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CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)
III) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A DESIGNED AND ORCHESTRATED CREATION
Not only is there physical evidence of a recent creation but there is also evidence that the creation of all life, the earth and the universe was specifically designed, created and orchestrated by God as testified to in the Bible.
A) THE INCREDIBLY COMPLEX DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSE POINTS TO A SUPREME DESIGNER: GOD
1) PHYSICAL LAWS AND CONSTANTS TESTIFY TO A DESIGNED CREATION
Dr. Don B. DeYoung states, (Impact brochure, Oct 1994, Article entitled, 'GRAVITY'):
"Gravity holds us firmly on the ground and also keeps the earth circling the sun. It draws rain from the sky and causes the tides. This mysterious gravity force continues to puzzle scientists even as it gives stability to the universe. How is gravity able to act across empty space, and why does it exist in the first place? Science has never been very successful in explaining such 'natural' laws. After all, these universal rules cannot slowly arise by mutation or natural selection; they have been here since the very beginning. Gravity, as well as every other intricate law and constant, is actually an absolute testimony to creation...
...Colossians 1:17 explains that Christ is before all things, and by Him all things consist. The Greek verb for 'consist' (sunistano) means to cohere, preserve, or hold together. Extrabiblical Greek use of this word pictures a vessel holding water within itself. The word is used in Colossians in the perfect tense, which describes a present continuing state arising from past action. This perfect tense also implies permanence of the act of holding the universe together.... If the Lord turned His back on the universe for one moment, instant chaos would result. Without gravity, the earth, moon, and stars would immediately disintegrate.
A second reference, Hebrews 1:3, declares that Christ upholds all things by the word of His power. Uphold (Greek, enegko) again describes the sustaining or maintaining of all things, including gravity. The word uphold means much more than simply supporting a weight. It includes control of all the ongoing motions and changes within the universe. This infinite task is managed by Christ's almighty Word, whereby the universe itself was first called into being (Hebrews 11:3)...
CONCLUSION
It is a fair question to ask natural science why basic laws such as gravity exist. Why is the universe filled with intriguing technical relationships, symmetry, and unity? Some experts are quick to reply that the task of science is only to find out the how of nature, not the why. But this excuse simply reveals the incompleteness of natural science alone. Ultimate truth about the universe must also deal with God's initial provision and his continuing care for us. The Creator is clearly an intimate part of every physical detail, including gravity."
[Dr. Don R. Patton, videa tape #2 of seminar on Creation/Evolution]
"There are laws that govern the physical universe... the light that's falling on me now obeys the law of an inverse square proportionality. It falls off inversely proportional to the square of the distance, and that's true whether the light's coming from the light bulb or whether it's coming from the sun. Why is that true? [Because] these laws are operational throughout the universe, wherever we go, wherever we can measure... The implications are obvious: there must be a Lawgiver with the authority and power to govern the Universe... Notice the statement by James H. Shea, who is editor of the Journal of Geological Education... He says [Geology, v. 10, p. 458], 'The most serious problem with this concept grows out of the fact that it uses a metaphor, the Laws that govern or control nature... We seem to believe that there literally are such laws. The concept is anachronistic in that it originated at a time when the Almighty was thought to have established the laws of nature and to have decreed that nature must obey them... It is a great pity for the Philosophy of Science that the word 'law' was ever introduced.'
Well, we can see his struggle... He's trying to evade the obvious implication of the fact that there are laws that govern the universe. We want to talk particularly about the laws of thermodynamics... Notice the statement by Albert Einstein quoted in Science [Vol. 157, p. 509], 'Classical thermodynamics.. only physical theory of universal content concerning which I am convinced that within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts, it will never be overthrown.'
Now, whatever this term means, according to Albert Einstein, this is the physical concept in which he has the greatest confidence. He is more confident regarding these concepts, that they will never be overthrown. These are laws of science. We spoke earlier in this series about what's necessary to constitute a law of science. It involves observation and repeatibility and experimentation, measurement. All of these factors help us define that which comes to be considered a law. And we'll be looking at the laws and the various observations that we're able to make in this universe and comparing it with the models of creation and evolution as we seek to explain origins and see which one of those concepts fits best with regard to the observations that we make. And particularly, in this session, regarding these laws of science, the most fundamental generalizations that we know about in science."
b) THE 1ST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
[Dr. Don R. Patton, videa tape #2 of seminar on Creation/Evolution]
"The first of these laws is the first law of thermodynamics or sometimes called the law of conservation. It says that while matter or energy can be sometimes interchanged, neither can be created or destroyed. The total amount is constant. Another way of saying it is [that] you can't get something from nothing... This principle of conservation... has been measured and tested and has been confirmed completely and is unquestionably a law. The science writer Isaac Asimov, one of the more prolific science writers of our time, was writing in the Smithsonian Institution Journal, June, 1970, [p. 6 and] he made this statement regarding this first law: 'This law is considered the most powerful and most fundamental generalization about the universe that scientists have ever been able to make. No one knows why energy is conserved... All that anyone can say is that in over a century and a quarter of careful measurement scientists have never been able to point to a definite violation of energy conservation, either in the familiar everyday surroundings about us, or in the heavens above or in the atoms within.'
Now that's a very very broad statement. It is the most fundamental generalization we can make about the universe according to this atheistic philosopher of science... And it pervades the universe from the atoms to the heavens. This [Isaac Asimov states] is a law. We measured it, we observed it...
But notice how he flies in the face of this law when he comes face to face with its implications regarding origins, this time writing in Science Digest [Vol. 69, p. 69], he says, 'Perhaps in an infinite sea of nothingness, globs of positive and negative energy in equal-sized pairs are constantly forming, and after passing through evolutionary changes, combining once more and vanishing. We are in one of these blobs in the period of time between nothing and nothing, and wondering about it.'
