Physics
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Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory:
A really accessible textbook on Quantum Field Theory | Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur - Tom Lancaster and Stephen J. Blundell (2014)
A superb reference book on quantum mechanical concepts | Compendium of Quantum Physics: Concepts, Experiments, History and Philosophy (2009) PDF
Anthony Zee's classic with his own intuitive interpretations of equations and concepts | Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell - Anthony Zee (2003)
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Beginning of the Universe:
BGV Theorem explained (The universe has a beginning) | Alexander Vilenkin's article (October 2015) on whether the assured beginning of a universe implies the existence of God
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General Physics Arguments:
General challenges to atheism (including fine tuning, chemical coincidences etc.) | Modern Physics and Ancient Faith - Stephen M. Barr (2003; Stephen is Catholic)
(I have not read all of it yet) | The Anthropic Cosmological Principle - John Barrow (1984)
How physicists try to solve infinite regression and fine tuning without God: Inflation Theory (inflaton field) and String Theory | The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design - Leonard Susskind (2005)
Popular treatment on the latest physical theories (interestingly admits that the question of why there is something rather than nothing is not yet explained, yet finds solace in the fact that much of the universe can be explained by something that weighs less than a pet dog combined with inflation theory; good case study for the irrationality of physicists, since beginning problem is still left untreated) | The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality - Brian Greene (2007)
Failure of the above to explain the universe (still doesn't explain beginning problem, is non-falsifiable, "explains anything anybody want" etc.)| Physics to God Website (run by two rabbis)
Young Earth Creationist Cosmology that can account for the old-age of stars | A New Creationist Cosmology: In No Time at All - Part 1 (2010), 2 (2011), and 3 (2011) -- the book it was based upon: Starlight and Time - Russell Humphreys (1994)
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Basic observation on Beginning of Universe discussions:
Physicists rely on the inflaton field as the (unproved, and maybe unprovable!) theory to compensate for the low probability of this universe happening (which they readily concede) by taking out a theory that is too "strong" that allows them to say that anything that can ever happen will virtually happen (every universe will be substantiated in the megaverse that encloses them). The most obvious example is that Boltzmann brains, which is a more probable scenario in a universe that allows anything provided that the probabilities are high, are considered more "ordinary" within anthropic constraints, and therefore should be taken as the more likely scenario that our universe is in. This means that all of our memories are very likely false thanks to probability. Probability comes back to bite us.
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Basic Observation on Quantum Mechanics and Absolutely/Relatively Unknown Information:
Quantum mechanics (defined as any treatment of a system at any scale in which Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle still holds true) just tells us that at low resolution, macroscopic descriptions of any part of the world, the descriptions that have a low amount of bits just cannot describe the system accurately, and therefore there is a cap in prediction power (or a relative loss of it relative to the actual amount of information in that same system under study). The Copenhagen interpretation is a guess that says that information is not just epistemologically but metaphysically less before a measurement is made; measurements are taken to be ontologically important entities that determine the state of the universe. We are doing the "handshaking" or "transaction." Extending that interpretation, the universe is "actually" increasing in information as the bubble of observation expands and forces all the wavefunctions it reaches to collapse. There are also interpretations of the universe that say that the universe is itself calculating information regardless of whether we observe it or not. This is the more ontologically "humble" interpretation. The transactional interpretation where future waves collide with past waves at each moment in the present (or whichever time and place) secures a definite value for observables in every point in spacetime regardless of observation. The universe is already always engaging in "handshakes" or "transactions," and our acts of observation (our "handshakes") are not powerful enough to change the system.
Whichever the case, information that was not in the system under a certain "screen resolution", say system_res1, is always coming into existence in that system_res1. Whether we ourselves are part of the information creating machinery or the universe outside of us is, it makes no difference (if we are conceived as part of the universe).
We don't know if technology will one day be developed to such a degree as to allow us to observe even scales at or below the Planck length and Planck time, and we'll discover the rules of and ways to manipulate the universe at the extremely small space-time or extremely large energy-momentum scales. If we do, we may encounter one of two scenarios as far as information is concerned: (1) we cannot find the source of additional information of system_res1, and it really is a "random number generator" or a dice roll for some class of information, which means that quantum mechanics is preserved down to the smallest scales; or (2) we find more ways to describe the universe, giving system_res2, that can fully account for the missing information at system_ res1, and those information are just lurking there waiting to be "offloaded" or "captured" by the larger time- and length-scales. In the first case, information does indeed appear "ex nihilo," and that actually would also be a point which we could argue as one part of God's Providence, as information is continually injected from somewhere "outside" of system_res2, the best and most extensive possible description of the universe. In the second case, information was already always there (whether in us or out there), and therefore all information would just be frontloaded to the beginning of the universe, where we would argue for Creation. Apologetically, it is just a matter of "where" information is located (at the "beginning" of the universe or "alongside" the universe).
