I am not particularly concerned about the word laws but what is meant by it and the perception of where those laws reside. I am glad to see that, since I raised the subject, the responses have been in favour of the descriptive but it hasn't always been so. My starting point was Joe's statement that "I'm convinced that everything in life follows logical rules". It may just be a matter of terminology but it is surely possible to get things more precise without drowning the untrained reader in jargon.

In all the discussions of science v religion that I've been involved in here, what has most concerned me is how you distinguish between the two. Some seem to think that it is by comparison of the results; science gives a better explanation of what we see than the bible (or vice versa). I totally disagree. The important distinction is between the ways of thinking. Steve Shaw and others have described that very well on this thread. I would still like to know why Steve prefers "laws of nature" which, to me, implies that the laws are part of the natural world waiting to be discovered over "laws of science" which, to me, puts them in their proper place as human constructs with predictive qualities.

I think we need to very firmly get rid of the notion that the universe "follows" the laws (rules, logic, what you will) of nature which, as I said at the outset, seems just as bad as attributing everything to a intelligent designer.