How do we know whether an event was spontaneous or caused by the laws of nature?

[Boojatta]

There is a religious standpoint that denies the existence of free will on the grounds that everything is controlled by God, and God's power squeezes out any possibility for human influence. This is similar to a philosophical position against free will. The philosophical position claims that everything is controlled by the laws of nature, so there is no room for any agent that isn't a law of nature to have any influence over events. In particular, a human being isn't a law of nature.

Now, consider the question in the title of this thread. The usual procedure would be to create a control group. We insulate some experimental chambers from the laws of nature, replacing the laws of nature in those chambers with inert, placebo laws. The problem is that nobody knows how to do that. Thus, we cannot use the usual scientific method to confirm that laws of nature cause events to occur.

[damntexdem]

1. Well, in theory everything is caused by the laws of nature.

Whether those causes are deterministic, or involve chance, or somehow involve human choice is another matter.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Gravity ,works every time ,unless your talking about Defying Gravity

And nature never had laws until man tried to explain it ,Like that one Adviser that told those people they were naked . Spontaneous is ambiguous which is inexplicable ,Therefore I Believe God is Ambiguous and inexplicable ,intangible, therefore open to interpretation to Free willed people.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Short answer-- we can't. Longer answer is...

that positivism, determinism, and all sorts of similar things are fun to talk about, but, as you noticed, can't be proven.

Bertrand Russell was a great guy until someone noticed he that he claimed if you knew everything you could predict anything. Could be, but the first problem is that you can't prove you know everything. Even if you somehow do, it could take eternity to figure out the algorithm. Infinite knowledge extends to infinity, or something like that.

To get back to your first paragraph, even the laws of nature are subject to random phenomena, and randomness is kinda built into the laws of nature. Free will could simply be accepted as random phenomena-- an extension of quantum mechanics.

Personally, I don't believe in a God controlling the universe. Not only would controlling the universe be a big job for any conceivable God, absolute control would, paradoxically, eliminate the need for a God, as the universe would be run perfectly. The point of a God is that there is ungodly stuff going on that God shold be on top of, not the cause of.

BTW, who came up with those natural laws? Was there a creator or did they just naturally evolve out of the chaos?

[LAGC]

7. Is there really such a thing as true randomness though?

I mean, in any "random" sample, if you had enough information, you could calculate the order out of randomness. That's how we've come so far in predicting the weather. To use another example, take cryptography in computer science. Random number generators are based off of a variety of things like the current date/time stamp, keyboard/mouse input, disk activity, etc. The only way it works as a security mechanism is that the potential code cracker or cryptanalyst is ignorant of what those causal random "seeds" were. But if a person could figure out all that information, he could re-create the random number stream through calculation.

I expect even in areas of science like quantum mechanics, we are just ignorant of prior causes. Everything seems "spontaneous" if we don't know what really causes it. But our ignorance doesn't necessarily make it a fact. I expect there will be many breakthroughs in this field over the next few generations.

[Boojatta]

4. Kick

[Boojatta]

5. Kick

[Boojatta]

6. Kick

[LAGC]

8. That's an interesting experiment you have lined up there.

I guess the real question is: how do we insulate anything in nature from the laws of nature? Isn't everything in the universe, by definition, subject to the laws of nature?

Maybe if we figure out a way to open portals to parallel universes that have different laws of nature than our own, we can borrow the equivalent of matter from that universe, and contain it within our own. Then we can compare results.

[Angry Dragon]

9. first you need to explain and prove god

explain and prove nature and its laws
and are they the same or different

[Silent3]

10. The tides go in, the tides go out

Draw your own conclusions. :)

[LAGC]

11. Bill O'Reilly already has.

He sure stumped Richard Dawkins.

:rofl:

[Deep13]

12. If an event actually happens, it was caused by the laws of nature. nt

[Boojatta]

14. Are you using the usual concept of "caused by"?

Do the laws of nature actually cause events to occur, and not merely describe the events that occur?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. Easy: if it happened, it was the latter. NT