Regarding the Gift

[Zealot]

Stigmatas, cooled embers, grace- such gifts are given to those who prove themselves pure of heart, soul and spirit. The saints are recipients of these and other gifts, but those in league with the Devil also receive gifts- although in their case the gifts are a reward for corruption and not from God. With regard to the saint, divinity touches man and brings him closer to perfection. Meanwhile, he who breathes like the Devil approaches the end of his road to ruin- beyond which there is only misery.

[Skyler]

For example. A helicopter, hovering in midair, neither falling to the ground nor rising, would appear to be breaking the law of gravity. However, there's another law in action--the Bernoulli principle--that allows it to stay aloft.

That is a bad example. A helicopter is completely subject to the theory of gravity, as are the moon and clouds. The parallel is a poor one.

The parallel is precisely what I'm explaining. The helicopter is subject to the law of gravity, but it does not fall to the earth, because of another law also in action. That is my point.

Likewise, when the laws of nature appear to be "broken" by God, many times they are simply "bent".

Really! Which laws were bent to make the sun remain still or to keep a prophet alive inside a big fish for three days?

To make the sun remain still, one would simply have to accelerate the progression of time in a localized area of the universe. To keep a prophet alive, I don't know that any "bending" is even necessary. I'm not a biologist though so I'll leave that open.

When he does "break" the laws of nature, if in fact he does so, he doesn't do it arbitrarily. God doesn't randomly suspend the laws of nature.

I don't claim that God does. Your Bible, however, claims that he arbitrarily suspends (or supersedes) the laws of nature when he gets angry, jealous, when a wedding runs out of wine or needs to prove that he is better than the gods of his people's neighbors.

I don't think it says it's arbitrary. Does it?

Finally, if nature does not arbitrarily change, then how, as I mentioned above, did the universe come into existence?

Nature, as far as we can observe, does not arbitrarily change. I don't know how the universe came into existence. Neither do you.

We don't have to know how it came into existence. We do know that it did.