Now, in view of what he said [as quoted earlier] is the most fundamental generalization about the universe that scientists have ever been able to make, I think we can conclude that this [second quotation] is not science. In fact, it's not even good science fiction, which flies in the face of this most fundamental generalization: the first law of thermodynamics which says [that] you can't get something from nothing. Matter can be neither created nor destroyed... I find that most of the scientists that I try to talk to about origins, when it comes to talking about the origin of matter, simply sidestep, evade [or] avoid the question - 'It came from somewhere else.' And [then they involve themselves]... in the logical fallacy of infinite regression:
'It came from over here.' 'Well, where did it come from to get there?' 'Well, maybe over here.' And then, 'Where did it come from there?' Well, you see they infinitely regress... never really getting to the point of where... it [all began]... And when we come face to face with the laws that govern this universe, we see that there is no natural explanation for the origin of matter. The law says nothing can come from nothing. And so you must go beyond the natural explanation to what you might call supernatural. ...Natural law can't account for [origins]... [Natural law] says [that the origin of matter] won't happen naturally. And so [natural laws deny] the naturalistic philosopher's effort to explain [origins]... And we can see the obvious conflict here. The law [of conservation of energy and matter] says there is a principle of conservation that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. And yet the naturalistic philosopher tries to explain the origin of everything in conformity with natural law, [but natural laws deny the possibility of the origin of the universe coming about by natural laws. On the other hand, the creation model scenario fits the existence of natural laws best, where] there is a Creator Who...[operated] in the beginning outside of natural law..."
c) THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
[Dr. Don R. Patton, video tape #2 of seminar on Creation/Evolution]
"The second law of thermodynamics... sometimes called the principle of entropy increase, says, 'the system runs down, or wears out.' And that's no surprise to us. We know that systems run down and wear out. We know that when we buy a new car it doesn't get more powerful. We know that we ourselves run down and wear out eventually. Notice the description of it that Isaac Asimov makes in the Smithsonian Institution Journal, [June, 1970, p. 6] when he says, 'Another way of stating the second law then is '''The universe is constantly getting more disorderly! Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and or own bodies in perfect working order; how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself - and that is what the second law is all about.'
[Compare quotations from Dr. Patton's notes by the following:
Sir Arthur Eddington from The Physical World, p. 74:
"..If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
A. B. Pippard, Cambridge University, Elements of Chemical Thermodynamics for Advanced Students of Physics, p. 99-100:
"There is no justification for the view, often glibly repeated, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only statistically true, in the sense that microscopic violations repeatedly occur, but never violations of any serious magnitude. On the contrary, no evidence has ever been presented that the Second Law breaks down under any circumstances."
Frank A. Greco, Harvard Medical School, American Laboratory, 10/82, p. 88:
"Being a generalization of experience, the second law could only be invalidated by an actual engine. In other words, the question, 'Can the second law of thermodynamics be circumvented?' is not well worded but could be answered only if the model incorporated every feature of the real world. But an answer can readily be given to the question, 'Has the second law of thermodynamics been circumvented?' Not yet."
Now this is a law likewise that has been observed and tested for well over a century. And no exception has been found, as he goes on to say. This is the law. Now, how does that compare again with the two models of creation and evolution as an explanation of origins?...
Richard Morris, in his book, Time's Arrows: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time, [1984, p. 113] a very well known science writer says, 'The second law of thermodynamics has a chameleonlike character. It can be expressed in more different ways than any of the other laws of physics. The reason that it takes so many different forms is that it is the most general of all the laws that scientists have discovered. It applies to practically everything.'
And so we're not then about a principle that applies only to mechanical processes as I've heard some claim. But like the chameleon that shifts... [colors. This principle, likewise] applies to everything. In particular we notice the statement in the Dallas Morning News of May 14, 1990, regarding entropy of information, [Tom Siegfried, Quoting Robert W. Lucky, Ex. Director of Research, AT&T, Bell Laboratories & John A. Wheeler, of Princeton & Univ. of TX, Austin]: 'Is there a real connection between entropy in physics and the entropy of information...
[Well, he's affirming that there is a connection and that it is the same thing and refers to the work of Robert W. Lucky at Bell Laboratories and John Wheeler of Princeton and the University of Texas. He says,]
'The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental...'
Now entropy is this tendency toward disorder and it operates in practically every area. [It is] the most general of all of the laws... [and includes] information. I think... [the law of entropy as it relates to information is] particularly relevant to the question of origins and evolution verses creation. Certainly evolution of life and of complex organisms involves an increase of order and information. And perhaps quantitively we can get a better handle on this issue if we look at it in terms of [whether there has been an increase or a decrease] of information. We [observe that] there [has been] a general overall decrease... of information, of order, of organization throughout the universe [i.e., an overall increase in entropy]. And this is one of the most fundamental laws we've ever seen. And yet inspite of that we have statements like this from V.F. Veisskoff, head of the department of physics at M.I.T.... 'The evolutionary history of the world from the '''big bang''' to the present universe is a series of gradual steps from the simple to the complicated, from the unordered to the organized, from the formless gas of elementary particles to the morphic atoms and molecules and further to the still more structured liquids and solids, and finally to the sophisticated living organisms....
[Calling them sophisticated is an understatement. In our earlier session, we pointed out that even the simplest cell has information content equal to hundreds of sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica - a tremendous amount of information. And yet that information degenerates. He says [that] the whole universe is governed by principle that is onward and upward including the information of organized systems. He continues saying]:
There is an obvious tendency of nature from disorder to order and organization.'
[American Scientist, Vol. 65, July/Aug, 1977, p. 409]
Well, how do you know that? The most fundamental generalization that scientists have been able to make says just the opposite. It says there is a tendency in the opposite direction toward deterioration and degeneration including information... [This] has been observed and tested and repeated and measured for over a century..."
2) THE 2ND LAW DOES APPLY TO OPEN SYSTEMS I.E., TO THE REAL WORLD
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2, cont.]
"Some people trying to avert or avoid the obvious implication [of the evidence]... will say, 'But, this second law only applies in closed systems, but we live in an open system - open to the extra energy of the sun. And when you have extra energy you can get an increase in order.'
Obviously, we see the child, that with an increase in energy in the form of food does grow taller. And the acorn grows into the oak. But I would affirm that it takes much more than energy to do that. But the statement that it only applies to a closed system is a false statement. Notice the statement by John Ross of Harvard University, CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS, [p. 40, July 7] 1980. He said, 'Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated [or closed] systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems.'
It's stated for closed systems so that we can define it with equations that we can then balance. But notice also Arnold Sommerfel in his... college textbook, THERMODYNAMICS AND STATISTICAL MECHANIC [p. 155]. He says that '...the quantity of entropy generated locally cannot be negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not.'