Whichever is the case, "information" (or better, randomness deficiency, to avoid the other definition of information as Shannon entropy; Random deficiency = Shannon Entropy - Kolmogorov Complexity) is there as the necessarily dual component of the ineffable "substance." This all sounds very hylomorphic, and in that sense we have never really escaped Plato. Another related matter is how should we argue for that information/form/structure and substance/raw material. Arguing for design is an argument for a very "informational" or "intellectual" part of the world (although we'd like to agree that it takes some "power" to create it), while arguing for brute, raw and data-compression-resistant matter is an argument for a very "potent" part of the world (although it takes some "intelligence" to decide how much to create, what kind of basic matter-type to create). In all aspects of the physical description of the world, there is that indistinguishable but inseparable intelligence/power (and maybe one could argue for goodness) dual- (or triple-) aspect.
Atheists need an ultimate intelligence-from-stupidity argument, not just at the biological level (where the design inference was used) but also at the physical level of description. Therefore, the inflaton field, conceived to solve a different set of problems, was borrowed to explain the current fine-tuned parameters of this universe. The problem is that that inflaton field has parameters of its own that need fine-tuning, and therefore fine-tuning is just pushed further down. Minimal information (or, more accurately, the randomness deficiency; a lot of variables give a large Shannon entropy, and a tight restriction to win gives the Kolmogorov complexity/compressibility as far as we know) is still repackaged and sent to somewhere, and that itself still needs explaining!
For atheists that argue that Kolmogorov complexity is highly dependent on the language used for description to avoid dealing with it, that argument works both ways: If it is implied that no language is able to describe the universe without (huge) loss of data, how do we then know that the terms/concepts of "evolution" is a well-defined concept that does not present loss of data or whose code-word-length in a program doesn't explode? What use is it of pointing out Berry's paradox at the last moment and saying: "Oh well, on this particular point, we'll never know!" That caveat doesn't really help, but is a selective use of skepticism when convenient. It is remarkably telling that the atheist would resort to this general level objection than quantifying code-word-lengths.
If different strengths of the anthropic principles are spaced too far apart, then one optimization will not necessarily entail another, forcing there to be simultaneous optimizing of multiple factors instead of one single factor, drastically reducing the probability that this particular universe was a "reasonably lucky roll"--why weren't the other more possible observer-containing universes rolled out? This is (one of) the Achilles' heel of Inflaton field theory.
Towards a general apologetic of the natural world
Can long-term or highly regular laws co-exist with short-term or low regularity actions? I think it can. As long as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is not disproved, there is always an omnipresent realm co-extensive with our spacetime (in which highly regular laws operate) where new information is constantly being injected into the universe through quantum fluctuation processes. This process is considered "just so" by naturalists who do not want to ascribe it to a God who is actively injecting information or influencing the course of every single field/particle, and is taken as the proof of the world's coming into being ex-nihilo: As long as it obeys certain law-like constraints, and as long as there is some sort of energy source (preferably infinite if we want an eternal multi-verse to bootstrap our universe), new information (that does not break energy conservation) can come into the universe to direct it. There is no need to posit a second entity called "matter" apart from energy if it is just a coefficient of coupled fields that phenomenologically has been conceptualized as matter (matter finds its full meaning in its spatio-temporal response to forces), just as water is not a second entity from H2O if H2O has been shown to possess all the properties of "water."
The necessary components for the natural universe we see can be boiled down to three things: energy, regular laws of how energy moves, and irregular information. An atheist will look at these things at this fundamental level of description, and say: energy was and is and will always just be there, either in the form of an untapped potential, or already converted into momentum in space, and is absolute energy; the regular laws of how energy moves is "just so," "purely natural," "impersonal", absolute laws; irregular information appears out of nowhere and is just chance occurence, and absolute chance at that. But these things can be connected theologically to the Bible by the Christian at this very level of description as so (insofar as we humans can understand at a prima facie level): The regular laws of how energy moves was determined by God's wisdom, enforced by His power, and made regular according to His goodness and faithfulness (could we say that the laws are part of God, if it strictly refers to the enforcing part? The enforcing law is God/God's Word?); energy came into existence through God's power; and irregular information is part of God's freedom and power and providence and wisdom (and is just missing knowledge to us)?
