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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

[b]Natural law theorists who attempt to discern natural law apart from eternal law, apart from God, cut off the beginning and the end:  they drop the idea that God instituted natural law before the dawn of time, and they drop the idea that the natural end of human existence is eternity with God.

Is a great deal of natural law preserved in the middle?  Sure.  But it is deprived of its Authority, its universal obligation, its complete consequences, and its ultimate purpose.

In other words, a theist and and atheist could exercise their reason and come to the exact same conclusions of the requirements of natural law.  But the atheist's position would be an ideal that would never be met, and so a fantasy.  [/b]

To be even more specific, an atheist could arrive at an ethical philosophy based on the words of Jesus:  the 10 Commandments (except the first three, which are about God), do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Those precepts could become the law of the land, of the entire Earth.  And natural law without God would still be a fantasy.

Because human beings would continue to violate these precepts constantly and almost universally without consequence in this life.  In fact, from the instant of a violation, an irretrievable moment in time and space, perfect justice in this life is absolutely impossible.

Natural law and ethics command how we "should" behave.  Only the existence of eternal law, of a Lawgiver, can give natural law its due gravity.  Otherwise, it is a thoughtful opinion, a hypothetical, a fine idea, but not reality.

[/quote]

1.  Atheists don't care that God instituted the laws.  They are imprinted on creation and that's all that matters from discerning of natural law.[quote]

Who imprinted them, if not God?  The unintelligent matter and its material processes of which we are made?  Why would unintelligent and undirected matter care if we lie, cheat, or steal?

[/quote]2.  Your statement that it is deprived of its ultimate authority is the same argument that we have been knocking down.  Wanting an ultimate authority does not make it so.[quote]

It also does not prove a negative.

[/quote]3.  Your belief that without this ultimate authority, everyone runs amok does not match with reality.  There are people who do not believe there is an ultimate authority, and they do not run amok.[quote]

I never made that argument.  I argued that if even one human being ever did wrong without consequence, or one human being ever suffered wrong without restitution, then perfect justice was impossible in this life, if this life is all there is.   Since billions of humans throughout history have both wronged and been wronged in matters large and small without consequence, perfect justice in this world does not exist.

[/quote]4.  Further if the purpose of God is to keep people from running amok, then why in His name does he not show himself say "hey, mess with me and you go to hell.  here's the brochure".  So God does not share your goal anyway.[quote]

Um, He did.  That's the natural law written in our nature.  But He didn't put it quite like that.

[/quote]5. Next, as it has been pointed out before, the fact that the atheist's world does not have the ultimate Authority is not an argument for his existence.  Wanting it does not make it so.  No matter how many times you repeat it.[quote]

And it does not prove a negative, no matter how many times you repeat it.

[/quote]6.  The ideal you speak of is is not met anyway, whether we believe or not.  That's just a fact. People commit sins, and ultimate retribution in the form of hell does not nullify that sin.  And believers are not so satisfied in heaven's reward that they do not seek justice in this lifetime.  [/quote]

[quote]Absolutely, the ideal is not met in this world.  "Seek ye not justice in this world."  (Since my husband is an attorney, I am very close to this fact.)  And since "eye has not seen, and ear has not heard," we don't know what God's justice will look like after this world, but we do have the Beatitudes to give us a lovely idea.  And part of natural law is to seek what justice we can here, because this physical life is a gift as much as our eternal soul is a gift.[/quote][/quote]

1.  No one has to imprint the laws.  People have thought that the universe was too complicated and beautiful to be made without an intelligence behind it.  Today we know that is not true.  Even if you believe that God kicked things off, you must agree that he only set in motion a few basic forces and the rest unfolded accordingly.  Those forces are not complicated enough to require intelligence.  It is not as though someone wrote out the schematic for a horse.  The same is true in morality according to the natural law philosophers, but if you really care you can read them.  I am doubtful that you want to do anything other than joust.

2.  No one is trying to prove a negative.  We just don't believe in things that have no evidence.  Unicorns.  Three winged flying pigs.  Forests of Candy Canes.  You can go on and on about it but a negative can never be proven, no matter how ludicrous it is.  I will never prove that three winged flying pigs don't exist.  There is no possible way to do it.  I can inventory every known pig, talk to every pig farmer, scour the literature, dig up fossilized pig bones, do a DNA analysis on pig families, and I cannot prove that a three winged pig does not exist.   Am I forced to say to every proposition, no matter how unfounded, "well the jury's out on three winged pigs.  I'm a three winged pig agnostic"?

3.  You didn't say "run amok".  You said "Because human beings would continue to violate these precepts constantly and almost universally without consequence in this life"

4.  Well apparently since an awful lot of people still don't believe he exists, he could have chosen a better communication method if his goal was to keep order in this world.  That actually makes the case that natural law is more suited to atheism than religion.

5.  See 2.

6.  You are now contradicting yourself.  You have been holding out God as a source of perfect justice.  How many times have you used that term?  Well, if perfect justice is in the afterlife, then people would have no need to seek it in this world.  And yet we do.  All the time.  Therefore believers by their actions demonstrate that justice is imperfect even under God.[/quote]

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