Yes, it's defined that way. We see it that way in the equations, but it works in the real world which does not involve closed systems and the neat picture often presented by the equations...
Richard Morris makes this comment... in his book Time's Arrows, [p. 113], He says. 'An isolated system is one that does not interact with its surroundings. Naturally there are no completely isolated systems in nature...
[And yet, as we observed earlier, the second law operates in nature. It's the most fundamental general observation that scientists have ever been able to make. But there are no closed systems there.. But he continues]:
Everything interacts with its environment to some extent. Nevertheless, the concept, like many other abstractions that are used in physics, is extremely useful...
[That is the closed system concept]
If we are able to understand the behavior in ideal cases, we can gain a great deal of understanding about processes that take place in the real world. In fact treating a real system as an isolated one is often an excellent approximation.'
Of course, that's what physics involves: approximations... We approximate using closed systems, knowing that in the real world where we observe this law in operation, that we are in an open system... [So] the statement that it only works in closed systems is obviously false even though we hear it quite often.
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes by Charles J. Smith, Biosystems, Vol. 1, p. 259:
"Biological systems are open and exchange both energy and matter. This explanation, however, is not completely satisfying, because it still leaves open the problem of how or why the ordering process has arisen (an apparent lowering of the entropy), and a number of scientists have wrestled with this issue. Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology."]
Isaac Isimov says in his book LIFE WITHOUT ENERGY, 'Forgetting the ideal, we can just take it for granted that in the real world about us, entropy always increases. And as we pointed out, entropy is the measure of the disorder of a system....' But he says [that] in the real world that we live in which involves systems only, entropy or disorder always increases. That's the way it is in the real world and there are no exceptions."
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2, cont.]
"Now while we do.... sometimes observe things increasing in order due to, among other things, an increase in energy that second law is not violated...
[These are only moments of increase of energy which by themselves do not create order increases in the overall curve of decrease over the life of that particular thing]
The idea that [since] we get extra energy from the sun and therefore [can] ignore [evidences all around us of overall] decrease and degeneration and disorder is... vacuous... and ignores the real problem. While energy is necessary to see any kind of increase in order it is not a sufficient answer to the problem... Consider the statement by George Gaylord Simpson, a very famous evolutionist in his book, AN INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY, when he says, 'The simple expenditure of energy is not sufficient to develop and maintain order. A bull in a china shop performs work, but he neither creates nor maintains organization. The work needed is particular work, it must follow specifications, it requires information on how to proceed..."
[GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON & W.S. BECK, AN INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY, p. 466]
When we look at information which operates by the same... principles... of entropy increase... we see that it requires an increase of information in order to have an increase of order - not just energy, but in addition to energy... [an increase of order] also requires [an increase of] information. We look at the living system involved, for example, in the human eye. A tremendous amount of information is involved here... The curvature of the lens is described by information and if that information is not accurate then the lens curvature is not appropriate and the whole eye doesn't work... Now, how did that information come into being?
[Compare quotations from Dr. Don R. Patton's notes as follows:
by Eigen, (Nobel Laureate), Evolution, p. 13, Nov. 10, 1982:
"Here at the molecular level are the roots of the old puzzle about the chicken or the egg. Which came first, function or information? As we shall show, neither one could preceed the other; they had to evolve together." by Peter T. Mora, National Institute of Health, Nature, Vol. 199, 1963, p. 216:
"Crystallization occurs because it leads to the lowest energy state, and to the most stable arrangement of atoms or molecules under the given conditions. Crystallization leads to simple, very uniform repeating structures, which are inert. These structures do not function, and are not designed by function."
by Richard Morris, Time's Arrows. p. 119:
"For example, when a crystal grows in a liquid, structure appears that was not present before the process of crystallization began. As the crystal becomes larger, the entropy of the system does increase... The appearance of structure does not always imply an increase in order, even though 'structure' and 'order' are equated in our everyday speech."]
4) THE 2ND LAW APPLIES TO LIFEFORMS THUS RULING OUT EVOLUTION
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., tape #2, cont.]:
"Information degenerates, deteriorates according to... the second of law of thermodynamics... Now... to produce... [a living organism like a properly functioning eye] you must have extra energy, but you need more than that, that's an insufficient answer. Now, we're told that you have extra energy from the sun. We grant that. But there's another question... The other requirement is information. And while energy comes from the sun, I ask, 'Where does the information come from?'... [But some] claim that the information came from the sun, along with the energy... Now, I don't know of information, certainly not the kind of information that would define the human eye riding on sunbeams. Where's the information for hemoglobin? Or the information for that simplest cell equivalent to thousands of copies of Encyclopedia Britannica on a sunbeam?.... [Information doesn't come] on sunbeams. Naturally [information] deteriorates, yet we see tremendous amounts of information even in the simplest cell.... Consider the statement by Harold Blum in his book TIME'S ARROW AND EVOLUTION, [Princeton Univ., p. 14]
He says, 'No matter how carefully we examine the energetics of living systems we find no evidence of defeat of thermodynamic principles, but we do encounter a degree of complexity not witnessed in the non-living world.'...
In other words, it applies to life just as well as non-life. The only difference is that when we get to living systems we find that which is more complex but it follows the same laws of thermodynamics...
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes by Ilya Prigogin (Nobel Laureate), Physics Today, Vol. 25, p. 28]:
"Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures. The probability that at ordinary temperatures a macroscopic number of molecules is assembled to give rise to the highly ordered structures and to the coordinated functions characterizing living organisms is vanishingly small. The idea of spontaneous genesis of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable, even on the scale of billions of years during which prebiotic evolution occurred."
Sydney Fox.. talking about the origin of life, [states] 'Evolution however, has put together the smallest components. It has proceeded from the simple to the complex."
[CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS, Vol. 49, No. 50. p. 46]
Now he is one of the leading experts in the world on the origin of life. Obviously, in order to get this 'simple' cell with information content equivalent to thousands of copies of the sets of encyclopedias, you've got to have a procedure from the simple to the complex. And yet in terms of information content we know that the second law says it goes the other way... But to get that simple cell [Sydney Fox] says you've got to proceed the other way. Well, how do you do that naturally? We've got extra energy from the sun, but where does the extra information come from? ....From natural processes... it's impossible...
