The Problem of Evil III. Pristine Creation (?)

After a lengthy pause, I resume the God and Evil series with this, the third post dealing with the Problem of Evil (hereafter referred to as PoE). In this series, I offer my own resolution to the quadrilemma of Epicurus discussed in this earlier post. The series will be several posts long. The full picture will only become clear as all posts are presented. For this reason, I will not generally respond to challenges or arguments to individual posts. But I am more than happy to answer any questions for clarification.

A central tenet of traditional Christian theology is that evil invaded a once pristine Creation. The assumption is that God’s original Creation was idyllic, unspoiled. It is assumed that God would not create a broken universe, one with a component of evil present at the very beginning. Into this unspoiled Creation, evil enters as an unwanted guest, through the rebellion of Satan and his angelic followers, and/or through the rebellion of man as illustrated in the first three chapters of Genesis.

Is this picture correct? Was all of Creation originally an unspoiled Eden? Is evil an interloper, and invader and spoiler of an otherwise ideal, paradisal cosmos? Does Scripture support this view, or does it suggest the contrary? At the culmination of his creative work, God looked at creation and found it to be “very good” ( Genesis 1:31 ); but was it perfect? Can our study of Creation, our scientific investigation of the universe itself, help us to answer this question? I believe it can.

If you believe, as I do, that God faithfully reveals truth through the nature of the universe (see Romans 1:20), then we can confidently look to the natural history of our cosmos as revealed in science to provide us with insight about God’s creative activity. Amazingly, our study of the present day cosmos has given us a remarkable front-row view of the creation moment. It is as though we can watch God fling this universe into existence. We are treated to such a trail of evidence, echos from the deep past, that astrophysicists today actually subdivide the very first second of time into “epochs” of natural history.

Among other things, they tell us that, following the initial moment of creation (aka “the Big Bang”),there was a very brief period known as the "Planck Epoch", which lasted a tiny fraction of millisecond. After this briefest of moments, the cosmos entered into a condition which has continued to the present day: the state of ever increasing entropy. (For a fuller explanation, see my earlier post on entropy) This Law of Entropy (also known as the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) dictates that the cosmos, as we know it, has a death sentence. We don’t know how long the universe has to live; some predict only about 100 billion years. Other suggest 100 trillion years or more. But we know that the ultimate fate of the universe is death. And now we understand that God made it this way from the very beginning. Not only is the universe winding down, entropy predicts that all matter, including all living beings, will ultimately die and/or decay.

This understanding is in keeping with the teachings of the Bible. The Psalmist declares that “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment.  Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded” (Psalm 102:25-26, quoted in Hebrews 1:10-12).

The Christian theological concepts I learned growing up in the church have evil invading the cosmos at some point in time after creation. Following this invasion (either the Fall of Adam and Eve or the judgment of Satan), death and decay begin to spoil an otherwise pristine Creation. Clearly, if 20th century science is close to the truth, this concept does not square with reality. But can the reality of a universe which has included death and decay from its very outset square with the Scriptures?

Your comments are welcome!

Book Review: Random Designer

In September of last year, Olivet Nazarene University Professor Richard G. Colling found himself embroiled in a controversy over views expressed in this book. Random Designer (Browning Press, 2004) had been used as a textbook in some of his science courses, and recommended by other professors at the university. When certain church members and pastors learned of the content of Random Designer, they objected to Colling’s views on evolution loudly and persuasively. Despite the support of the administration and faculty at Olivet, several of these denominational leaders wielded their influence (read “threatened to withhold their financial support”) to intervene and compel the removal of Colling from the biology department.

One unintended consequence of their action is that I picked up and read Colling’s work. Hopefully, the controversy will spur many such new sales, because I believe that many will benefit from reading Random Designer. The book targets some of those very pastors that led the charge against Colling, as indicated on this slip cover blurb:

"Written in easy-flowing personal narrative for working professionals, pastors, religious leaders, public school teachers, college students, and people of all faiths, Random Designer is a story of a loving and caring Creator who miraculously harnesses the random and chaotic forces of nature to accomplish his ultimate purposes. And now, after faithfully laboring for billions of years to bring His creation to an awareness of Himself, He calls to us from the deepest recesses of our minds. Will we hear His voice?"

Random Designer is divided into two sections. Section I deals with the science of randomness. Randomness is the necessary consequence of the laws that govern our cosmos, particularly the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy. Colling shows how entropy works as a randomizer, and how this same law suffuses the earth with a constant flow of energy which in turn serves to being order to randomness. Hence, in Colling’s view, the natural rise of life on earth through evolutionary processes. Randomness becomes the necessary fodder for natural selection, and it is apparently the Designer’s tool of choice. If like me, you have contemplated the place of randomness in Creation, you will benefit from Colling’s descriptions of these processes.

In Section II, Colling turns from science to the theological and practical considerations of randomness. I want to highlight two of the chapters. One seeks to answer questions that surround Adam. Is Adam an historical figure? Is he a metaphorical “stand-in” for the human race? Colling explores these and other possibilities. A chapter which fascinated me is entitled “The Ultimate Creation”. Colling cites science which suggests that the human race may have arrived at the pinnacle of evolution. The same processes of randomness that increase complexity must also serve to maintain complexity. The complexity of the human genome may have reached a balancing point. Or to put it another way, the human genome may be nearing full capacity. If this is true, as genetics suggests it may be, then it is not unreasonable to conclude that we are the ultimate creation of the Random Designer!

