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by Steve Risner

This is a follow-up on my last post concerning entropy and, hopefully, we’ll be able to leave it be for a time. I’m writing in response to some strange (what I’ve even regarded as crazy because, frankly, some of it is the whackiest stuff I’ve seen an evolutionist say) things a theistic evolutionist said in a group on Facebook. I love the group because, while it is truly an atheist’s troll den, it serves to provide me with information to write on. This information can be things they say Biblical creationists say. It might be things they think are great arguments for their position. Or it might be arguments against the Bible or creation. Either way, I get a great deal of material from such groups, although they can try one’s patience a great deal. Honestly, I need to work on how I respond to character assassination and personal attacks. I need to cool it, but I let it get away from me sometimes. Jesus is working on that with me and I’m grateful. Moving on to the point…

Entropy is a measurement of how much energy can be used for meaningful work in a system. Basically, as energy gets used or transformed, some of it is always wasted. Eventually, no energy will be useful for work. That’s called “heat death.” If you ask Google what heat death is, it will say, “a state of uniform distribution of energy, especially viewed as a possible fate of the universe. It is a corollary of the second law of thermodynamics.” It just means energy is dispersed such that it cannot be used for anything useful. This results in “death.” Associated with the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which talks a great deal about entropy) is the idea that a natural system will tend to degenerate into a less organized state as time goes on. I believe these two things work against abiogenesis and universal common descent. I’ve explained a little as to why in my last post.

Basically, the idea is that simple chemistry in a warm pond (or where the currently popular version of the humanist origins myth says abiogenesis happened) will not, with the application of undirected energy, produce the sophisticated, highly complex structures that are essential for a life form to exist. The difference between even amino acids (which are fairly complex in comparison to water or salt) and proteins and DNA in their complexities is astronomical. But we are to believe that undirected energy (that’s critical) can cause amazing amounts of order from a disorganized soup of chemicals. It’s a hard case for them to make, in my opinion. I realize many will want to suggest it’s settled somehow. But it really is not settled at all on any factual basis. It’s just settled in their imaginations.

To highlight what I feel was an important point from my last post, consider that while those who propose we should all believe the humanist origins myth (the Big Bang, chemical, stellar, and cosmic evolution and abiogenesis leading to universal common descent) will say entropy (that measurement of disorder that always tends to increase) only applies to closed or isolated systems (depending on which person you talk to—closed or isolated). But the Second Law of Thermodynamics works in all systems that are left undisturbed. Dr. John Ross of Harvard University states:

“… there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. … There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.”

So be sure not to fall for this trick of the evolutionist. And while order can increase slightly in a system because it decreases elsewhere, there is a major difference between order and complexity. A complex system of data storage and retrieval is not the same as crystallization (this is the example I’ve been given numerous times of order increasing naturally). A crystal is an organized lattice work of a particular chemical makeup. Google explains it as “a piece of a homogeneous solid substance having a natural geometrically regular form with symmetrically arranged plane faces.”

If you smash a crystal, you get smaller crystals. If you cut it into pieces, you get more smaller crystals. This is because it’s a repeating pattern of chemicals organized in a very plain and predictable way. This is not true of a life form. If you smash a cell, it’s no longer a cell; it’s a number of complex parts that no longer function together. If you cut a turtle into a million pieces, you no longer have a turtle. It’s not a repeating pattern of order. It’s a highly specialized, complex, and orchestrated number of processes and structures that make it what it is. You lose that if you smash it or cut it up or whatever. Do you follow? Do you see the difference between order and complex?

Applying energy to the system will cause the breakdown of order to occur more quickly. We are supposed to believe that applying energy to a warm pond caused it to organize and become highly complex. This defies science and experience as we all know this isn’t how applying undirected energy works. And undirected energy is all the naturalist has. They cannot call on anything supernatural or unnatural because that violates the major crux of their belief system. So, they are left holding a bag of miraculous events—everything I listed above as tenets of the humanist origins myth—but cannot explain them naturally so they make up very interesting ideas on how some of it could happen (which is usually wishful thinking) but doesn’t help them explain that it did happen.

The high level of order and complexity we see in living things and, quite likely, the universe as a whole, can only be accounted for by a Creator—a Designer. How foolish to say a watch has a maker but a watchmaker does not. One is a complicated machine that cannot be accounted for without an intelligent cause. The other is an astronomically more complex machine that not only built the watch but imagined its design and created it from raw materials. But one has a maker while the other doesn’t. Do you see the contradiction? Do you understand the absurdity of the humanist origins myth? It’s self-contradictory.

Without an intelligence behind it, energy cannot be employed to create high orders of complexity. Without intelligence to harness and utilize available energy, regardless of the type of system, we see the universality of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a plus for creation and not so good for anti-Biblical origins tales. Paul writes for us in Romans 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Unbelievers are without excuse. But I think believers are as well—believers who can read the Word of God and know exactly what it’s saying but reject that and accept something completely unbiblical. And to think this whole discussion was brought about by a Christian who thinks he’s doing a service for the Lord by preaching a message contrary to the one we find in Scripture. It’s bizarre to me how some people work.

In this regard, I think it’s important to note that the Lord warned us against hanging on to the philosophies of the world while living the Christian life. In 2 Corinthians 6:14-16a Paul writes, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?” And then in verse 17 he tells us, “Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.’” We are to avoid blending our faith with the faiths of others. We are to avoid joining our faith with foreign ideas that are completely contrary to what Scripture tells us.

What else are theistic evolutionists doing but this very thing? God has called us out of unbelievers. Of course, our origins beliefs will be contrary to those of the world. They hate God and anything associated with Him. Creation can only exist because of the Creator, so they make up silly stories about expansions and the evolution of everything that defies science, reason, and experience. But they have to because they must reject the Creator, no matter how foolish their stance is. Richard Lewontin said this on this topic: “…we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.” At least he was good enough to admit it.

More next time – I’ve run out of space again!

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