We see... illustration of this second law of thermodynamics throughout the living world whether we are looking at that simplest cell or whether we are looking at anything else in the universe. Consider the statement that's made by Theodosius Dobzhansky, as he... illustrates in the living world the implications of this second law. [Here he is] talking about mutations which ironically are supposed to be the explanation of the onward and upward process of evolution. He says,
'The harmfulness of most mutants is just what could be reasonably expected.....
[In other words, here is something that goes wrong and produces harm]
an accident... [he says] a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. [He says] Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or into one's radio set can hardly be expected to make it work better...
[No, we have a random change that sometimes occurs in [the] hereditary process that's defined as a mutation. It produces harm, it doesn't produce onward and upward processes as he would imply from this statement. He continues defining this phenomenon, saying]
One can say that mutations are owing to incorrect copying, to occasional mistakes in the generally so remarkable accurate process of replication.. You may, if you wish, compare mutations to accidental misspellings or misprints which even the most experienced copyist makes from time to time... '
[THEODOSIUS DOVZHANSKY, HEREDITY AND THE NATURE OF MAN, p. 126]
So mutations, then are supposed to be the raw material from which we get this procedure upward to produce evolution. And yet... it's rather better described as an illustration of this second law in the living processes that produce deterioration and disorder and disorganization. That's what the law predicts and that's what we observe...
Stephen Gould has acknowledged that's what we see indicated in the fossil record about the history of life in this world...
'I'll say it once more, maximal diversity of structural design right at the beginning with the late history of life being a story of reduction of the initial maximal diversity by the extinction and loss of most of the lineage and failure of any survivors... ever again to generate fundamental new designs.'
[Stephen Gould, Speech at SMU, Dallas, Tx., Oct. 2, 1990]
At the beginning of the history of life.... we have every major design right from the start. And from that point you don't get an increase in complexity. You don't get increasing order, you have, as he said, a reduction through extinction and 'a failure, ever again [he says] to generate new designs.' You have fewer... [phyla], fewer major organizational, structural designs... now than you had at the beginning. It has deteriorated and degenerated according to the principle [of entropy]."
[Compare with a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes by Jean Rostand, The Orion Book of Evolution, p. 17:
"No, decidedly, I cannot make myself think that these 'slips' [i.e., mutations] of heredity have been able, even with the cooperation of natural selection, even with the advantage of the immense periods of time in which evolution works on life, to build the entire world, with its structural prodigality and refinements, its astounding adaptations... I cannot persuade myself to think that the eye, the ear, the human brain have been formed in this way"]
"We're reminded that the evolutionists represents his kind of change typically as a change from the small to the large. We look at TimeLife's representation of the evolution of man and it begins with the small monkey-like creature, the gibbon, which they acknowledge has nothing to do with the evolution of man, but he's in the chart, that leads then to the larger, and still larger. Finally, on up to the tallest - a modern man. You look in the biology textbook, and you see a little Eohippus, the... horse, leading up to the next size and then the next size and finally up to... the modern horse of today. And if evolution is true, [then] this is the kind of thing that we should... see represented in the fossil record... [But] that is not the case... The 2nd law of thermodynamics... predicts a downward, deteriorative procedure that we see illustrated... And what we do actually see in the fossil record is perfectly consistent with that [2nd law]. Notice the statement that's made in the geology text that's made by Von Engeln & Caster regarding the nature of life in the past... He says, 'That mammalian life was richer in kinds, of larger sizes, and had a more abundant expression in the Pliocene than in later times.'
[Von Engeln & Caster, Geology, p.19]
It was bigger in the past and there were more kinds. There are fewer kinds today This reminds us of Gould's statement that when we began we [had] all of the major kinds. We haven't produced any new ones since and it has deteriorated since then. And that's true also regarding size... Consider the statement in Time Magazine regarding Richard Leakey's work in Africa. [It says that Leakey has] 'been scouring the gorge since 1931. Over the years he has unearthed the bones of an ancient pig as big as a rhino, a six-foot-tall sheep, a twelve-foot-tall bird and the flat topped skull of the erect '''Nutcracker man'''.
[TIME MAGAZINE, March, 10, 1961]
These are things that were bigger... sheep and birds and rhinos. And that's just scratching the surface... That's typical of what we find in the fossil record rather than the other way around which is the way it is generally represented. The horse chart... [showing an] increase in size is in virtually every biology textbook. But we see... a donkey, Equus Gigantis.. that was unearthed near Lubbock Texas. And this was a donkey that would have been about nine feet tall at the shoulder... That certainly would mess the horse charts... And so they conveniently leave that out, as they do most of the information on relative size....
A bison in the past that would have been about twelve feet tall at the shoulder that has a horn span of almost twelve feet - much much larger than the bison that we observe today. Again , you don't see that in the charts that are represented in the textbooks... In the fossil record, [the armadillo] was much larger. In fact... nine times larger than the present day armadillo... And when we look at the various creatures in the fossil record, invariably they were larger in the past. We see a fossil turtle that was found in San Antonio, almost identical... to modern day turtles except that this one was 12 to 14 feet across... We look at... crocodiles as they appeared in the fossil record compared with the modern crocodile... The fossil crocodile was some 50 feet long compared with [today's crocodile of] about 14 feet long.... This is typical of the fossil record. Most of us are used to seeing cattails around the countryside... In the fossil record they were over 60 feet tall! The cone being somewhere between 6 and 10 feet.... And this is a very common fossil that we see everywhere... A dragonfly.. [fossil] with a wingspan of over 30 inches. That's typical of the fossils that you find in the fossil record... That's not an exception...
Consider the statement by Clifford Simak in his Trilobite, Dinosaur and Man [p. 158], he says, 'In general all the Pennsylvanian insects were larger than the ones we know today.' Now if things are evolving [as] in these little charts that we see in the biology texts... [then] why aren't they bigger today then they were in the past? In fact the truth of the matter is just the opposite... That's true with every [living] thing that you can find that's analagous to things alive today. If they have a modern representation, we see that they're bigger in the past.... We find some rhinos in the fossil record [were] up to 18 feet tall!... Notice also the camel that was found in India, 20 feet tall in the fossil record.... One of the more dramatic fossils that we find is [on of a] wolf which was approximately 6 feet tall at the shoulder... We see a 14 foot [modern] shark compared with a fossil shark... up to a hundred feet long... The dinosaurs, of course, were huge creatures. They're extinct today, virtually. We do have one modern representative of the [dinosaurs]... in South America, the Tuatara. He's about 8 inches long... In the living world when we look at the fossil record we see things that are larger over and over and over again. And any representation to the contrary is a false representation..."
