His ideas of elementariness and changeability were both
embodied in his choice of water as the primitive substance out of which endless
modifications all else was made. Succeeding philosophers adopted his ideas but
with the substitution of earth, air or fire, or all four of them, as the
elementary substances. By the time of Aristotle the substances themselves were
often replaced by the properties, cold, heat, moist and dry, to which he added
the divine “quinta essentia,” or fifth essence, of which the refined and
perfect substance of the heavenly bodies consisted. The doctrine of elements
had previously been enlarged by Empedocles with the opposing principles of
“love” and “hate,” later replaced by the non-emotional forms of “warmth” and
“cold,” to account for the coherence and diffusion of matter.
The opposing ideas involved in the constitution of the world as One or Many originated another train of speculation which in the course of time developed into philosophy. Ultimately the world and human nature became comprehensively embraced in an all-inclusive scheme of mental philosophy, moral philosophy and natural philosophy.
When the separation of these great branches of knowledge into philosophy, ethics and physical science occurred their unity is lost, and it is even made to appear that they are mutually exclusive and often antagonistic to each other. Just as the metaphysical and physical and irrationalism and rationalism are viewed today. But of course this is philosophically incorrect when done by science and the atheist philosophers when they preclude the existence of a priori or metaphysical knowledge.
The enormous expansion of the study of nature in modern
times, by establishing the sciences of astronomy, geology, paleontology,
meteorology, chemistry and biology, has deprived physics of much of its
primitive colossal empire, and the term is now used in the severely restricted
sense of the study of the properties and laws of inorganic matter and energy
under the titles mechanics, heat, radiation, sound, electricity, magnetism and
radioactivity. The metaphysical elements or reality are diminished in importance
and relegated to obscurity or irrelevance.
Physical science was developed in ancient Greece by attempting to establish uniform principles of nature by philosophical speculation, the only means then known, in opposition to the popular mythology which attributed the phenomena of nature to the capricious actions of the jealous and quarrelsome deities. The Greek philosophers though dimly perceived an ordered world through the operation of principles and laws which they struggled to formulate. Though God as revealed in the Bible bears no resemblance to the mythical deities of Greece, the process of separation of the ordered world of nature from a Creator God has been vehemently pursued in modem science by some of its exponents until it is often made to appear that the universe does not now require, nor has it at any time needed, a creating God. The truth is that unbelief is contrary to the principles of physics itself.
Although physics is concerned with the origin of matter, force and energy (origin of the universe) this cannot actually be studied by physicists. Why? Physics cannot study origin because there was no human there to observe it. Nor can creation or Big Bang be repeated. At best it is a subject for only physical speculation and theory. Four solutions of the problem of the origin of the universe may be proposed:
- The universe is an illusion
- It spontaneously arose out of nothing
- It had no origin but has existed eternally
- It was created
The proposal that the universe is illusion has had and still has more adherents than one would initially believe possible. The theory generally asserts that there is no problem to solve except the metaphysical one of human consciousness. Recently the idea of the world as an illusion has been revived in physical science in the last century. The ideas of relativity, quantum physics and wave-mechanics, the constitution of the electron and proton, are so novel that sufficient time has not been available to obtain a full theoretical knowledge of their nature and relationship to each other. The semi-obscurity that veils them lends itself to metaphysical speculation on the fundamental nature of the world of matter, energy and space especially at the quantum level. I mean a majority of matter is indeed empty space.
Here’s the problem… if matter is merely a mental concept then energy and waves are mere abstractions. The works of an Architect are only an illusion for which no Architect is needed. In whatever way the universe is reduced to an illusion, the argument invariably abounds with contradictions. To offset these opinions it need only be stated that all the data on which these discussions and theories are based are obtained by experimental physics. To physical science it is undeniable that the world exists, and therefore the suggestion that it is an illusion isn’t worth pursuing further.
