The first distinction is made between the laws of nature (e.g. natural law) and the laws of science (e.g. laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc...). The latter are the result of man's scientific endeavor while the former have existed, necessarily, from the beginning of the universe.
Our scientific understanding is, of course, expressed in terms of scientific laws, but these only reflect the pre-existence of the laws of nature which have governed the cosmos from its inception.
Edgar Andrews explained it like this:
"The laws of nature constitute unchanging reality whereas the laws of science are our frequently imperfect attempts to describe reality. It is the business of science to discover laws that describe, more or less accurately, how the universe works. Such discoveries not only deepen our understanding of the cosmos but can often be exploited for man's benefit in what we call 'technology'.
But neither science nor technology would be possible without the unchanging substratum of natural law - the ultimate physical reality that science strives to probe and understand.
As we have seen, Einstein and other leading scientists have stressed this difference pointing out that beneath our scientific descriptions of the universe there may well lie 'realities' that we do not (and perhaps cannot) comprehend. And it is possible, even inevitable, that sometimes science's laws and models lead us away from these realities rather than towards them.
The longheld belief that light propagated through an omnipresent medium called the 'ether' is a historical example. This idea was genuinely 'scientific', being based on the fact that waves generally occur in some medium - ripples on a pond propagate in water and sound waves propagate through air (or some other fluid or solid medium). But until it was proven wrong, this perfectly reasonable scientific model stood in the way of a true understanding of electromagnetic fields and radiation. Some modern speculations may prove equally false and equally misleading.
Science proposes a huge variety of laws, principles and models... A failure to distinguish between the laws of nature and the laws of science lies behind the superiority that atheists often claim for science over theology. Science, they say, unlike theology, is open to change. Its errors can be corrected, its theories refined and its explanatory power continually expanded. All this is true, but it only reflects the fact that the laws of science are an imperfect representation of the changeless reality and perfection of natural law.
Similarly, human theology is a search after the changeless truth about God and is notoriously subject to error, revision and refinement. But the revealed realities concerning God, when properly understood, are no more fallible or changeable than the underlying laws of nature that science seeks to uncover (indeed, there is a close connection between the two).
All that said, the laws of science that we establish by practising science represent, at any time, our best approximations to the underlying realities of nature."
I would add that historically sometimes the slightest error or gap in a scientific theory has been its undoing. Yet the leading scientists of the day asserted the theory was as accurate as the earth orbits the sun. They were wrong.
For example, the Newtonian universe had a small gap. There was a time when Newtonian physics explained almost every observed fact about the world, however, the orbital cycle of mercury deviated slightly from the predictions of Newton.
Following the behavior of most of today's atheists, this would amount to nothing more than an annoying gap to be quickly filled in so as to declare Newtonian cosmology the correct view of the universe. They would supress all other views and teach as irrefutable fact a Newtonian cosmology. All students would be taught this irrefutable fact and be required to align with it, at least in their assigments, or risk very real educational and career-related consequences. They would enforce their position that Newtonian physics be maintained and taught as the only valid view and mock anyone who asserted otherwise.
[^ Obviously that is NOT science].
But along came Einstein
anyways, advancing his theory of relativity, and suddenly the orbital deviation of Mercury was accounted for. Predictably, instead of affirming that this was quite an accomplishment and Einstein's theory should be given serious attention:
they strongly resisted him.
Eventually; however, the truth could no longer be denied and a pure Newtonian cosmology was abandoned. The gap was an amazing clue that the status quo of science was deeply flawed in its perception of reality and Einstein was brilliant and fortunate enough to discover the correct scientific understanding regarding it.
And guess what? Despite strong validation through scientific testing, there may be gaps in Einstein's theory of relativity... lol.
I excel in all things scientific, and have never had a conflict with anything I've ever read in Genesis./QUOTE]
