Some interesting excerpts: > [...] this view sees natural things that appear to be permanent as merely following habit. Heat follows fire and hunger follows la

Some interesting excerpts: > [...] this view sees natural things that appear to be permanent as merely following habit. Heat follows fire and hunger follows lack of food as a matter of habit, not necessity, “just as the king generally rides on horseback through the streets of the city, and is never found departing from this habit; but reason does not find it impossible that he should walk on foot through the place.” [...] tomorrow coldness might follow fire, and satiety might follow lack of food. God wills every single atomic event and God’s will is not bound up with reason. [...] “Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.” [...] “Nothing in nature can act spontaneously and apart from God.” [...] Mohammed Yusuf, the late leader of a group called the Nigerian Taliban, explained why “Western education is a sin” by explaining its view on rain: “We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.” [...] the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano was the result of God’s anger at immodestly dressed women in Europe. We often overlook in hindsight how unclear it was how the world works at its basics in earlier times. In other words, it could have turned out that way. It was partially luck that the West got it right. For all they knew, it could have been really God micromanaging everything with no humanly discernible consistency or laws to it. Certainly not ones that are as simple as Newton's laws for example. It was not at all inevitable that, say, the intricate dance of celestial bodies can be reduced to 3 laws of motion plus the inverse square law for gravity.