joegratz.net

During my haircut today, my barber and I were talking about his previous career as a Baptist minister.¹ Something about me must have suggested to him that I was suggestible. Perhaps it was the fact that I kept a straight face when he referred the judge in his child custody proceedings as “one of those Jew-boys,” as difficult as that was. Perhaps it was my positive reaction when he told me how the Lord had provided a cure for his stage fright. Whatever it was, something led him to hand me a tract he “thought I’d enjoy” on my way out of the shop.

It’s an anti-evolution tract titled “Foolish Professors,”² presenting the old “ex nihil, nihil fit” (”nothing comes from nothing”) argument from Aquinas’ Five Proofs, in new clothing.³ The author invokes the first and second laws of thermodynamics, arguing that:

• “The universe could not have come from nothing naturally, because neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed, according to the first law of thermodynamics”; and,
• “The universe could not be eternal, for it would have devolved into a cold, dark, dead mass long ago, according to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy always increases in a closed system.”

Of course, the Laws of Thermodynamics only apply to closed systems, and the author recognizes the counterargument that the Universe is an open system. However, he demands experimental data proving that the universe is an open system: “The poor, insane, unregenerate scientist, so-called, pontificates ex cathedra⁴ that the universe is an open system when is is physically impossible for him to verify such an hypothesis.” So if the universe isn’t an open system, what surrounds it? The author has an answer ready here as well. “[T]he Bible indicates that the universe is surrounded and enclosed by a body of water whose surface is frozen!”

What? Frozen? I’ve never heard that before. That would be sort of cool.

Let’s look at the sources he cites. These are the two that talk about waters:

• Genesis 1:6. “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” OK, there were waters. No word on the phase of the waters.
• Job 38:30. In the King James Version,⁵ it reads, “The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.”

There we go. “The face of the deep is frozen.” If all of this came out of the deep, and the face of the deep is frozen, then he’s got to be right. Right? Well, look at the context and at some other translations. We’re pretty clearly talking about the majestic power of weather here, not of First Things. This sort of points up the silliness of taking one English translation as the revealed word of God, as Ruckman does.

I think the cite checking I’ve been doing for Constitutional Commentary is affecting the way I read things, don’t you?

¹ He went from ministering to his flock to shearing it, I suppose. But I digress.
² The tract does not indicate its authorship or source, but this page indicates that it was written by Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, who appears to be disliked by some for his insistence on using the King James Version, and who has published all manner of amusing-cum-scary kookery at his web site. If you’re amused by this sort of thing and want to read more, you can access his newsletters here; to get past the password protection, just press Escape when it asks for username and password.
³ The author doesn’t credit Aquinas, of course. Noting that the genesis of his argument lies in Summa Theologica would really irk the author, since he lists the Catholic Church as one of the “instruments of propaganda serving to spread the lie of EVOLUTION and drive the world to madness”, to wit, “textbooks, National Geographic, Smithsonian Institution, Roman Catholic Church, news media, ad infinitum.”
⁴ From my observations, professors have often been known to pontificate while standing up as well as ex cathedra.
⁵ And, boy, does Ruckman hate anything that’s not the King James Version.