5) THE 2ND LAW APPLIES THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE TO THE EXCLUSION OF EVOLUTION
[Dr. Don Patton, op. cit., Tape #2, cont.]:
"As we look around us in the world today, we see abundant evidence of this pervasive principle - this law that is obeyed by the universe - the most fundamental generalization that scientists have ever been able to make: the 2nd law of thermodynamics. We look at the earth around us. Here's... the Grand Canyon... we see tremendous erosive processes that are not building up. They're not getting more ordered. But we see deterioration. That is obvious. Now, we can measure the amount of deterioration [that is] happening here. We can measure the amount of sediment transported by this river to the ocean. And we can estimate the amount of sediment that's transported by all the rivers of the earth to the ocean and it is an immense amount: about 127.5 million tons per year. That's enough to fill a freight train that would reach all the way to the moon and half way back - every year delivered to the oceans! At that rate it would deliver all of the continents to the oceans in less than 14 million years. But we're told [by evolutionists] that the surface of the earth containing all the fossils [is] billions of years [old]... But [the fossils would] all be gone at 14 million years at present observed erosion [rates]. Well, here is [observed a] deterioration downward - degenerative processes that really don't fit the evolutionary scenario.
When we look beyond this earth, to the sun to the universe around us.... it becomes even more obvious [that the 2nd law invariably applies]... The sun... [is] burning up.... We are looking at the consumption of about 4? million tons per second of matter being radiated by energy throughout the universe, [and] an additional million tons per second by the solar wind radiated out from the sun.. Now, that's not helping the sun any, it's not getting more ordered but it is by analogy 'burning up'... We multiply that by billions of stars that we see in the galaxy and the billions of galaxies [and] we see what's happening in the universe. [We] have immensely multiplied deterioration - downward, degenerative effects that are observed going on just like we observe close up in the sun.... We look at other things throughout the solar system... The Lunoid' meteor... it came apart [as it went by the sun] - broken up by gravity. And this is the kind of degeneration that we see everywhere we look in the universe. We look at comets [which] are very ephemeral objects - almost nothing... we see some organization of matter [in the form of comets] and we see them coming apart... Notice the statement by Fred Whipple, Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in his book the Mystery of Comets. He says, 'Comets tend to split in pieces, particularly when they are near the Sun or Jupiter, but also when they are ... in space. Some comets seem to tire out and die.'
[Fred L. Whipple, Dir., Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory, MYSTERY OF COMETS, 1985, p. 93]
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:
'The sun is slowly but surely burning out, the stars are dying embers, and everywhere in the cosmos heat is turning into cold, matter is dissolving into radiation, and energy is being dissipated into empty space. The universe is thus progressing to an ultimate '''heat death''' ...And there is no way of avoiding this destiny. For the fateful principle known as the second law of thermodynamics, which stands today as the principal pillar of classical physics left intact by the march of science, proclaims that the fundamental processes of nature are irreversible. Nature moves just one way.'
[LINCOLN BARNETT, THE UNIVERSE AND DR. EINSTEIN, p. 102]
Obviously this is not an onward and upward process. This is a deteriorative process - a degenerative process. This is what we see. And of course this is what the [2nd] law [of thermodynamics] says, that things tend to degenerate, run down. This is what we observe in our life. And when we look in the universe around us, that's all we see. In fact, comets are deteriorating so rapidly that it becomes a significant problem [of evolutionists] trying to explain them. Notice the estimates here of various astronomers - authorities who have estimated the life, at least, of the short period comets, which are the only ones we have multiple observations of. R. A. Lyttelton of Cambridge says a maximum of 10,000 years.... He says they'll all be gone in 10,000 years - the short period comets. A Russian astronomer... [S.K. Vsekhsviatsku] [says that] they'll all be gone in gone in 3,000 years. Fred Whipple... [says that] they can [only survive] 200 orbits. The average... orbit is seven years [times] 200 - we're talking about 1400 years. So that's about half of what the Russian said. [W] Schwinn [says] a maximum 25,000 years. They're saying this because they see them come apart. Fred Hoyle, a famous astronomer in England says [that] they'll all be gone, and he includes the long period comets, in a million years. But they're supposed to have been here some 20 billion years?... Notice the article that was in the NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN several years ago. 'Star Reported Dying' . This was 1974, 8000 light years away. [It] mentions that we're witnessing the death of a star cooled from 30,000 degrees in 1950 to 5,000 today, '75... That's cooling down 600% in about 25 years. That's deterioration, that's what we observe. How many of you have ever seen the headline that says 'Star Born Last Night?... There are many... [theories proposed by evolutionists on the origin of stars] but they are contrary to the 2nd law... Many of you saw the headlines describing the explosion of a huge star in 1987, the supernova now called Nova of '87... In fact, in the first few seconds, we are told that it emitted as much energy as the sun will in its '10 billion year lifetime', (if you believe it's going to live that long). It [emitted] energy equivalent to that which is seen in the entire visible universe - this one star... [There are photographs of numerous stars which blew themselves out of existence, such as] the veil nebula... and the Crab Nebula... a supernova that was observed in 1054... [So] we look back at the crab nebula, this glob of glowing gasses. We compare it with the Orion Nebula... Ironically, this Crab Nebula which is compared with the Orion Nebula, both of which are blowing gases - the Orion Nebula is supposed to be the birthplace of stars, where they're coming into existence. Now the Crab Nebula is the death of a star - it has come apart, it's dissipating. We know [that] that's what happened [because] we observed it [happening]. [On the other hand] nobody's observed the actual birth of a star... This Orion Nebula really is... dissipation, degeneration. It's a star coming apart and.. that's why the gas is glowing. It's just left over from the star that's come apart, which... we know [is] the explanation of the Crab Nebula...
