The machine is capable of running under its own steam – think programmable engine lathe or CNC milling machine. It has its own ‘laws of nature’ and can operate on its own. Its ‘laws of nature’ include electronics, programming and mechanical parts, some passive, some active. What the operator does to it, it is incapable of doing to or for itself. She uses ‘higher technology’ which is not part of the ‘rules of nature’ when she interacts with the equipment, ‘breaking the rules of nature’ and changing some aspect of its operation, maybe quite temporarily.
So God is breaking the rules of nature in your analogy. Are you somehow making a distinction between “breaking the rules” and “violating the law”? Otherwise your analogy seems to support my claim, not yours.
No, we are talking about two different M.O.s, one where the laws of nature are interrupted and one where they are not. Remember supernatural miracles and (agh! ) hypernatural ones? Hypernatural ones might be analogous (not perfectly) to the operator tweaking the program. The change to the machine or the DNA would not be detectable nor reveal it as having come from ‘outside’, should a hypothetical someone else look. If a whole gear was moved from one place to another or the gear ratio changed, now that would be noticeable and you could deduce that the laws of nature were interupted. (Remember that an analogy is a three-legged horse. )
Since I am all about God’s providential timing (remember the outbuilding being moved and Cabela’s parking lot), maybe tweaking the machine’s processor clock speed would be somewhat analogous. The machine is still running under its same ‘rules of nature’.
Why couldn’t he simply create force ex nihilo as a direct effect?
In this case the physical cause of the asteroid moving would be the force, and the cause of the force a divine action not so unlike the creation of the universe.
I’m not committed to this view of divine action, but an explanation of this sort would at least seem to be a case in which there won’t be any violations of natural laws.
Keep in mind that, if you want to say that God necessarily violates natural laws through divine action, you actually need to specify what laws you are referring to. Otherwise the objection is vacuous.
If you were omniscient and omnipotent and knew before hand exactly how your created universe would behave, down to the last photon, would you constantly intervene to keep it on track?
Humans need to do this when we design and engineer complex things only because we don’t know how things will work until they are tested. Not so for God.
He could. But that would be a miracle, a violation of natural laws. Nothing says he can’t violate natural laws if he likes, so I don’t know why everyone is getting to exercised about it.
I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be. Creation of a force without any of the natural causes of force is a violation, or an exception if you prefer.
So the difference is whether we can detect it, not what it actually is. A violation of natural law that we can’t detect doesn’t thereby cease to be a violation.
That’s changing the laws of nature. Your distinctions seem not be be distinctions.
Have you by any chance heard that an analogy is a three-legged horse? Especially when talking about the immaterial and omnipotent Sovereign of the universe and time and his relationship and interaction with the material cosmos.
In the great expanse of eternity, which stretches behind Genesis 1:1, the universe was unborn and creation existed only in the mind of the great Creator. In His sovereign majesty God dwelt all alone. We refer to that far distant period before the heavens and the earth were created. There were then no angels to hymn God’s praises, no creatures to occupy His notice, no rebels to be brought into subjection. The great God was all alone amid the awful silence of His own vast universe. But even at that time, if time it could be called, God was sovereign.
We are going to disagree about why God created the universe, though. He was never ‘all alone amid the awful silence of His own vast universe.’ That is awful. I’m sorry it came from Ligionier. He was joyous within the familial relationship of the Trinity.
Why he created the universe and us in it was to increase his joy by sharing it and expanding his family with joyful adopted children who would reciprocate his love and be proud of and praise their adoptive Father.
I think John Piper addresses that (but it’s been decades since I read it):
I wouldn’t call the silence awful, since God is perfect. He doesn’t need anything to be complete. However, there was/is a ‘time’ when God was without Creation.
) hypernatural ones? Hypernatural ones might be analogous (not perfectly) to the operator tweaking the program. The change to the machine or the DNA would not be detectable nor reveal it as having come from ‘outside’, should a hypothetical someone else look. If a whole gear was moved from one place to another or the gear ratio changed, now that would be noticeable and you could deduce that the laws of nature were interupted. (Remember that an analogy is a three-legged horse. 
