I don't know that that's true within their respective realms. Non-scientific ideas are as bound to adapt to growing understanding and greater experience as science, just in different ways. That's why people who accept ancient pagan nature mythoi as legitimate are a fringe element, much like those who insist Christianity requires a 6000 year old Earth and that therefore the Earth is only 6000 years old.

But the point is if you're going to say a given scientific theory of the universe can be valid DESPITE direct and fundamental conflicts with basic scientific principles you need a better reason than "because that's the only way the theory works" or you're in the same boat. Sure, scientific laws are subject to change based on new data, just like we decided to modify the Laws of Conservation when it was theorized and then experimentally proven that energy can be converted to matter and vice versa. Of course, the modification only occurred AFTER the experimental proof, not because someone said, "but I need it for my theory!!!" Further, considering such a profound alteration of scientific principles as ignoring entropy is rather like convening a Constitutional Amendment Convention: You can do it if you really want to, but it opens the door to ANY revision up to and including the supernatural. Unless there's an observational reason for exempting the Big Bang from entropy there's no reason not to exempt it from other bedrock scientific principles (and if matter/energy can be converted, creation of either ex nihilo remains firmly in the realm of metaphysics rather than particle physics) and just say, "because God did it. "

As you conveniently pointed out above, the "meta-rules by which natural laws may be rationally accepted" ARE the only fixed laws of physics. Even seemingly unassailable ones remain subject to review based on observation which is arguably the only real meta-rule of physics. In terms of your analogy, credit is routinely accepted for debt based on the promise of future payment in the absence of "observable currency. " That's the distinction; the rules of physics require things be observable, verifiable and consistently reproducible, which is why it's OK to assert something that isn't, but NOT as a natural law; it's supernatural by definition, just as a meta-rule isn't a rule, it's a meta-rule. Physics has been increasingly moving in that direction for some time; we don't require DIRECT observation anymore, because the Uncertainty Principle makes it impossible: We rely on observed EFFECTS rather than directly observed phenomena (which is a core principle of the supernatural, but a recent development in natural science. ) The Big Bang takes it one step further; at least quantum physics experiments can be reproduced (though the nature of quantum mechanics is such guaranteeing the same experiment under the same conditions produces the same results is practically impossible; even if true, you can't verify all the starting conditions in the first place, and outcomes are ultimately a probability no matter what you do. ) No, the issue isn't that one approach requires us to take things on faith and the other doesn't, the issue is that both are conjectural but only one is internally consistent.

I observed the effects of things I can only classify as supernatural for the simple reason that no natural explanation is possible. Give me a natural explanation why a knife forcefully thrust at fabric won't penetrate it. Or why anyone would anticipate by a week the completely random encounter that produced that event. I would say my experience has NOT been "as if there were no unobservable things" because I and others have experienced the effects of things that can't be directly observed, consistently reproduced or independently verified.

In point of fact, it does, because the most critical quality of the First Cause is that, unlike the First Effect, it requires no antecedent cause. That makes it fundamentally of a different nature; the First Effect can never be without the First Cause, but the First Cause, by definition, requires no underlying cause. The cosmos may very well be God willing His body to dance; I often conceive the cosmos as a physical manifestation of God, but it does not follow from God assuming a convenient physical representation that He's restricted to the physical. Thus divine creation is NOT possible without supernatural separation because it posits finite material with a definite beginning arose from a non-material Source with NO beginning, neither of which are possible under natural law, since neither the non-material nor the eternal can be verified or consistently reproduced. That's why Aristotle rebutts an infinitely regressing series of causes in The Metaphysics rather than The Physics; he did write both, after all. Divinity is NOT a natural principle under generally accepted understandings of the term; the only arena in which natural law is asserted to be part and parcel with God is the one that rejects the generally understood meaning of "natural law" in favor of a religious one that rejects current cosmology on its face in favor of a 6000 year old Earth.