Saturday, March 25, 2017

The Second Law of Thermodynamics: An excerpt from the Dictionary of Christianity and Science

On April 25, 2017, Zondervan will publish the Dictionary of Christianity and Science. This is the definitive reference book discussing the intersection of Christian faith and contemporary science.  It has been a project that has taken over five years to complete. The four general editors, Paul Copan, Tremper Longman III, Christopher L. Reese, and myself have worked with over 100 outstanding contributors and our amazing editor, Madison Trammel, to bring this book to fruition.

There are a few features of this book that separate it from other such works. While most articles in the dictionary are unbiased, for topics that are controversial among Christians, the Dictionary presents various advocacy articles with opposing views. For instance, different views on evolution and the length of the days of creation are included. These articles represent the viewpoint of the author and are not completely unbiased. This multiple presentation model serves as a great resource for each reader to understand the complexities of the issue and come to his or her own conclusions.

Most of the articles in the Dictionary relate the particular subject to some aspect of Christian thought. For instance, articles on Special Relativity or Conservation of Energy have a concluding paragraph that mentions how some aspect of that subject relates to the character of God. This feature that explicitly discusses the intersection of science and faith distinguishes this reference book from others.

I have written 22 of the 450 or so articles. If you preorder the Dictionary you will get a number of bonus features including a presentation slide deck discussing String Theory which includes one of the articles I wrote on that subject. As an introduction to the Dictionary the rest of this post reproduces the entry I have written on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This reprint is copyrighted by Zondervan and the four general editors and is used by permission. At the end of this article I briefly discuss the relationship of the second law of thermodynamics to biological evolution. I want to point out that I am not advocating for evolution but just stating facts regarding whether or not evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

A Universe From Nothing?

Could the universe spontaneously come into existence from nothing as the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss has proposed in his 2012 book, A Universe From Nothing: Why there is something rather than nothing? And what is this "nothing" that Lawrence Krauss has proposed? Is it actually no thing? Does Krauss's proposal eliminate the theists' claim that the Big Bang beginning of the universe requires a transcendent cause that is not bound by space and time? The publication of this book generated a significant dialogue that dealt with these questions. Although initial publication of the book was five years ago I still consistently get asked questions about its content and the scientific validity of its proposals. I think it is important and valuable to address these issues from both a scientific and Christian perspective.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Looking for God in Nature


One of the biggest misconceptions in the discussion about science and faith has to do with our ability to explain natural phenomena and what those explanations imply about God's actions in the universe. This is a misconception that is explicitly held by many who don't believe in God and implicitly held by many who do believe in God. The result of believing this idea is a complete misunderstanding of God and biblical teaching, and leads to false conclusions about God's involvement in the natural world. The misconception is the idea that if science has developed a naturalistic explanation for some phenomena then that removes God's involvement from the process. A closely related corollary to this misconception is the idea that if there is a phenomena that we can't explain, then God must be the explanation. This latter corollary is called the "god of the gaps". We invoke God as an explanation for things we don't understand.  Both of these ideas, a god of the gaps argument or the idea that a scientific explanation removes God, are false, unbiblical, poorly reasoned, and lead to incorrect conclusions.