Start here…first principles (D)
Terry Dashner……………Faith Fellowship Church, PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013
What’s the foremost law of science? Norman Geisler and Peter Bocchino raise this question in their book entitled, Unshakable Foundations (Bethany House 2001). I think you might be interested in knowing how they answer it.
“Everyone—and everything—is growing older and becoming more and more deteriorated; we see this to be a universal truth. Consequently, people die, cars corrode, buildings fall, landscapes erode, and our natural resources gradually deplete. No matter how hard we try, we will never be able to reverse this process and get things back to their original highly ordered and uncorrupted state. Things and systems are constantly breaking down and moving in the direction of higher states of disorder. We can keep fixing the car, painting the house, and repaving the driveway, and yet some counterforce seems to be at work—persistently undoing what we do. This bent toward deterioration is the result of the universal law of physics known as the second law of thermodynamics.”
If we apply this second law of thermodynamics to the universe, then the universe is slowly running out of steam. Okay you say, “What’s the big deal?” Many scientists, including the former Carl Sagan, state that the universe has always existed. When you believe that a Creator does not exist, you must say that the “something” created itself (or has always been) out of “nothing.” The problem with this, besides the obvious—“nothing” cannot become “something” without a Creator—is that the laws of thermodynamics demand an origin and an ending.
Would you agree with this statement? God is an uncaused Being. An uncaused Being has always existed and does not need a cause. I believe that God is the First Cause of every finite thing that comes into existence, and there is nothing prior to God as the Cause of all finite things because God has always existed.
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, two physicists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, discovered that the earth is bathed in a faint glow of radiation. [Ibid, p.95] For this they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978. Their measurements determined that the earth could not be the source of this radiation glow. It was determined that the radiation glow was left over after the “Big Bang.” In other words, the earth has not always been around. It had an origin. And if it had an origin, then the laws of thermodynamics are at work in the universe to bring it to a conclusion some day.
I’m going to end this series by reminding you how it started. Key are the first principles. They apply to argument and science in general. The Law of Noncontradiciton—all conclusions can’t be right, the Law of Identity—if A is identified as A it can’t be C, and the Law of the Exclude middle are the first and basic principles of logic. All truth must be logical, although not all logic is truth. Then again, just as you must continue to put gas in your automobile because of the second law of thermodynamics, so the universe must have a source outside it, or it cannot be sustained indefinitely. Food for thought.
Is there a worldview that lines up with these basic laws? Yes, but only one. It is the theistic worldview. The theists believe in the one God of heaven. He created all things, and by Him all things exists. The theists agree with the first principles related to the nature of truth, the nature of the cosmos, and the existence and knowability of an infinitely powerful, intelligent, and unchanging Being (Logos). Time does not allow me to lay out the other topics that theism embraces, i.e., law, human rights, evil (real and not illusion), and ethics. Theism offers a rational justification for, and coherent explanation of, the questions arising from a study of these issues. [Ibid, p. 140]
Keep the faith. Stay the course. Jesus is coming soon and very soon. Pastor T.
About the Author:
Pastors a small church in Broken Arrow, OK. US Navy veteran, retired police officer, and father of three grown children.