No doubt, all the objects and properties of the universe and God can be closely analyzed in a way that may give a more nuanced and holistic description of the objects and the universe. This prima facie description is just there to highlight which of God's properties each property of the universe shows more than God's other properties. In these simple, general level concepts, a believing child can be made to understand the crucial point of disagreement with an unbelieving child at the same meta-scientific level as an adult.
Explaining Apparent Age
There are many lines of scientific inquiry that do point to an ancient earth, and one of them is radio dating of a sample with known decay rates of parent-to-daughter isotopes that seem to give an ancient age with the best experiments and scientific theories currently available. Disregarding radiocarbon dating, which works on relatively young-earth friendly timescales, Potassium-Argon or Argon-Argon dating, Rubidium-Strontium dating etc., works on the scale of millions to billions of years, and experiments have been done that show that the radioactive decay rates are not affected by extreme environmental conditions. This gives Old Earth Creationists the confidence that God may very well have created the universe (and even the earth) with an actual age on the scale of billions of years.
One way to solve this is referred to as the Omphalos hypothesis. There was a book published in 1857, 2 years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species, titled Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot (by Philip Henry Gosse). The Greek word "omphalos" translates to "belly button," and was also used to refer to the belly button of the world in Delphi, according to Greek myths. The book's namesake refers to Adam's belly button--if he ever had one, despite being without a biological mother and therefore without ever having an umbilical cord--and the book's central point is related to the discussion of apparent age: If the world, like Adam, was created mature but with the vestiges of a non-existent past deduced by natural principles that were operative in successive periods or generations, then by principle, all the extrapolations of science to the past could be perfectly reasonable extrapolations based on that version of science (of course, if we generously grant that it was accurate to the point of ensuring the truth or high probability of truth of its deductions), as long as it is first asserted that God made it "seem" so. That God made it seem so raises a question: Was God dishonest in making it seem so? Or can God do so with other justifications that do not make God out to be a liar? Whatever the answer, I think that this course of reasoning is one possible way to resolve the problem.
As I was thinking about other ways to allow an apparent age, I thought of the whole process of explanation of a phenomenon. We usually explain any given phenomenon by both initial conditions and physical laws, and deduce one with the other once we have the phenomenon. Think of algebra. Given an equation, we can put placeholders called variables, say a and b, and solve for a once we have b. This usually assumes that we know the equation, e.g. we know that there's a plus sign here that means addition, or a superscript of a value that means the power to which a number is raised. We are solving for values that we easily undestand as elements that can be fed into a theory. But what about the whole equation and the operations used inside are also understood as variables? Sometimes we are solving for the equation when we know the initial conditions. An example is the Gaussian distribution, which we deduce from known relations between the microscopic states in a given frame of reference in multiple spatial dimensions and those in a rotated frame of reference, which form our initial conditions and final conditions respectively. The configuration of atoms, molecules, fields, or any static-like physical entity, are also "rotated," (or "translated") through time under certain equations that express the physical laws, while the physical laws themselves are considered even more static and unchanging (or only painfully slow in changing), so as to ensure an at-bottom stable enough framework in which all the other changeable laws are allowed to change, as long as they sacrifice their ultimacy aand title as physical laws, and are subordinate to other "deeper" physical laws, and so on until all physical laws are ultimately subordinate to the ultimate physical law... or God's will? Are we willing to put that ultimacy past our deepest "theorized" physical laws and into the hands of God?
If we do so, then we are pursuing a different route (but perhaps complementary to the "omphalos" solution). Let's call this the "Second Omphalos" hypothesis, and this time the "omphalos" refers to that of the serpent, which was forced to crawl on its belly in the curse after the Fall. Theologically, we know the initial conditions as they are specified by God by the term "Creation," and we know the ongoing physical processes as they are specified by God as "Providence." In the geological Old Earth-Young Earth debate, we are more willing to allow more variations in Creation. There are also good reasons for doing so: The first chapter of Genesis states point blank several initial-conditions-like decisions being made by God. When the flood happened, we also like to think of it as a new set of conditions under a set of still unchanging laws. The confusion of languages at the tower of Babel was new entity-like information that was added or made to replace the original language that was spoken in all the earth. Can we push the possibility of change deep into the (yet-)immutable physical laws themselves?
