Well, let's look at your argument, shall we?
real life wrote:We have overwhelming scientific evidence that the universe exists.
Scientific law (1st Law/Conservation) prohibits the universe from being created. (i.e. it is not possible for the universe to have formed using natural processes.)
Therefore, the universe was formed then using a supernatural (i.e. not natural) process or act.
Except the first law describes the internal energy of a system. So firstly, the system has to exist and secondly, we're only talking about the internal energy, not the system itself.
Thirdly, you'll have to prove that the energy and matter of the Universe came out of nowhere. Before the Universe existed, there could have been another Universe, which collapsed in on itself to form the singularity from which our Big Bang occurred.
Fourthly, as the First Law describes the internal energy of a system, saying that the creation of the Universe violates the First Law is nonsensical if you do not know what is outside the Universe. To say that the birth of the Universe violates the first law, you must know the conditions of the system in which the Universe is contained.
I severely doubt you do.
I have thus shown that your argument is a strawman and is therefore not evidence at all.
Quote:The only alternative to this that has been put forth so far is that the universe (matter) was NEVER created (i.e . did not need to be created) because it is eternally existent.
Scientific law (2nd Law/Entropy) indicates that matter will, over time, become more and more disordered. Energy becomes less and less available for useful work.
No, it doesn't. The Second Law states that entropy of a system will tend to increase over time, not that matter will become more disordered. Entropy is a measure of the unavailability of a system's energy to do work (and is thus related to processes) and has little to do with chaos or disorder.
Take, for example, a mass of individual amino acids in a solution of water. They are individual, thus they are moving about more chaotically. However, because they are individual amino acids, they are reacting with the water around them. Hydrophobic ones will form "crystal" lattices of water around themselves. Hydrophilic ones will bind to the water. Both will decrease the entropy of the water, by causing it to bind and clump together, instead of whizzing around randomly.
It is therefore thermodynamically favourable for amino acids to link up into a polypeptide chain, which then folds into a 3D globular protein. In doing so, the entropy of the "protein" will decrease, but the entropy of the system will increase and is thus favoured.
This is what the Second Law refers to.
Quote:The universe cannot have existed eternally since entropy has not taken the expected toll.
See my above argument concerning Big Bang resulting from death of an old Universe.
Secondly, once again, you do not know what is outside the Universe. How do you know that energy isn't consistently being put into the Universe from outside, via naturalistic means?
But then again, what do I know? I'm no physics major.