A mini-essay I've wanted to write for a while, and was recently needled into actually doing.

First, a disclaimer: worldviews run deeper than facts.  No amount of evidence or conclusive proof of any fact or theorum will ever convince or be accepted by anyone who has closed their mind to the possibility.  But that's not science's problem.  Science is the process of the acquisition of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, not the evangelization of non-believers.  As the brilliant Michael Crichton put it:

"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."

So, to those who are willing to consider the facts on their merit, I'll continue...

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics can be expressed a number of ways - entropy always increases, a closed system moves from order to disorder over time, etc.  So, let's take the entire natural world... however many galaxies, dimensions and whatever else it contains.  That's a closed system.  Given an infinte amount of time, it will have decayed to the lowest possible form, and be in complete disorder.  However, there is obviously still order, and plenty of matter and energy not decayed.  Therefore, logically (or mathematically), A) an infinite amount of time has not passed, or B) something supernatural (outside the closed system of the natural world) has affected the system.  B would prove God, so let's look at A.  If an infinite amount of time has not passed, there was a specific, measurable point where time/space continuum came into existence.  Whether 14 billion years ago, or yesterday, something came out of nothing.  An uncaused cause, or a reaction without a corresponding action becomes a mathematical necessity to explain existence without the supernatural.  However, these things are both commonly accepted as impossible, but more importantly, mathematically disproven by the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.  Therefore, applying logic to naturalism, existence is a mathematical impossibility.  Either we do not exist, or the supernatural does.  Naturalism necessarily disproves naturalism.  read more »