And yet we see articles like this in Discover Magazine: '''Stellar Nurseries''' referring to Orion Nebula - glowing gasses like Crab Nebula that [are] supposed to be the birthplace, a nursery [of stars]. Just virtually overnight, anytime, we are supposed to see stars popping into existence...
Notice J. C. Brandt's comment in his book THE SUN AND THE STARS [p. 111] regarding star formation. He says, 'Contemporary opinion on star formation holds that the objects called protostars are formed as condensations from interstellar gas...
[Now, most of us have had experience with smoke or campfires. We see the smoke come up from the campfire and we don't see it getting more and more organized... The gas dissipates, we know that. The laws of physics demand that. And yet [according to evolutionists] this gaseous material [was] supposed to [have] come together, working [in the] opposite direction contrary to the 2nd law in forming a star... And so... [Brandt] acknowledges some of the problems [with his theory of star birthing], he says]
'This condensation process is very difficult theoretically and no essential theoretical understanding can be claimed; in fact, some theoretical evidence argues strongly against the possibility of star formation. However, we know that the stars exist and we must do our best to account for them.'
...Consider Geoffrey Burbidge, Director... of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, University of California, in his book STELLAR STRUCTURE. [p. 577] He says, 'If stars did not exist, it would be easy to prove that this [complete disappearance of stars] is what we expect [from what we observe happening in the universe]'
Well, it's because we see them burning up... We see them dissipating... rather rapidly. We don't see them coming into existence and so we would expect them [all eventually] not to be there. The 2nd law of thermodynamics [says] they should dissipate... And if [billions of years have transpired] then they shouldn't be there...
Then we have beautiful objects that we observe in the sky. Here we have Andromeda Galaxy, a disk like assemblage of some billions of stars. And so we see the star [as] an organized body and then we see stars themselves organized [into formations] by the billions. How did they get that way? Well, they didn't get that way in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics... In fact, notice the statement by Geoffrey Burbidge of the University of California, San Diego, writing in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, this was February '92. He says, [We have] 'No satisfactory theory of how galaxies and larger structures formed. Galaxies cannot form by gravitational collapse in an expanding universe.'
Now, it's easy to make the calculations. We're told [by evolutionists] that the universe is expanding and this is an outward dissipative force whereas you have to have them collected [in an] inward [direction] to get them organized... If you calculate the expansive... and the attractive forces [required it proves that] you just can't get... [stars and galaxies] to form [given the laws of science]... And yet there they are. We see beautiful pictures like the Sombrero Galaxy - a tremendous organization of billions of stars. There they are. How did they get there? How did they get organized? Well, not in accord with the 2nd law of thermodynamics...
Martin Rees, a famous Astrophysicist is quoted in the Dallas Morning News in '88 saying, 'The most basic questions about galaxies are still not understood. If galaxies didn't exist, we would have no problem explaining that fact.'...
[THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Aug. 15, 1988]
[Compare a quotation from Dr. Patton's notes:
'It seems that the more we learn about the basic laws of nature, the more those laws seem to tell us that the visible matter - the stuff we can see - shouldn't be arranged the way it is. There shouldn't be galaxies out there at all, and even if there are galaxies, they shouldn't be grouped together the way they are. ...The problem of explaining the existence of galaxies has proved to be one of the thorniest in cosmology. By all rights, they just shouldn't be there, [especially if, according to evolutionists, the universe is billions of years old] yet there they sit. It's hard to convey the frustration that this simple fact induces among scientists.. ...Despite what you may read in the press, we still have no answer to the question of why the sky is full of galaxies, although we've succeeded in eliminating many wrong answers.'
[James Trefil, Prof. Physics, George Mason U., DARK SIDE OF THE UNIVERSE, 1988, pp. 2, 55]
Same problem with stars except multiplied a billion times... [If] you can get the material condensed enough you can find gravitational collapse taking over. But how do you get it to that point? With stars [you] can imagine that, but you can't get it to the point where it starts. And then with galaxies you can calculate the amount of mass that ought to be there to hold it together... [but] better than 90% of the mass necessary to hold it together is unobserved - we can't find it. It's called [by evolutionists] the missing mass.... And then we look at formations like... barred [and] spiraled galaxies... These straight bars [of star formations which appear to be dissecting the spiral galaxies] are amazing if [they] have been spinning as long as we... have been] told [by evolutionists] that they've been spinning. That organizational structure that we see would wrap itself up according to Kepler's 3rd law in just a few thousand years. We see the principle illustrated with... spinning ice skaters. They hold their arms out, they spin [more slowly and] as they pull them in, they spin faster... Likewise with these [barred/spiral] galaxies that are spinning very rapidly - more rapidly than [evolutionists'] theories can account for - the interior would spin faster [and] the outer part would spin [more slowly] And if you've got a bar through the middle - how in the world you get it there they don't know... it would wrap itself up and [self-destruct] in just a few thousand years. Yet there they are. How did they get there? How did they stay there... [Especially if the universe is billions of years old]? Not only do we see... organizational... [structure of stars within] galaxies, but we see organizational structures of [multiple] galaxies [themselves]. And here we see a globular cluster of thousands if not billions of galaxies. And that is mind boggling: the globular cluster [of billions] of galaxies which [are organizations] of billions of stars which [are organizations] of immense amounts of [matter]. We see great organization. How do you account for that by natural law?
Well consider the struggle that's expressed... in Discover Magazine in 1988 by Nobel Laureate Alfvn in an article entitled 'The Big Bang Never Happened'... He says, 'For years astrophysicists have invoked some kind of dark matter to explain why spiral galaxies rotate as fast as they do and why galaxy clusters do not fly apart... extra gravity needed to form the galaxies and clusters in the first place.'
[Hannes Alfvn, Discover Magazine, June, 1988, p. 76]
And he talks about the extra gravity needed to form the galaxies and clusters in the first place that they can't account for. The mass is missing that would be necessary to produce that extra gravity. They rotate too fast. Why don't they fly apart? They 'should' How do you get them to form in the first place?... Here we are told we are looking at some one million galaxies and... we see organizational structure that ties these galaxies together. And we're told about the great wall which expands over hundreds of millions of light years - even billions of light years... The Big Bang that has been proposed as an explanation cannot begin to account for it... Consider the statement by a number of leading astronomers in the world; Arp, Burbidge Hoyle and others: 'The Big Bang model offers a Universe created in a smooth featureless condition out of which a highly structured Universe is nevertheless supposed to have evolved. Numerous attempts have been made to explain how this miracle is supposed to have happened. ...little more than ingenious hand-waving. Perhaps this is why they are called '''scenarios''' '
[Arp, Burbidge, Hoyle and others, Nature, Aug 30, 1990, p. 809]
They're just stories made up to try to explain it, ignoring the 2nd law of thermodynamics, ignoring... the attraction of mass unless you imagine a lot of matter 90% of which is missing. What you observe is highly organized structure which is dissipating.
