depends on the idea that the laws of Nature are constant in
time and in space. But how can we justify this? Some might justify constancy ‘in
time’ simply by repeating the experiment and getting the same results day
in and day out, but what about ‘in space’? However, this is strictly
speaking the fallacy of induction, as the skeptic Bertrand Russell illustrated
with his ‘inductivist turkey’ parable: a turkey is brought to a farm in America,
and for 364 days is fed the same food every day, and goes to sleep happily that
night. So he has every reason to assume that Thanksgiving will be the same, and
he will once more go to sleep happily. But his head is chopped off instead, and
he ends up as Thanksgiving dinner. So on a secular basis, there is no proof that
the laws of nature will be constant tomorrow, just because we have observed
them to be constant so far.
The same applies to the assumption that the laws of nature are the same in all parts
of the universe. Since we can test a theory locally, on earth or in the solar system,
it seems to be a fair guess for the rest of the universe. But we can’t know
for sure that they are not different in the core of Pluto, for example. We cannot
experimentally test the laws of nature in other parts of the universe so they are
only assumed to be true there also.
The same problem lies with the assumption of an orderly universe. This can’t
be proven: first because of the inductive fallacy, and second, because any alleged
proof would have to presuppose the very order it claims to prove.
The biblical basis for these assumptions
So why did science advance rapidly since the Renaissance? This has largely been
from Europe and based in the Western culture. The underlying assumption that the
laws of Nature are constant has been the result of Judeo-Christian thinking. As
Thomas Aquinas put it:
Photo wikipedia
Nikolaus Kopernikus
‘Since the principles of certain sciences—of logic, geometry, and arithmetic,
for instance—are derived exclusively from the formal principles of things,
upon which their essence depends, it follows that God cannot make the contraries
of these principles; He cannot make the genus not to be predictable of the species,
nor lines drawn from a circle’s center to its circumference not to be equal,
nor the three angles of a rectilinear triangle not to be equal to two right angles.’2
The creator God by his very nature created laws that are reliable. The Apostle Paul
tells us:
For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. (1
Cor. 14:33).
Excluding the occasional miracle, God Himself chooses to generally operate in conformity
with His own laws—the laws of Nature. These are part of His Creation, the
expression of His own orderly will. He is Lord and judge and lawgiver.
For the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king;
he will save us. (Isa 33:22)
He is the same always.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Heb 13:8)
Through the prophet Jeremiah God tells us,
If I have not established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws
(or ‘fixed order’ in ESV) of heaven and earth, (Jer 33:25)
Clearly God is speaking of the laws of nature like gravity. The Scripture says:
Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order
of the moon and the stars for light by night, … (Jer 31:35)
God usually operates in a regular way that scientists describe as ‘natural
law’. He makes it clear that the continuity of these laws can be relied upon
to the same extent as His covenantal word, and vice versa—i.e. totally. He
says …
In Islam the very idea of Laws of Nature would be blasphemy as it is ‘a denial
of Allah’s freedom.’ … Allah killed science.—Robert Spencer
If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall
the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever. (Jer 31:36)
Thus says the Lord: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with
the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time,
then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not
have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my
ministers. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot
be measured, so I will multiply the offspring of David my servant, and the Levitical
priests who minister to me. (Jer 33:20–22)
God is saying that if He doesn’t keep His own laws that hold the universe
together then even the Nation of Israel is in jeopardy, God’s covenant is
broken—the lineage of David is broken and it even follows that there may be
no son of David, who will reign over the Creation,
Christ Jesus.
No doubt God is sovereign, but He is bound by His own nature, which is non-capricious,
faithful and unchanging. The ‘laws’ are our description of the way He
normally acts in a dependable way. The Bible is the basis for the Judeo-Christian
culture from which our modern scientific age has developed. On the other hand the
Koran ‘ … portrays Allah as absolutely sovereign and bound by nothing.
This sovereignty was so absolute that it precluded a key assumption that helped
foster the development of science in Europe: … that God is good, and that
His goodness is consistent. Therefore, He created the universe according to rational
laws that can be discovered, making scientific investigation worthwhile.’3
Photo wikipedia
Tycho Brahe
Robert Spencer, an authority on Islam, makes this very relevant comment: that in
Islam the very idea of Laws of Nature would be blasphemy as it is ‘a denial
of Allah’s freedom.’4
Spencer goes on to say that the very idea that Allah created the Universe with
consistent and rational laws means He cannot do something, which would bind his
absolute sovereignty. (In Christianity, the sovereignty of God does not preclude
Him from being bound by either his covenantal word, or aspects of His divine nature.
In short, God is not limited by anything outside Himself.) So in the world
of Islam there is no logical connection between the order in Nature from one instant
to the next. No wonder Spencer says in his book that ‘Allah killed science.’
It makes much more sense that science developed in Christian Europe where Islam
failed to reach. Islam was stopped by the armies of the Christian west around the
1400s just as science was starting to rapidly develop, fostered by the Christian
church, which kept learning and knowledge alive.
One Muslim website5 states …
“The muslim says: “The creatures (includes everything) are given by
God, their qualifications (including the physical laws, equations, formulaes [we
may be unknowing everything, the real is known by Allah]) and they are executed
and may be changed by Allah when(r)ever He wants.”. [emphasis added]
The website argues in favour of the Islamic position, but there is a clear admission
and corroboration of Spencer’s conclusion above. It seems to be saying that
Allah can change the laws, and their relationships whenever and wherever he likes—a
very capricious god, impulsive and unpredictable. The website compares the above
with the view of the atheist as:
The (atheist) scientist says “The properties (including above mentioned laws
and so on) of everything are intrinsic to them and absolute and not subject to change
except for any specific conditions.”
In fact, the humanist must borrow the order from the biblical worldview before he
can even think in an orderly fashion about his universe.
This would be the worldview of most secular scientists today. The atheist assumes
the properties of matter or laws of nature are intrinsic to nature itself. That
is the position of the materialist who believes all things, all laws, arise spontaneously
from the universe itself. The humanist worldview tries to establish itself in a
rational consistent universe without a Creator. But how is that possible unless
some order is impressed upon matter itself? In fact, the humanist must borrow the
order from the biblical worldview before he can even think in an orderly fashion
about his universe. The biblical worldview involves a universe that is rational
and behaves consistently. It is the expression of an orderly Creator, whose laws
reflect His own unchanging nature and the fact that, while He is able to engage
in miraculous activity outside of those laws, He chooses not to do so capriciously
or arbitrarily. I.e. He ‘keeps’ His laws Himself.
Related articles
Further reading
References
- Knowledge = acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles,
as from study or investigation; general erudition: knowledge of many things. First
definition from <dictionary.reference.com/browse/knowledge>
Return to text.
- St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Two: Creation,
Chap 25, section 14. Translated by James F. Anderson. (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1975). Return to text.
- Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam
(and the Crusades) (Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, DC, 2005) page
96. Return to text.
- James V. Schall,War-Time Clarifications:
Who Is Our Enemy? 2001; Quoted in ref 3. Return to text.
- <www.geocities.com/athens/troy/7568/index.html>
accessed 26 February 2008. Return to text.
Published: 18 March 2008(GMT+10)
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