Did the universe spontaneously and autonomously appear from nothing on its own? It is unthinkable, that out of nothing, nothing of itself can come without having first being created. In an infinite void there is no conceivable way of differentiating one point either of space or duration from another in order that a spontaneous change can occur from nothing to something when no forces of any kind are in existence. This proposed solution of the problem of the origin of the universe is therefore summarily dismissed.
Has the universe always existed? These remaining two solutions of the origin of the world have one significant characteristic in common; something, either matter and energy or a Creator, must be eternal. No greater intellectual difficulty can therefore arise in one solution than in the other. We cannot escape from acknowledging an eternal Creator except by admitting the eternity of matter and energy. Since entropy exists in the universe we can dismiss the infinite universe theory also.
The assumption of an eternal material universe in the past leads to insurmountable difficulties. If the universe has eternally existed, then, since energy is being constantly dissipated, every event of which time is an element must already have taken place untold ages ago, and nothing could occur now. An eternal universe would now be a universe without events. Heat death of the universe should’ve happened at some infinitely distant point in the past. We know that since the time of Edwin Hubble in the 1930s that astronomy shows galaxies are slowly spreading out and retreating from each other with velocities increasing as they recede. In an eternal duration the expanding universe would already have expanded to infinity and invisibility leaving the exhausted sun with its desolated planets to wander aimlessly alone in space. The visible presence of the universe in its current state is therefore proof of its temporal nature.
It is generally recognized in physics that all types of energy can be transformed into other energy on the basis of strict equivalence. But this is not the whole of the universal picture. There is a steadily progressing degradation of energy in which all forms of heat are ultimately being dissipated into coldness at so low a temperature (heat death) that it can no longer be available. In scientific terms it is described this way. The universe and its energy is constantly tending toward a state of maximum entropy, which shows that all energy is gradually being degraded into heat energy at a uniform temperature near absolute zero or where no more work can be extrapolated from the universe. When the process is completed the universe will be dead. In an eternal universe such termination would long ago have been reached.
The second law of thermodynamics points to the ultimate end of the world by cold. It is only while energy is passing from high to low potentials that work can be done. The motion even of even your eye reading this when traced to its ultimate origin (God) is therefore proof that the world is temporal and not eternal. Even if heat death or maximum entropy is the way the universe will end….it bypasses the divine intervention mentioned in 2 Peter. It doesn’t describe us freezing but rather burning up. Thermally, it hints towards just the opposite end of the thermometer.
2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
This leaves one plausible solution. The universe was created. The Bible and facts of science endorsed that the universe must have had an origin in time, and it is entirely proper to speak of a preexistent Creator since it is logically not possible spawn something autonomously from nothingness. There had to be a first cause. The account in Genesis seems to be the only story of creation which is free from the gross concepts of idolatry and mythology. In the very first verse of the Bible we see all the things needed for reality to exist physically. For reality to "be" in terms of scientific thought we have the following four statements…all of which are simultaneously scientific and theological.
- Time: In the beginning
- Force/Energy: God created
- Space: the heavens
- Matter: and the earth
The Creation account opens bluntly with little room for misunderstanding. God (Elohim-plural form) created the heaven (plural form) and the earth. No argument is introduced to demonstrate the eternality of God. If God exists, which this text assumes, He exists by His very nature eternally. No formal argument can possibly be framed to prove it but logic requires it. Logic dictates that if all other intelligence in the Creation are temporal, it would be using the temporal to prove the eternal. The eternity of God must therefore fundamentally rest upon the declaration of that fact by Himself, and secondarily by implication from the fact of His existence which Genesis 1:1 implies. The existence of God is self-evident in the statements above. All matter, energy, force apart from life, must therefore have come into existence by divine fiat at the same time. No differences in age, though many in state, confront us. This identity in age of all inanimate matter of the universe is in harmony with the basic assumptions of our current expanding universe. The Bible is therefore scientifically coherent and accurate about origin.
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