The creativity of people in every field of human endeavour is amazing to behold. But where does this creativity come from? Simon Pease offers some thoughts ……
The First Law of Thermodynamics!
The term “create”, on careful reflection, is fascinating. A house, for example, can be created out of bricks, mortar, wood and other materials. In other words, existing physical matter is fashioned into another form. The house has been created, for sure, because it did not previously exist. It has not, however, been created out of nothing. This obvious truth is apparently confirmed by the laws of science:
“The first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of conservation of energy, adapted for thermodynamic processes, distinguishing two kinds of transfer of energy, as heat and as thermodynamic work, and relating them to a function of a body’s state, called Internal energy. The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.”
This explains why people are unable to create anything out of nothing. Human creativity, wonderful though it may be, is thus limited to working with what we have already been provided. For the Christian, every good thing is a gift of our Creator, to whom we are eternally and profoundly grateful. This is why we describe our universe as “creation” – a term which some find offensive, because of all that it implies.
The First Law of Cake-making!
Belonging to a somewhat earlier generation, I never learned the art of cake-making at school! However, I understand on good authority that flour, sugar, eggs and butter (or the equivalent) are the essential ingredients for success. Therefore, I can at least imagine a lesson in which the teacher imparts this useful skill to his or her pupils. The teacher announces that today’s double lesson (to provide plenty of time) will be on cake-making. She (or he, if you prefer) explains the ingredients needed to make a cake, sits down and then, without any explanation gets distracted with some other task. Shortly afterwards, things start to go awry. The pupils appear confused, looking nervously around, and talking to each other in hushed tones. At this point, the teacher begins to get impatient, and demands to know what is wrong. One brave soul then speaks up. “But we haven’t brought any ingredients, Miss!”
At this point, the teacher’s irritation fades and a warm, condescending smile crosses her face. “Yes, I told you these are the ingredients needed for cakes, but if you are patient, the cakes will make themselves.” There is a brief stunned silence, followed by a few carefully hidden gestures indicating that some of the pupils think the teacher has “lost it”.
An absurd, fantastic story, perhaps?
“Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. Let’s imagine that we could list them in some kind of cosmic cookbook. So what are the three ingredients we need to cook up a universe? The first is matter – stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids……”
“I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science.”
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Stephen Hawking is widely considered a scientific genius, even being presented in the popular Star Trek series as superior to Newton and Einstein. Perhaps mere mortals, such as myself, are therefore not entitled to question his reasoning, even if it bears an uncanny resemblance to the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. In Hans Christian Anderson’s fable, it takes a child, devoid of all sophistication and sycophancy, to point out the glaringly obvious fact that the emperor is walking around stark naked in public whilst everyone else politely pretends he is wearing the most beautiful garments.
To be fair to Hawking, although he did not believe in God, he was at least willing to consider the hypothetical possibility of a Creator:
“The laws of science determine the evolution of the universe, given its state at one time. These laws may, or may not, have been decreed by God, but he cannot intervene to break the laws, or they would not be laws. That leaves God with freedom to choose the initial state of the universe, but even here it seems there may be laws. So God would have no freedom at all.”
Well, that certainly appears to demolish the credibility of the Bible – a book detailing from start to finish God’s activity in Creation, including many of His most significant miraculous interventions in human affairs!
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
The game of rugby was famously invented when, according to popular tradition, a school boy violated the rules of football by picking up the ball and running with it. Since then, people have frequently changed the rules of the game to make it more exciting and safer to pay. In every sphere of human activity, such as the arts, science, technology, warfare, sports and so on, people have continually reshaped their own creations. Why then, should the Supreme Creator be uniquely constrained in the manner that Hawkings prescribes? Simple logic therefore dictates that no-one should believe in Stephen Hawkings’ version of God. Perhaps no wonder then, that Hawking dismissed this false deity whom he had created in his own imagination.
The organisation SETI was set up and given massive funding to search for signs of intelligent life in the universe. Detecting a simple binary sequence of 1s and 0s, such as a transmission from outer space in something akin to Morse Code, might for example be considered sufficient proof for the existence of another intelligence apart from our own.
DNA – Like a Computer Program
An interesting aspect of technological progress is the way in which people seek to imitate or learn from creation, such as with the development of flight. Working as a data specialist in IT, I recently attended a Microsoft conference at which the company claimed to be on the threshold of achieving a staggering breakthrough in the miniaturisation of data storage. Rather than needing massive industrial scale complexes full of computer servers to hold all their customer cloud data, they believe they can reduce their storage requirements to a tiny fraction of this space. But how to achieve this? The solution Microsoft is working on is to copy the most efficient form of data storage ever discovered – by synthesising artificial DNA! No wonder, for Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has himself stated:
“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”
Gate’s choice of the word “like” is interesting, suggesting a subconscious desire to avoid the implications of his own thought train. DNA is, indeed, a computer programme. Without it, no life would exist. As any IT professional knows, programming code consists of sequences of the binary 1s and 0s of which Morse Code is such a primitive example. DNA is infinitely more complex, so perhaps someone at SETI should take note and look closer to home for evidence of superior extra-terrestrial intelligence! A few bold scientists have even challenged the establishment’s claim that DNA somehow just randomly evolved and, of course, have failed to receive anything remotely approaching an adequate response. However, in later life, the famous atheist Richard Dawkins conceded that he was in fact willing to consider the possibility that life on earth had been designed and created by a superior alien intelligence – provided it was not God!
Not only does all life on our planet depend on DNA, but above all we rely on its ability to self-replicate. Even the simplest living organism has this capacity built in. So, with all our intelligence and collective knowledge, is there anything that human kind has created (not even out of nothing, but just from what God has already given us), which is able to replicate itself – such as a simple paperclip? Possibly the closest we have come is by generating computer viruses which deliberately destroy previously healthy collections of carefully designed and programmed 1s and 0s – hardly something to be proud of!
Many people have been gifted with wonderful talents and abilities. Yet whose creative works should we admire the most – our own, or those of the God of the Bible in whose image we are created? Or perhaps the better question is whom we should most admire, or indeed worship?
Simon Pease is author of “Ruth – A Prophetic Parable”. Sub-titled “How Does The Story Of Ruth Relate To YOU Today?” He teaches on the unity of Scripture and contributes to the UK magazine Sword. Link to the Ruth book: http://christian-publications-int.com/Ruth_A_Prophetic_Parable.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics
Stephen Hawking. Brief Answers to the Big Questions. P29
https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/14/remember-that-time-stephen-hawking-was-on-star-trek
Stephen Hawking. Brief Answers to the Big Questions. P29
https://seti.org/seti-institute/Search-Extraterrestrial-Intelligence
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/336336-dna-is-like-a-computer-program-but-far-far-more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abugiGHOHg0
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A18-23&version=NKJV
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