Random Designer is written for undergraduates, and as such is an easy read. If you are seeking understandings which bring purpose and order to a world of apparent randomness, you may find Colling’s book helpful.

POST #4: Entropy, the Concept

There is in physics a phenomenon the results of which you experience every moment of your life. With every breath, with every bite of lunch, with every synapse between brain cells, with every metabolic function in every cell, this physical principle is at work in your body. Some day, when your body lies cold in the grave, this phenomenon will still be at work in you. As you read this and listen to the gentle whirring of the hard drive on your computer, you are listening to the effects of this law of physics. The breeze outside your window, the clouds rolling by in the sky, the very light enabling you to see these things: these are all evidence that this fundamental principle is constantly at work. Einstein called it “the first law of all sciences.” It is everywhere, effecting everything.

This principle is often mentioned in the Bible. It has profound theological significance. But only in the last 150 years have we come to understand its operation. And only in the last 50 years have we come to understand its history, its origin. And thus, only in our time can we more fully connect the dots between this physical law, the Scriptures that discuss it, and the theological implications of that convergence. This principle is called entropy. You may be more familiar with its other name: The Second Law of Thermodynamics.

What exactly is entropy? The technical definition of entropy is “The measurement of randomness in a system; the measurement of the decreasing availability of useful energy in the universe.” With respect to energy and matter, our universe is lumpy. It is full of “chunks” of matter (which have not yet been converted to energy). It has hot spots and cold spots. Energy is not evenly distributed. It is this uneven distribution which provides the thermal energy to accomplish work. But this thermal energy available to accomplish work is constantly decreasing. Technically, entropy is the measurement of the “unavailability” of energy to do work. Physicists thus see our universe as presently in a state of “low entropy”, moving inexorably toward what they call “high entropy”, and ultimately leading to the even distribution of useless energy, resulting in a universe that is dark, very cold (about 2° above absolute Zero), and utterly dead. This state would occur somewhere between a trillion and 100 trillion years from now. So don’t lose sleep over it.

(Some scientists see the end of the universe somewhat differently. Instead of a cold dark expanse of nothingness, they envision a sort of reverse big bang, sometimes called “the Big Crunch”, in which all the energy of the universe converges upon a single point in an extremely hot, fiery implosion. This event would occur much sooner, perhaps in only 100 billion years. But whether a slow cold death, or a relatively quicker hot fiery death ... and there are a couple of other less popular theories also along way off ... the prospect of the “end-game” of entropy is not very inviting!)

In the figurative, or popularized use of the word, entropy refers to a lack of order, or a gradual decline into disorder. And while the technical use of “order” and “disorder”, “low entropy” and “high entropy” can sometimes be confusing, in the end, entropy simply means this: everything tends to break; my teenage son’s room only gets messier; teeth decay; iron rusts; wood rots; without the infusion of a heat source, everything gets colder; people, plants, and animals die; ultimately, planets disintegrate; stars burn out.

There is much confusion surrounding entropy, particularly among Young Earth Creationists. The law of entropy, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is often invoked as evidence against evolution. This is unwarranted. Others consider life itself to be in contradiction to the law of entropy. But the fact is, entropy is always at work, it never goes on vacation, and it does not “disprove” evolution. The Law of Entropy does not say that all things move toward disorder in all places at all times. To the contrary, we observe the organization of atoms, molecules, living cells, and a variety of other things all the time. Children grow up, exquisite snowflakes form, huge new stars are born, 747 jetliners are assembled, crystals self generate. The very composition of this article results from me organizing (some might dispute this statement!) my thoughts, and then bringing order to these letters on a page. Such occurrences, some the result of human activity, some of natural causes, might seem to defy entropy. But in each case, the Law of Entropy is still at work. As Richard Carrier (an atheistic scientist and critic of Creationism) correctly states on this page of his website. “it is still possible for a closed system to produce order, even highly elaborate order, so long as there is a greater increase in disorder somewhere else in the system.” In other words, in every process within the cosmos, there is always a net increase in entropy. When some new degree of order appears to arise somewhere, it is more than offset by increasing disorder elsewhere.

Entropy means that everything will eventually die. Our Sun will burn out. Earth will crumble into nothingness. All life forms will die. There will ultimately be no “matter”. Living in an “entropic universe” means that everything is driven by decay, by a slow wind-down, by death itself. In everything from ecosystems to the decay of the Sun, life itself is dependent upon death. In essence, we live in a “death-driven universe”

Did God create the universe this way? Was it his intention that the very driving force of all Creation would be death itself? Or is entropy part of the curse of sin? When did entropy begin? Prior to the information gleaned from cosmology over the last 50 years, no one knew the answer to that question. Theologians were free to place the origin of death and decay anywhere along the cosmic time-line that pleased them, or was consistent with their theological presuppositions. But we are no longer free to do so. We now know, with a high degree of certainty, exactly when entropy began. And the theological implications should not go unnoticed.

In the next posts, I will look more closely at the “timeline of entropy”, and discuss what this timeline suggests about our Creator, and his intentions.