What Heat Teaches Us About God

Sometimes good ideas come out of the blue.  I guess that is why the word "epiphany" was invented, eh?


I was teaching ninth grade students about "heat" as a form of energy that can be transferred and becomes increasingly less useful because energy is lost at each heat transfer.  There is a law of thermodynamics, which states that "entropy in a closed system increases over time."  Entropy basically means disorganization.


It can be paraphrased to say, "Energy becomes less useful over time" or "Matter becomes less structured and increasingly disorganized as time continues."


So...looking backwad in time, where did all this energy come from early in the history of the universe?  Did it just "appear" (viz. magic or hocus pocus)?  I choose to believe that God, the only explanation for making something out of nothing, since he is by definition "other than" the material world we live in, put the energy in at the beginning.  I dislike seeing hisotry as a runnning down of the clock, but in terms of energy, that is a good analogy.


So heat and the way heat works in the universe requires God to setup and start the system. 

Should you think not, remember what G. K. Chesteron wrote in Thomas Aquinas:  "...it is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn into everything." 

 

Waddaya think?

Copyright 2012 Jay Reimer    (You can email me at jay.reimer@gmail.com