Continuing on with another excerpt from my book What Your Atheist Professor Doesn't Know (But Should):
The First Law of Thermodynamics –Conservation of Energy
"Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a '44,
no Les, no more"
-- Epitath on a grave in Tombstone, Arizona
In the Laws of Thermodynamics, we have still more evidence for a transcendent origin of the cosmos. The First Law of Thermodynamics is often called the Law of Conservation of Energy. This law suggests that although energy can be transferred from one system to another in many forms, it cannot be created or destroyed. Thus, the total amount of energy available in the Universe since it came into existence is constant. Matter can be converted into energy, as Albert Einstein observed when he offered his grand equation E=MC2.
Second Law of Thermodynamics - Increased Entropy Over Time
"We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe we're glidin' down the highway when in fact we're slip-sliding away"
-- From Slip-Sliding Away, by Paul Simon
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is commonly known as the Law of Increased Entropy. While the quantity of matter/energy remains the same (First Law), the quality or (“usability”) of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time. How so? Usable energy is inevitably used for productivity, growth and repair. In the process, usable energy is converted into unusable energy. For example, heat from pouring a pot of boiling water into the ocean, although not truly “lost”, will soon dissipate so that it’s undetectable. Likewise “latent” energy, like a wound up spring, will tend toward unwinding (it goes through a “kinetic” stage) and will be dissipated toward “uselessness”. Thus, usable energy constantly tends to be irretrievably “lost” in the form of unusable energy. Eventually (absent any supernatural intervention) all matter/energy will reach “maximum entropy”---one might say, a state of maximum “equilibrium”.
"Entropy" is defined as a measure of unusable energy within a closed or isolated system (the universe for example). As usable energy decreases and unusable energy increases, "entropy" increases. Entropy is also a gauge of randomness or chaos within a closed system. As usable energy is irretrievably lost, disorganization, randomness and chaos increase.
Since the order in the universe was at its maximum at the beginning, and has been winding down into increasing disorder since then, the question “who organized it initially?” naturally arises. Another thing that we can deduce is that if the universe had existed eternally into the past, it would have long ago decayed into maximum entropy, or disorder. Since it has not, we know that the universe had a beginning.
Another indication that the universe had a beginning is that it is expanding. If you “run the film in reverse” going backwards in time, it all condenses down to the ultra-dense “singularity” from which the Big Bang arose, and prior to that, the only possibility is a transcendent agent which could have caused matter, energy, time and space to come into existence. Who could this entity be?
There are many references to creation in the Bible outside the book of Genesis, and what modern science has discovered matches them as well. For example, take a look at these verses:
Psalm 19:1-2, Psalm 104, Psalm 148:1-6, Isaiah 40:21-22, Isaiah 42:5, Isaiah 45:12, Isaiah 51:13, Jeremiah 10:12, Jeremiah 51:15, Hebrews 1:10-12, and Hebrews 11:3.
These references to such things as a beginning of the universe (that is, of time, space, matter and energy) and to its continual “spreading out” or expansion (it is still expanding today) were not empirically discernible to these authors. They must have had “inside information” to get this right.
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