On Creationism

The resurrection accounts in the New Testament show an interesting evolution of the narrative, and with Easter round the corner it seems a good time to look at it, in relation to the idea of Biblical inerrancy. The Nature of the Resurrection The earliest writing is in the letters by Paul, and he says some key things. With regards to the resurrection itself Paul makes a big deal about Jesus being the " first fruit " and of Jesus showing us the way. What he means is that Jesus is the prototype for the resurrection process; what happened to Jesus is what he expects to happen eventually to all Christians. 1 Corinthians 15:20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. So what happened to Jesus? Paul makes it clear that he believed in a spiritual resurrection; everybody is raised from the dead in a new spiritual body (that does not necessarily mean ethereal, but rather a body made of divine or heavenly material). 1 ...

See the article here where thermodynamics is abused : http://www.panspermia.org/seconlaw.htm Brig Klyce is Honorary Associate Professor at Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology. He is an advocate for " Cosmic Ancestry ", described on his web site as: Cosmic Ancestry implies, we find, that life can only descend from ancestors at least as highly evolved as itself. And it means, we believe, that there can be no origin of life from nonbiological matter. Without supernatural intervention, therefore, we conclude that life must have always existed. Klyce is no creationists, but he does seem  to fall under the Intelligent Design label, and he abuses the Second Law like the best of them. His strategy is to claim it applies to any sort of entropy you feel like. Much of the article is correct; he describes thermodynamic entropy well, then looks at logical and information entropy, and much of that is sound too. Then he claims the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to logical and i...

This is an article at Answers in Genesis that abuses thermodynamics . http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/02/12/just-add-energy Andrew McIntosh is Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds. This guy really should understand this stuff, right? Let us see what he says: The principles of thermodynamics, even in open systems, do not allow a new functional biological structure to be achieved without new machinery already being in place. Wow. A Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory seriously said that? It is telling that McIntosh does not present any maths with the article; I would love to see how he works this requirement for "new machinery already being in place" into: S(i) < S(f) ... where S(i) is the initial energy, S(f) is the final energy. That is all the Second Law says. Entropy at the end is greater than entropy at the start. There is nothing in there about mechanisms or machinery or anything about how ...

Another article at the Institute for Creation Research that abuses thermodynamics , this one by Henry Morris. http://www.icr.org/article/51/247/ Henry Morris has a Ph.D. in hydraulic engineering; I would guess that a knowledge of thermodynamics would be part of that, so again, this is a guy who should know better. The article starts with a lot of discussion on the words, and in fact is rather wordy all the way through. Part way through the second on the Second Law, he presents his argument about the First Law (go figure): ... Similarly, the First Law shows that the universe could not have begun itself. The total quantity of energy in the universe is a constant, but the quantity of available energy is decreasing. Therefore, as we go backward in time, the available energy would have been progressively greater until, finally, we would reach the beginning point, where available energy equaled total energy. Time could go back no further than this. At this point both energy and time mus...

This guy is a mathematician, indeed a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas, El Paso. Let us look at the abuse of thermodynamics by Granville Sewell: http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/AML_3497.pdf Here is an opening comment that seems to summarise his position: Of course the whole idea of compensation, whether by distant or nearby events, makes no sense logically: an extremely improbable event is not rendered less improbable simply by the occurrence of ‘‘compensating’’ events elsewhere. According to this reasoning, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room are rusting into scrap metal—and the door is open.1 (Or the thermal entropy in the next room is increasing, though I am not sure how fast it has to increase to compensate computer construction!) There is all sorts of nonsense in there that you would think a university professor would know about. Let us start ...