We need to justify the move from initial conditions to the underlying theories. Can we justify that initial conditions (relative to any later conditions or phenomena) wcan be changed without any change in the usual physical laws? Or is there a continuity between the initial conditions and the physical laws that make it difficult to even hold onto the tenacity and stability of physical laws? Are we justified in saying that God only changes the initial conditions, but never the physical laws themselves? And is there any ultimate proof or justification that God does not change the physical laws themselves? That all changes are only changes in the more changeable parts of the universe, e.g. entities, and not the laws?
First, this assumes that the physical laws themselves have some kind of ultimacy that rivals that of God's freedom--as if there are some physical laws that are eternal and therefore not subject to God's control (insofar as to control means to have the ability to change). In this sense, I cannot accept that the physical laws as we understand them are part of God's nature insofar as we take those physical laws to mean the changeable entities. They would rather have to be classified under God's freedom. Secondly (and more problematic), it also assumes that the empirically deduced laws as we now know just are precisely that set of laws, if we are willing to take the laws embodied by those equations as ultimate and not allow any more superior equations behind those laws to turn even those very laws themselves into changeable variables.
I think that we cannot do so, and must allow the possibility that the laws themselves did indeed change. Theologically, this allows God truly full freedom and control over the universe, and Biblically, as far as we are willing to be Biblical, we have good evidence to do so. The search for Scriptural evidences for this would involve searching for verses that detail more process-like changes, changes into how things usually work, or mechanism-like changes (as opposed to entity-like changes). One example is the curse in response to the fall. Possibly, animals changed (the serpent sure did), such that there were at least death-causing animals that could be harbingers of death to man himself. This could probably be a locus where we might want to place the explanation for fossils: the world changed so violently that many deaths happened in their own ecosystems all at once, in which the usual synergies of a group of animals broke down and were replaced by parasitical relations and predator-prey relations. There are changes in how the world works in terms of its biological plant-like entities ("thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field") that are the laws of the field (but, if one persists, may be construed as an entity-like change in which new entities such as thorns and thistles were introduced instead of a process-like change where the land now produces thorns and thistles). There is definitely enough room for natural disasters that predate Noah's flood to occur, and volcanic rock that already had Argon or Strontium or other daughter isotopes from the mantle (that of course were too technical of a detail to be recorded by humans then) were already present in the lava (and, as a postulate, the world was cursed in such a way to allow death-inducing radioactive processes to be introduced and established among atoms). We may also want to consider the curse as the place in time where The laws of birth are another process-like change: pain accompanies the birthing process. That man would die would also possibly allow many changes across orders e. Another example would be the events surrounding Noah's flood: Gen. 6:3 talks about the truncating of man's age, which is a change in an already established process of aging-towards-death. Also, the world in all its processes was modified in such a way after the flood so that a flood of that same magnitude will not ever happen again. We do not have to put all the attentino on the flood itself, but can allow that a myriad of things could have happened between the fall and the flood that are not all meticulously recorded.
There is much room for science, but the Bible's record and faith in that record can surely fill up all the retrospective space between the literal account of Creation (and Fall!) and modern science. What this would be saying that all of the evidence for Old Earth makes sense under those assumptions of eternal or long-term physical laws if we tenaciously hold onto them (but are not Biblically justified in doing so)! The upshot of this kind of view is that all of the historical details of the Bible can be jointly held with the assumptions of modern science even when it assumes its laws and that the laws it currently hold are "long-term enough" to explain old events reasonably (as long as they are not too old--there is a cutoff date) and provide good predictions for the future. There would be no great impact on science's consistency and practical technological uses (we put science "in its place" by ranking it below in priority God's decision on how physical laws should be at any given time), and would make us Christians consistent when we take God's word as truth over everything else--even our claim that physical laws are unchanged since the universe. The retrodictive battle for the history of the earth is a purely theological one. We don't have to just state that decay rates "slowed," but if we are to wear our theologies on our sleeves, we are free to say that there might not even be any decay rates at the time at all (the sun could burn with a different mechanism--and this does not threaten the fact that the sun very likely relies on decay rates to burn today)!