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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Natural law assumes and requires a Lawgiver.  [/quote]

Then why did many natural law philosophers not use one?[/quote]

Some did not believe in a God.  Some did not think God was necessary.  Their point was that [b]you could look at existence and determine what is good from that[/b].

In many ways it's the same thing as the Big Bang to theists or atheists.  One person says that the Big Bang is proof of the existence of God.  Another says that our knowledge of science, the observations about how the universe works, reveals to us the Big Bang and that no special Being is required to make that happen.  But whether you think God kicked it off, or that the forces of the universe dictate it, it does not matter.  Both theists and atheists can then understand the physical world using the same tools going forward from that point.

Likewise with Natural Law, you can go back all the way to Plato's Republic, who begets Aristotle, who is re-interpreted by Aquinas for the Christians and on and on through Hobbes and over to Locke who gave us Life, Liberty, and Property.  Locke's derivation of natural law is that our purpose is survival, and from that he determines what is necessary to that end.  His formulation is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Property".  Does it matter that Locke personally believed that God created the purpose of survival, and Richard Dawkins believes that it is a consequence of life itself?  No.   Once you arrive at a common principle of survival (just as in the Big Bang discussion), you can derive the other principles in the same way.  Just as theists are not forced to ignore the plain realities of modern physics, the atheists are not incapable of formulating Lockeian Natural Law.

It is very, very simple for any atheist to argue that [b]an essential element of life is the need for survival[/b].  Therefore both theists and atheists can derive natural law.[/quote]

Certainly, it is possible for both theists and atheists to discern natural law, because natural law is part of our nature.  So natural law has been discussed from earliest antiquity, and does not conflict with any laws of the material world.  All well said.

But if a man's life is confined to the material world, "survival" means something very different than if man's life is both material and immaterial, mortal and immortal.

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