I have to confess that massive office towers impress me. I've lived pretty close to uptown Charlotte for more than 10 years and whenever I'm in the city I still think they're pretty cool. They're awesome and they seem like they're going to last forever.
But they won't. Their natural tendency is to wear down and become more disorderly. They require on-going repair. This downward trend is described by a law of physics called the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
In the Smithsonian Institution Journal in 1970 Isaac Asimov described the 2nd Law this way ...
"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....How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deter
iorate."
So the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that the natural tendency is for systems to go from a state of order to a state of disorder. However outside influences can fight against the 2nd Law, for a time, and win! What are those outside forces that can make things go from disorder to order? They are energy and design. If my daughter's room is a pigsty she can expend energy to clean it up (carrying dirty clothes to the hamper). She can utilize intelligence (design) to eliminate the disorder. She's smart enough to know that the clothes go in the hamper, that books go on the shelf, and the sheets are to be laid across the bed before the comforter.
The natural progression of all things is to a state of disorder and yet we have complexity in the universe. The solar system is a complex system. The earth is uniquely capable of supporting complex biological forms. The human brain is a complex computer. Where did the complexity in the universe come from? Energy and design were a necessary ingredient for a universe with complexity.
I believe that there is a God who is interested in the world because there must have been a force of energy and design to have created a universe with complexity in the first place.
In the Smithsonian Institution Journal in 1970 Isaac Asimov described the 2nd Law this way ...
"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....How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deter
iorate."So the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that the natural tendency is for systems to go from a state of order to a state of disorder. However outside influences can fight against the 2nd Law, for a time, and win! What are those outside forces that can make things go from disorder to order? They are energy and design. If my daughter's room is a pigsty she can expend energy to clean it up (carrying dirty clothes to the hamper). She can utilize intelligence (design) to eliminate the disorder. She's smart enough to know that the clothes go in the hamper, that books go on the shelf, and the sheets are to be laid across the bed before the comforter.
The natural progression of all things is to a state of disorder and yet we have complexity in the universe. The solar system is a complex system. The earth is uniquely capable of supporting complex biological forms. The human brain is a complex computer. Where did the complexity in the universe come from? Energy and design were a necessary ingredient for a universe with complexity.
I believe that there is a God who is interested in the world because there must have been a force of energy and design to have created a universe with complexity in the first place.
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