Friday, July 13, 2007

Laws of Man and Laws of Nature

A few points I've noted.

Both of the laws, man's and nature's, appear to have the same feature, that as long as they are not being violated, no special attention is warranted. The act is considered within the normal parameters and therefore from the point of what is at all allowed is a-OK.

However, once you begin to violate them, some tremendous differences appear.

For example: violation of a man's law warrants a punishment. Such behavior can not only ruing your reputation as a noble person, but also result in physical punishment. However, violation of nature's law, while certainly warranting some serious attention, and which virtually always are limited to laboratory conditions, and then the person who actually managed to violate the natural laws, will gain reputation as a genius and possibly receive a Nobel prize. If you happen to fall off a building, violating the nature's law on gravity would have immense and immediate personal reward. But blowing your car through a crowd of people would result in immense, and also likely immediate, personal punishment. Also, the forcement of these different types of laws is quite a bit different. Man's laws require human actor to ensure their enforcement, but nature's laws have been in place and reliably enforced for billions of years.

This brings us to religion. Why? Because religion constantly refers to its laws as 'natural' laws. That whether or not people submit themselves to those laws, they still are subject to them. That there is no escaping the laws and that they will follow you even if you move to a little Caribbean island. However, these laws have hardly been enforced by nature. In fact, most of the religious principles can only be advanced as 'laws' by the same means as man's laws. Not only this, but the reward/punishment system these laws are based on mimic that of man's laws, not nature's.

Clearly religious 'laws' should not be advertised as something which is simply "part of nature". Doing so amounts to dishonesty that I believe, should certainty warrant the questioning of its promoters character, because it is hardly noble.

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