| | Thanks guys. These arguments are enthymemes (arguments with presumed, but missing, premises). Here's how they look with pure, unadulterated reasoning (i.e, with these missing, presumed premises included):
(1)
a) Things outside the universe require faith.
b) Physical laws (just like religion), because they are "unexplained" in a certain sense of the term -- are outside the universe.
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c) Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too.
And (b) is false
(2)
a) science is a subjective phenomenon (it depends on what's in the mind of a particular man).
b) Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way.
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c) [Therefore (because all of physical science depends upon what was in Newton's head)], the very notion of physical law is a theological one.
And (a) is false.
(3)
a) science depends on what a group of folks think (it depends on social metaphysics).
b) abstractions can't refer to concretes (because when they do -- they automatically invalidate those concretes).
c) physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.
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d) [Therefore, physical laws are contained in a transcendent realm].
And at least (a) and (b) are false; and perhaps even (c) [for some physicists such as Einstein].
(4)
a) "real" laws are mutable, inconstant things which change in response to events in the universe.
b) physicists declare [that] the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.
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c) [Therefore, physical laws aren't "real" laws -- because they are understood as invariant things].
And (a) and (c) are false.
(5)
a) explaining why the universe is as it is is important & productive (rather than just a plain vanilla acceptance of reality as it is)
b) fixation on unchanging laws, which we cannot provide a meta-reality (read: beyond-reality) reason for, kills hope for this
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c) [Therefore], there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly
And (a) and (c) are false.
(6)
a) physical laws should be able to be falsified by experiments which involve dynamics which actually supercede these laws themselves (i.e., supra-physical, or supra-reality dynamics) -- so that the laws can be the dependent VARIABLES, rather than the independent ones -- or else they must be believed on faith
b) science hasn't come up with one of these supra-reality experiments yet
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c) [Therefore], until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
And (a) is false.
;-)
Ed
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