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From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Proofs of creation
Message-ID: <631@opus.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Jul-84 02:14:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.631
Posted: Sat Jul 28 02:14:32 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Jul-84 01:34:38 EDT
References: <116@uwmacc.UUCP> <166@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: NBI, Boulder
Lines: 61

A couple of comments on what I think are Paul's two main points:

>(i)	Conservation of energy.  Energy may be transformed
>in a variety of ways, but can neither be created nor destroyed.
>So where did energy come from in the first place? Answer:
>it was created.

In a classical (classical physics) sense, matter is also conserved.  Toss
in relativistic phenomena and neither is conserved separately - fine, but
the sum (appropriately normalized, c?) is conserved.  But the essence of
Paul's statement is NOT conservation of matter or energy (or spin, charm,
strangeness, color, or a bunch of others), but rather the issue of "where
did x come from in the first place."  At best, this is a poorly phrased
question, for the simple reason that we don't know how to phrase what we
really mean.  It's difficult to deal with time as anything other than a
continuous, smooth flow.  We feel the flow of time to be so completely
continuous that we can't think about "what happened before" without
assuming that either (a) everything started off at one point or (b)
everything has always been.  A singularity in time is just not something
that you can get your mind around - even a little - without a lot of real
study and thought (or a lot of drugs, I suppose:-)  In some sense, the
"where did x come from?" begs the question; it presupposes that x had to
come from somewhere.

>(ii)	Entropy.  Every transformation of energy from one form to
>another involves loss of some of that energy as non-recoverable
>head energy...
>...
[Paul goes on to argue that the universe is not of infinite age.  Let's
pass on that for now...]
>...the age
>of the universe is finite.  Hence at one time it did not
>exist.  How is it that the universe is?  It was created.

Again, this gets caught up in the "at one time" problem.  What if there
were an "initial time" - a time for which the word "before" had no meaning?
(It's much the same mess as talking about the edge of the universe and
asking what's beyond the edge.  The questions are analogous if you swap
"time" and "space".  And in each case, we have trouble grasping the
question, let alone the answer, from our perspective of a universe which
seems to have smoothly flowing time and Euclidean space.)

Paul goes on to discuss some implications of increasing entropy.  A closing
statement is of interest:
>P.S.  After writing the above, I have just read an article which
>makes a couple of references to miscrepresentation of the 2nd
>law by creationists.  If I am guilty of that error, I trust that
>someone will point out why.

The "misrepresentation" (or maybe "misinterpretation" is fairer; I dunno)
is that "entropy" is somehow equated with "order" or "complexity".
Although entropy does relate in a way to some things we label as "order",
it's wrong to turn this into an equation and think that "order" and
"entropy" mean the same thing, particularly using a lay definition of
"order".  The idea that a very hot lump of rock (early Earth) has evolved
into the planet we know today by increasing entropy is thermodynamically
quite possible.  The problem comes in trying to label Earth today as being
quite highly ordered and then concluding that this must imply low entropy.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
	...A friend of the devil is a friend of mine.