entropy & god

[N I M A]

Entropy and Causality used as
a proof for God's existence

The second law of thermodynamics states that the amount of energy in a system that is available to do work is decreasing. Entropy increases as available energy decreases. In other words, the purely natural tendency of things is to move toward chaos, not order, and available energy necessary for work is lost (mostly as heat) in this process. Eventually, the universe will run down and all life and motion will cease. This is the natural tendency of all things. Batteries run down, machines break, buildings crumble, roads decay, living things die, etc. Left to the natural state, all things would eventually cease to function.


The universe is not infinitely old because it has not "run down."

If the universe were infinitely old, it would have reached a state where all usable energy is gone.
But, we are not in this state; therefore, the universe is not infinitely old and must have had a beginning.


Because the universe has had a beginning it is not infinite in size.

It would require an infinite amount of time to become infinite in size. Since the universe had a beginning, it has not had an infinite amount of time to expand; therefore, it is finite in size.


All events have causes.

There cannot be an infinite regress of events because that would mean the universe were infinitely old.

We've already established the universe cannot be infinitely old.
If it were infinitely old, the universe would be in a state of unusable energy, which it is not.
If it were infinitely old, the universe would be infinitely large, which it is not.




Since the universe is finite and had a beginning and there cannot be an infinite number of regressions of causes to bring it into existence, there must be a single uncaused cause of the universe.

A single uncaused cause of the universe must be greater in size and duration than the universe it has brought into existence.

Otherwise, we have the uncaused cause bringing into existence something greater than or equal to itself.


Any cause that is natural to the universe is part of the universe.

An event that is part of the universe cannot cause itself to exist.
Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause outside the universe.


An uncaused cause cannot be a natural part of the universe which is finite.

An uncaused cause would be infinite in both space and time since it is greater than which it has caused to exist.


An uncaused cause would be separate from the universe.

Being separate from the universe, which was caused to be, it would not be subject to the laws of the universe since it existed independent of the universe and its laws.
This would mean that entropy need not be required of the uncaused cause.




This uncaused cause is supernatural.

By supernatural is meant completely 'other' than the universe and is not the product of it.

This uncaused cause must be incredibly powerful to bring the universe into existence.




The Bible teaches that God is uncaused, is not part of the universe, created the universe, and is incredibly powerful.

God's existence (in Christianity) is not an event, but a state.
Psalm 90:2 says that God is God without a beginning.
This means that God is uncaused.


Therefore, the God of the Bible is the uncaused cause of the universe.

[N I M A]

The Universe is running down.
The physicists refer to a natural quality called “entropy” as a measure of that process, and as proof of its inevitability.
There is a rather simple example of a change in entropy that can serve to explain it to non-physicists.
Consider a deck of cards on a table. It is sorted into its four suits and each suit is stacked in rising order from deuce to ace, with the suits progressing upward from clubs to diamonds to hearts to spades. The details of the ordering are not important; what is important is that there is a specific order that may be defined and expressed as described here. Now consider that someone or something scatters the deck across the floor of the room. The cards have not been changed, but the order of their arrangement is now destroyed. A physicist would say the entropy of the card deck has been increased. Entropy is a measure of the disorder in a system. Consider now a closed container. There is a wall dividing the container into two approximately equal volumes. On one side of that wall is a very hot gas. On the other side is vacuum. If an opening is formed in the dividing wall, the hot gas will flood into the empty side at a high rate until the two volumes are at approximately equal pressure and temperature. If desired, a rotating device could have been placed in the opening and used to drive a generator to produce electricity. However, once the pressure has equalized, no more energy can be extracted by means of the rotating device. In this second case the principle is like that of the deck of cards. The entropy of the system defined by the container has increased; the randomness has increased and the potential for extracting energy by means of the rotating device has disappeared. The system has “run down”. There is a second attribute of entropy at work here that is somewhat more complex. The energy that can be extracted from the container by the rotating device (or in any other manner) is always less than the total energy dissipated in the process, and than was present in the container when the experiment started. This is the principle that makes a perpetual motion machine impossible, because such a machine would have to produce more energy that it consumes. A more homespun way of saying the same thing is to point out that “water doesn't run uphill”. Apply what has been stated to the universe as a whole. The universe is an orderly system in which inconceivably large assemblies of matter are radiating energy at almost immeasurable rates. It is an orderly system because it proceeds in a manner that we are learning to understand, in accordance with natural laws about which we are constantly improving our knowledge. And the universe must obey the same entropy law as the deck of cards and the tank of gas. The energy potential of a star after its formation is always less than the energy required to form it. And the energy that will be radiated from a star is always less than the total energy in that star when it was formed. Thus the cycle can continue for a very long time indeed; there is much discussion about how long that time may be, but no discussion at all as to whether or not there will come a time when the total energy in the universe will have become so dissipated that there is no way to extract any work from it. Our universe will have run down. There are processes by which entropy can be decreased within a certain defined space. They are called “negentropic” processes. Any activity that increases the organization within a system (such as picking up the cards and putting them back in the original order) is negentropic. But here, also, there can never be a net reduction in total entropy; sorting the cards will always require more increase in entropy overall, than has been decreased by having the cards back in the right order. Nevertheless, the most useful and productive human endeavours are negentropic; those that, within a limited context, reduce randomness and increase organization. The Great Library at Alexandria was such an endeavour. It had assembled and organized much of the knowledge that humanity had gained at the time. The burning of that library increased the entropy of the human condition in ways that we can only guess at from the fragments of information that survived, but the event is surely one of humankind's greatest sacrifices to the principle of entropy. So we see that even with the best of intentions we humans can not reduce the total entropy of the universe in which we find ourselves, but will be forced to travel down the paths of time watching it increase inexorably. There is one very important point to be made about this, however. Negentropic processes require organization; they are in fact “organization”. Because they result in a localized increase in organization, there must be some organizing process in control. That is, negentropic processes require the a priori existence of conditions that will cause the negentropic process to occur. Now there are some rather primitive negentropic processes, such as crystal growth and star formation, that depend upon equally primitive organizing conditions. However, all higher order negentropic processes require the presence of life, and really high order negentropic processes require the intervention of intellligence. Consider, now the time when the entropy of the universe was at a minimum. At the instant in which the “Big Bang” banged, the energy potential of the universe was at its maximum and the organization of the universe was total. How can we know this ? Because of what we discussed above. If there can be no net entropy decrease within the universe, then the net entropy of the universe had to have been at a minimum at its beginning, and current theory holds that that was at the initiation of the “Big Bang”. We are now in a position to ask: What led up to the “Big Bang” ? Physicists generally decry that as “an inappropriate question”, meaning that they don't have the faintest idea how to go about seeking an answer to it. Yet the answer seems clear, based upon the train of reasoning we traced above: Only a living intelligence can produce complex negentropic conditions . In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn't overcome it. John 1:1-5