I don't think you are referring to "natural law," as in "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." and Clarence Thomas.
Instead, I think you mean that materialists claim that our morals, conscience, compassion, etc. are just particles and energy. While I think that the forms of life I am familiar with, seem to depend on such things, I don't think life is the physical things it depends on. I think that materialism leads to great evils such as genocide and abortion. Some materialist-evolutionists claim that they, too, revere life as something precious, but how can something that you could assemble "from scratch" in a laboratory, as they claim they will be able to do soon, be that precious?
I don't think that a belief in evolution implies that one is a materialist, although some of the evolutionists claim to be materialists.
I want scientists to continue learning how things work, and how physical things affect living things, and I want students to learn. But I think schools should teach science in a way that does not push a materialist or atheistic agenda.
Materialism holds that all is matter or reduced to it. Pantheism or pantheistic materialism reduces all to mind. In a rigid materialist view all is matter, and nothing is mind. I believe most pure darwinists assert this must be the explaination for life on earth and its component characteristics. If a darwinist will clear up the nonmaterial nature of man, if he so asserts, I will like to try to understand this.
Natural Law is something entirely different. I do no believe this subject has been brought up on this thread, at least not in my correspondence. The strict materialist is self defeating in that he cannot prove that the theory of strict materialism is made of matter. The idea that all is made of molecules begs the question, of what molecule is an idea made of, or a thought. It seems that mind can only transend matter if it is not matter or other than matter. If it is other than energy or matter, then matter is not all that exists. It therefore follows that if human consciousness is the flow of electrons, then persons are material processes, not free human beings.
As I understand Natural Law, it is the theology or study of God based on what one can know from nature. Natural Law is in contrast to supernatural theology, which depends upon a supernatural revelation of God. Natural Law depends upon the rational arguments for God's existence and for nature. This is incontrast to naturalism or metaphysical naturalism which refers to the view that nature is the "whole show".
If true materialist darwinists believe that life evolved to a state of "other than matter" I am interested in how that happens from a darwinian world view and understanding of those processes. To say that the nonmaterial evolved from matter requires a materialistic explaination which I have not yet heard. If you can please explain.
Well put.