Now that's precisely what the creationist would predict, but it is hardly what the evolutionist would predict... Some of them have faced it although most of them do not. They are very practiced and professional at seeing the opposite of what's actually observed. What we observe is deterioration. We see organization there but it's going downhill. That's what the 2nd law predicts. That's the most fundamental generalization scientists have ever been able to make about the universe. That's what we see, but they imagine just the opposite....
Consider H. J. Lipson, professor of physics, University of Manchester, writing in Physics Bulletin, He says, 'I think however that we should go further than this and admit that the only accepted explanation is creation. I know that is anathema to physicists, as it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.'
[H. J. Lipson, Physics, U. Of Manchester, Physics, Bulletin, Vol. 31, 1980, p. 138]
I think that makes sense. We're supposed to go by the facts, the experimental evidence...
Consider the statement in FUNDAMENTALS OF CLASSICAL THERMODYNAMICS, a textbook that just states what the necessary implications of these observations are: 'We see the second law of thermodynamics as a description of the prior and continuing work of a creator, who also holds the answer to our future destiny and that of the universe.'
[G.J. VAN WYLEN, RICHARD SONNTAG, FUNDAMENTALS OF CLASSICAL THERMODYNAMICS, 1985, p. 232]
Now that's a brave statement made by those who are writing textbooks who are authorities in the field... "
[Compare several quotations from Dr. Patton's notes:
'I think all suggested accounts of the origin of the Solar System are subject to serious objections. The conclusion is the present state of the subject would be that the system cannot exist.'
[Sir H. Jeffries, Cambridge, THE EARTH, 1970, p. 359]
'All of the hypotheses so
far presented have failed, or remain unproved, when physical theory is
properly applied.'
[Fred Whipple, Harvard, ORBITING THE SUN, 1981, P. 284]
'It's far easier to explain why the moon shouldn't be there than to explain its existence.'
[Nafi Toksoz, M.I.T., Science 81, 3/81, p. 120]
'The greatest puzzle is where all the order in the universe came from originally. How did the cosmos get wound up if the Second Law of Thermodynamics predicts asymmetric unwinding toward disorder?'
[Paul C. W. Davies, Kings College, London, Universe In Reverse, SECOND LOOK, 1, 1979, p. 27]
[Dr. Baugh, op cit, p. 14]:
The evolutionist is plagued with an immediate observation that the universe is somewhat in chaos. He interprets this as the second law of thermodynamics, which states that everything is increasing in random order, from complex to less complex.... this second law of thermodynamics, demands that there had to have been a time in the past when everything was in perfect synchronization; that is, orchestral creation."
The first law of thermodynamics is one of energy conservation: "Energy is neither created nor destroyed." The second law of thermodynamics can basically be stated that inspite of this conservation (First Law), the energy available for useful work does decrease so that the universe can be said to be "running down". Example: The sun's energy is dissipating via heat into the universe. The dissipation of raw energy into the universe, such as from the sun, is observed to cause a destructive-devolving and not a constructive-evolving effect. So EVERYTHING IS DE-EVOLVING AND NOT EVOLVING!!
[Henry M. Morris states, ('BACK TO GENESIS' periodical #75, March 1995, article entitled, 'IN THE BEGINNING, HYDROGEN')]:
"Evolutionists have a most amazing faith. They believe that people have evolved up from the ape (or something like an ape), that apes and other mammals have evolved from reptiles, that reptiles have evolved from amphibians, amphibians from fish, fish from some unknown phylum of multi-celled invertebrates, that invertebrates in all their phyla evolved from some unknown protozoan, that some other unknown protozoan evolved from complex chemicals, and that the complex chemical elements evolved from the simplest chemical element of all, namely hydrogen.
The operative word in the above sentence is believe. There is no evidence for this remarkable chain of events. Apes and reptiles and vertebrates and invertebrates and chemical elements, (including hydrogen), still are here in abundance, but none of them are changing into anything else. Neither are there any evolutionary transitions documented in the records of the past (despite olden tales of mermaids and centaurs), not even in the fossils which are purported to represent a billion years of earth history. This 'remarkable chain of events' is in reality nothing but a remarkable statement of faith in the great god Hydrogen, the elemental substance which is supposed to be the father and mother of us all!
Thus, hydrogen, the simplest chemical element, is 'a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas which, given ten billion years or so, produces people.' That quaint definition, originally suggested by the late creationist astronomer George Mulfinger, is a cogent summary of the faith one must exercise in order to be an evolutionist.
It was that prince of evolutionary astronomers, Harlow Shapley, long-time head of the Harvard University Observatory, who long ago pontificated that people today should rewrite the first verse of Genesis. According to him, it should be something like: 'In the beginning, hydrogen created the heavens and the earth.' Modern evolutionary astronomers and cosmologists have thus ruled out the idea of a personal, omnipotent, omniscient God as Creator of the universe. A more recent scientist has put it this way: 'Take some matter, heat while stirring and wait. That is the modern version of Genesis. The '''fundamental''' forces of gravity, electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces are presumed to have done the rest.'
[Andrew Scott, 'Update on Genesis,' New Scientist (Volume 106, May 2, 1985), p. 30.***]
But this same writer, perhaps not suspecting that some creationist might happen to read his evaluation of this statement of faith, proceeds to make the following admission.
'But how much of this neat tale is firmly established, and how much remains hopeful speculation? In truth, the mechanism of almost every major step, from chemical precursors up to the first recognizable cells, is the subject of either controversy or complete bewilderment. [***]
To unbiased observers it must seem that 'every major step' from one degree of organization to the next higher degree is not only speculative, but impossible - at least in any realistic sense.
The chief problem (among many) is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which notes that everything at least tends to go toward disorganization - not greater organization.
