Genesis 2:1-2 “The heavens and the earth… were finished. And on the 7th day God ended His work which He had done…”

July is the most expensive month for running your air conditioning. Living in Kansas City the past few weeks has proven that point, with temperatures around 95 degrees and a heat index over 100. AC is a wonderful invention. But did you know that an AC system is an excellent way to illustrate why the Theory of Evolution is false? Let’s start with how AC works, then how it obeys the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Invented in 1902, AC is the process of removing heat from air in a confined space and then releasing that now cooled air back into that space. What happens to the heat it removed? It’s dumped into a “heat sink” – the outdoors. There are four main components in your AC system: 1) refrigerant, 2) a compressor (run by electricity, it compresses the heated, vaporized refrigerant from the evaporator), 3) a condenser (set of coils that removes the heat from the vaporized refrigerant from the compressor, condensing it into a cold gas-liquid mixture), and 4) an evaporator (another set of coils downstream from the condenser, that puts heat back into the refrigerant, returning it to a gas and sending it back to the compressor to start over).

So what does this have to do with evolution, abiogenesis and the First Law of Thermodynamics? Let’s start with the First Law, which says “Energy in a closed system is constant. It can’t be created and it can’t be destroyed. It can only be converted from one form into another.” An AC system is a closed system, where energy that starts in the form of electricity to run the compressor is converted into cool air into the house and heat dumped into the outdoors, but the mass and matter of the refrigerant remain constant.

So, AC engineers must deal with the uncompromising truth of the First Law. Starting with electricity to run the compressor, they know that not all that electrical will be used by the system to create cool air – some will end up as wasted heat. So they are always searching to improve their design to use the maximum amount of the electrical energy they put into the system and minimize the amount of wasted heat.

That’s because the First Law can never – and we mean absolutely never – be broken. It is an established, universal fact in the scientific community. If we put this into an equation, it says: Energy put into the system = Energy put out by the system (i.e., compression) – Unusable energy lost (i.e., heat). Now, let’s apply this universal law to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the concept of “abiogenesis” embraced by atheism.

A well-known evolutionary biologist once said that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. Atheism asserts there is no God. With that as their foundation, atheism believes in “abiogenesis” – that life arose from nonliving matter. But where did that matter come from? There are three possibilities for the existence of the non-living matter that evolution needs for abiogenesis: 1) matter popped into existence out of nothing (spontaneous generation), 2) matter always existed, or 3) matter was created.

Our universe, like our AC example, is also a system, with all its mass, matter and energy contained within it. If there is no God or “First Cause” for its existence, then like our AC example it’s a closed system. That’s because there isn’t something or someone to add or remove matter from the outside. If matter could enter or exit the universe, it would be an open system, which Christians would agree with, since God added matter into the system in the beginning. So atheism must view our universe as a closed system if they want to explain it without God. Right away, using the First Law, the atheism and evolution have a major problem.

Their problem is explaining the origin of the matter needed for abiogenesis. If we start with possibility #1 – spontaneous generation, we fail miserably. Why? Remember our First Law of Thermodynamics – in a closed system, the amount of energy is constant (energy in = energy out). But if the universe had no mass/matter/energy, then all mass/matter/energy popped into existence (spontaneously generated), we’d have a situation of ZERO energy input and GREATER THAN ZERO energy output. If we applied this to our AC example, it is like saying that the amount of work the compressor does plus the heat lost is greater than the electricity put into it to make it run. That’s impossible – by the First Law of Thermodynamics.

What about possibility #2, that mass/matter/energy always existed? We’ll refute that next week using the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That leaves us with possibility #3, that matter was created. Since the First Law has no exceptions, the physical universe must be an open system, brought into existence by a non-physical (not made of mass/matter/energy) Force outside of it. That Force is explained in Genesis 2:1-2 (our verse this week). It’s the God of the Bible. That’s scientific – that’s logical – and that’s reality.

“The Evidence of Faith’s Substance”, Article #251