Further Thoughts on Natural Law

An anonymous reader shared his perception of natural law as "the laws of nature and the universe without the intervention of man and his interpretation." I think this is a good way to put it. An example would be the law of gravity or ocean tides. They work whether we think they should or want them to. They are just there. Maybe I was confused by people arguing about what the natural law means in their interpretation and presuming to speak for God. We don't need to decide whether there are such things as gravity or tides. They are pretty obvious. How God means us to act seems to me to be a matter of interpretation and should probably be called something other than natural law.

Whence Natural Law?

I have wondered for a while about natural law. Wikipedia describes it as "the principle that some things are as they are because that is how they are." Well, that may be, but who gets to decide what the natural law is? Does one find it written on the side of a tree somewhere? The theologian Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century stated that the rational nature of human beings defines natural law. I don't remember everyone getting together to agree on what natural law consists of. In reality governments and religions have been the ones to proclaim natural law. The whole discussion seems rather academic until we get to particulars such as contraception being against the natural law since everyone knows that sex is for procreation and without the option of procreation, sex is "disordered." That has been a source of controversy for some time. The whole matter remains a puzzlement to me. Anybody have any ideas?