'Presumably the universe began in a very chaotic state. A chaotic state is by definition, a state of high entropy (when we speak of 'chaos,' we mean that there is a great deal of disorder). On the other hand, numerous kinds of structure have appeared since the universe began.... But how can this be, if entropy was so high at the beginning?
[Richard Morris, Time's Arrow: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 212]
Most cosmologists assume that the universe began with the Big Bang, which would seem to be about the ultimate in chaos. Explosions normally generate disorder, and this primeval explosion of nothing into something must have been the greatest explosion of all, if it really happened.
Cosmologists, however, have devised various curious schemes in their attempts to circumvent the Second Law. That most prolific of all science writers, Isaac Asimov, assumes the universe was like a cosmic egg (the ancient pagan evolutionists used to think of it in some such way also). He says:
'The cosmic egg may be structureless (as far as we know), but it apparently represented a very orderly aggregation of matter. Its explosion represented a vast shift in the direction of disorder, and ever since, the amount of disorder in the Universe has been increasing.'
[Isaac Asimov, In the Beginning (New York: Crown Publishers, 1981), p. 24 ******]
Just how the cosmic egg could have no structure and yet have a high degree of order is not clear to me, but of course I am an ignorant and biased creationist. Neither is it clear how this vast shift toward disorder somehow produced all the highly ordered systems in the universe, including human beings. To Asimov, however, it was quite simple.
'Within the vast shift toward disorder involved in the big bang and the expansion of the Universe, it is possible for there to be local shifts in the direction of order, so that the galaxies can form and within them individual stars, including our sun.'[******]
'Well, perhaps it may be '''possible,''' but no one yet has been able to explain how. Nobody really understands how star formation proceeds; it's really remarkable.'
[Roger A. Windhorst, as quoted in 'A Matter of Timing,' by Corey S. Powell: Scientific American (October 1991), p. 30]:
"One of the great successes of evolutionary cosmology is the supposed ability of the Big Bang to explain the origin of hydrogen gas, and this is always offered as one of the three 'proofs' of the Big Bang (the others are the background radiation and the supposedly expanding universe - both of which, however, have also been explained by certain rival cosmologies)."
But that's all. Thus we are left with hydrogen as the originator of everything else, even though we don't know how it did this. As an article of faith, we are asked simply to intone the evolutionary mantra: 'In the beginning, hydrogen.'
That belief is supposed to be more credible than 'In the beginning God created.' One wants to be charitable, but it is hard for the Christian not to recall certain Scriptures at this point. For example:
'...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie' (II Thessalonians 2:10,11).
'Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,...'(Romans 1:22, 23).
Perhaps the saddest aspect of this whole scenario is that so many Christians are being taken in by it. For example, a currently popular evangelical scientist seems to be echoing the atheist Asimov when he defends the Big Bang and the whole system of cosmic and stellar evolution. He says:
'What [Dr. Duane] Gish and others fail to recognize is that the hydrogen which forms (by God's cause and design) one millisecond after the universe began is much more ordered and less entropic than the galaxies, stars, planets, and life-essential elements. The galaxies and stars are broken-up pieces of the primordial gas cloud. The planets and life-essential elements are the burned-up remains - i.e., ashes - of hydrogen gas. Thus, the big bang manifests, rather than violates, the second law of thermodynamics.'
[Hugh Ross, Creation and Time (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1994), p. 131]
I'm not making this up; that paragraph is really quoted verbatim from a recent book! He believes that the obvious conflict of this concept with the Second Law is resolved simply by the postulated heat energy in the Big Bang.
The key word, once again, is 'believe.' He would like for us to believe that stars are broken-up pieces' of the primordial hydrogen and that our own living bodies with their 'life-essential elements- are the -burned-up ashes' of hydrogen gas because that's what the secular astronomers who reject the God of the Bible must believe, and he believes we should not question their (and his) authority.
One cannot help but think of another verse of Scripture here: 'For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God' (John 12:43)."
[pp 454-464]
And so God placed the curse on man and on his whole environment, thus forcing him to recognize the seriousness of his sin, as well as his helplessness to save himself and his dominion from eventual destruction. The necessity of laboring merely to keep alive would go far toward inhibiting still further rebellion and would force him to recognize that Satan's tempting promises had been nothing but lies. Such a condition would encourage him to a state of repentance toward God, and a desire for God to provide deliverance from the evil state upon which he had fallen.
In the animal and plant kingdoms likewise, limitless proliferation would be checked by these new factors of disease, predation, parasitism, and so on. Had the Fall never taken place, animal life would no doubt have remained constant at an optimum population by divinely directed constraints on the reproductive process. Now, however, God's personal presence is to be withdrawn for a time, and it is more salutary to maintain order by means of these indirect constraints associated with the curse, adding still further to the testimony that the world was travailing in pain, awaiting its coming Redeemer.
Thus, the entire 'creation was made subject to vanity.' The earth began to 'wax old, as doth a garment' and ultimately 'shall perish' (Hebrews 1:10-12). Since all flesh is made of the earth's physical elements, it also is subject to the law of decay and death and as 'grass, withereth... and falleth away' (I Peter 1:24). It is universal experience that all things, living or nonliving, eventually wear out, run down, grow old, decay, and pass into the dust.
This condition is so universal that it was formalized about a hundred years ago (by Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, and other scientists) into a fundamental scientific law, now called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that all systems, if left to themselves, tend to become degraded or disordered. It has also been called the 'law of morpholysis' (from a Greek word meaning 'loosing of structure'). Physical systems, whether watches or suns, eventually wear out. Organisms grow old and die. Hereditary changes in species are caused by gene mutations (sudden random disruptions in their highly ordered genetic systems) which in many cases have resulted in deterioration or extinction of the species itself. Even apart from mutations, the deterioration of the environment has often led to species extinction.
Instead of all things being made - that is, organized into complex systems - as they were in Creation Week, they are now being 'unmade,' becoming disorganized and simple. Instead of life and growth, there comes decay and death; instead of evolution, there is degeneration.
This, then, is the true origin of the strange law of disorder and decay, the universally applicable, all-important Second Law of Thermodynamics. Herein is the secret of all that's wrong with the world. Man is a sinner and has brought God's curse on the earth."
