Suppose a poultry farmer puts food in the poultry enclosure every morning at 6 am. On observing this happening repeatedly, a cock declares, “Food comes daily at 6 am into our enclosure – this is a law of nature.”

Scientists postulate laws of nature after observing that nature functions according to repeatable patterns. For example, Newton inferred the law of gravity after observing the falling of objects. Scientific findings about nature’s regularities can be valid and valuable, yet labelling those regularities as laws of nature doesn’t explain them adequately.

Why not? Because nature’s regularity is not an intrinsic necessity. Food doesn’t have to come in the poultry at 6 am; it can come at 7 am. Similarly, objects don’t have to fall according to the rule F = G*m1*m2/r^2; they could well fall by the rule F = G*m1*m2/r^3. Of course, such a change would lead to chaos in the world as we know it. But that is an observation of consequence, not an explanation of cause. Nature, as conceived by the materialistic worldview, is insentient, blind, purposeless – it doesn’t intend to function intelligently for shaping an orderly world.

Just as we attribute the poultry food’s regularity to a personal provider, so too can we attribute nature’s regularity to a personal divinity. The Bhagavad-gita (09.10) declares that nature works under the supervision of God.

Once we understand that nature’s regularity is contingent, not inherent, we recognize the logical tenability of miracles. The laws of nature can be miraculously suspended temporarily by divine will, as when Krishna suspended gravity to lift the Govardhana hill. Such miracles are not against science – they are above science.

When we thus appreciate God as the source of the regularity of nature that is foundational for science, scientific advancement deepens our faith in God.

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