The Good Word

CREATE August 1998

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, . . . (Genesis 1:1,2)

Scriptures and science agree that in the beginning there was chaos -- whether a "big bang," a primordial "black hole" or "formless and empty," the picture conjured is one of maximum disorderliness. The striking point is that this is the beginning. Common sense and Eddington's arrow tell us that this should be the end, not the beginning. (See Jeremiah 4:23)

How to go from chaos to order? This is the question of creativity. How to go from nothing to something? There are two aspects of creativity:

IDEA. To conceive of that which doesn't yet exist.
FULFILLMENT. To bring the conception into reality.

The idea element distinguishes the Bible view from the atheistic and falsely called scientific approach. The activity outlined in Genesis 1 is clearly the fulfillment of a plan in the mind of the Creator.

". . . Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light. And there was light." (Genesis 1:2,3)

The agent of God's creativity to bring fulfillment to His idea is cited as the Spirit of God. The actual production of light followed God's saying. It is his word that has the power to bring light into darkness.

Light, a form of energy, is the first and most essential element of life. Without a continuing source generating light, it will finally dissipate into darkness. Here, in Genesis, God is identified as the generator of light, through his Spirit. For now, we will identify his Spirit as intelligence.
To get some understanding of how raw intelligence could have a physical impact in creation, consider Maxwell's little demon. Maxwell was a pioneering scientist in the area of statistical thermodynamics. To see what his little demon was about, you need to know a little bit about heat and temperature.

We know from experience that if you drop an ice cube into a cup of boiling water, soon the cube melts and warms up, while the water cools from boiling. The entire contents of the cup becomes water that is uniformly the same temperature throughout. The law of increasing disorder has triumphed. The organized state of ice cube plus boiling water has been reduced to a tepid cup of liquid.

What you may not have known is that the water molecules in the boiling water are zipping around at a very high average speed. Those in the ice cube are not moving around at all, although they do quiver in place, in their rigid crystal lattice. In the cup of tepid water, the water molecules from the ice cube have speeded up; the boiling water molecules have slowed down; and now they are all moving at the same average speed as they wander around inside the cup.

Maxwell described a conceptual way of reversing the process. He would place a thin wall or divider through the middle of the cup of water, separating the water into two regions. Then puncture a tiny hole into the wall that is only big enough for a single water molecule to fit through (at one time). Next, he places his little demon beside the hole to serve as an observer and gatekeeper.

The little demon watches the water molecules zipping around on either side of the hole, some faster and some slower. (The average speed, or temperature, is the same on either side.)

Now, the little demon gatekeeper sees, perchance, a molecule approaching the hole at high speed from one side, and he let's it through the hole. When this happens, the average speed on the side it is leaving drops by a tiny, tiny amount. And the average speed on the side it goes into goes up by the same amount.

By continuing this process of letting fast molecules go through the hole in one direction (and slow ones the other direction), one side of the cup will get colder and colder (it could freeze into an ice cube) and the other side gets hotter and hotter (it could boil).

This reversal of the natural process, in this case going from disorder to order, would be driven solely by the intelligence of the gatekeeper. The separation of tepid water into an ice cube and boiling water conceptually shows how intelligence alone might create usable energy. In fact, separation is the essential component of creativity:

"God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness." (Genesis 1:4)

Separation is cited again and again in the Biblical account of creation:

First day: light - dark
Second day: air - water
Third day: land - water
Fourth day: day - night
Fifth day: birds - fish
Sixth day: female - male

To move from chaos to order requires separation of the disparate components of chaos. And this can only occur under the guidance of intelligence.

Modern science confirms the ancient manifesto of origins: intelligence alone is an adequate power for creation. Philosophers have long noted that there is no design without a designer. Evolutionists look for random chance to produce designs.

Sometimes it is suggested that the complete works of Shakespeare could be created by an explosion in a print shop. That is, by randomly collecting letters of the alphabet, as might happen in an explosion, there is a statistical probability that some intelligent writing could result. In fact, the evolutionist would argue that given enough time and explosions you are certain to get intelligence from the print shop explosion.

This foolishness ignores that in addition to an English language version of Shakespeare, you would also get German and every other translation. There would also be mixes and hybrids generously stirred in with billions of pages of garbage. In fact, the output of the explosion would contain no intelligence whatsoever.

But an outside observer, with intelligence and a knowledge of Shakespeare might separate from this mess the works of Shakespeare. But the intelligence in that case would come from the outside observer, not the explosion in the print shop. (The principle outlined here also denies the possibility of the spontaneous evolution of informational macromolecules, the building blocks of life -- proteins and nucleic acids such as DNA.)

It is striking indeed that the ancient scriptures assign such an accurate role to intelligence as the agency of separation, the key element of creation. In Genesis this intelligence is referred to as the "Spirit of God." This same Spirit is cited often in the Scriptures as a creative agent. In the New Testament this creative agent is explicitly identified as Jesus Christ. The gospel of John refers to him as "the Word." [Greek: logos] and says that "Through him all things were made." (John 1:3) The apostle Paul declared of Christ that, "by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible." (Colossians 1:16)

The logos, the Christ, the mysterious but personal creator of the New Testament is personified as Wisdom in the Old Testament. Solomon, reputedly the wisest man to ever live, names Wisdom as the creator: "I [Wisdom] was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. . . For whoever finds me find life." (Proverbs 8:23,35, et al.; cf. John 1:1-4)

Jesus is the Creator. This facet of the Christ is often overlooked. But his role as Savior of the human race is closely tied to his rightful claim on the race as its creator.

You, my friend, are not an accident. Before you were a gleam in your mother's eye, Jesus the creator planned for you. It is through his power that you and your forefathers came into being; it is through his power that you are sustained today. And what he has begun he will complete. Enjoy the goodness of the person he designed you to be!

A great deal more could be said on the topic of creativity and creation, but other subjects beckon. It may be many years before the errors of evolutionism ebb on the scientific scene. Meanwhile . . . keep the faith.

Your friend, Herb Sorensen