The rub is that the entire universe is assumed to be a closed system, and so despite pockets of order that seem to contradict the second law, the sum total of entropy in the universe is always increasing. Any system left on its own tends toward disorder unless work is applied from the outside. To build it, its builder must lay waste to a number of trees such that the total disorder of the system increases. Think, for example, of a beautifully ordered and symmetrical log cabin. The answer lies in the work that is necessary to create order. So how can it be true that chaos, decay, and wastefulness always increase? New life, new creation, new possibilities. It is easy to think of beautiful, hopeful instances of order. This leads me to ask, what kind of God would create a universe in which entropy, or disorder, always increases? Let’s see if wrestling with the concept of entropy hinders or helps our faith. Still, be it technical or by analogy, it is at first glance a troublesome concept. Its technical application does not translate well to our everyday experience of increasing disorder except by analogy. Science, however, sums up the ever-increasing disorder in a single word: entropy.Įntropy, also known as the second law of thermodynamics, succinctly states that as time marches forward, systems tend towards disorder. Sin, suffering, the groaning of creation, lament, grief. Our faith provides language to help us grasp and endure this kind of disorder. And it doesn’t even include the disorder each of us feels in the personal chaos we must navigate. We know firsthand a thing or two about disorder. A changing-some might say-deteriorating, landscape for the Christian church. This is because entropy can be understood to be a condition of ‘randomness’ and ‘chaos’ when it works upon systems.A pandemic that won’t let go. However, there is confusion about entropy, even from leading scientists and physicists. Doing this does not stop entropy, but what it does achieve is a slow-down in entropy itself. The same is true if we happen to look after our bodies, and we eat good, fresh healthy foods, combined with exercise. If we smoke, or are obese through fatty foods, we lack exercise, we drink too much alcohol and generally do not look after our bodies, then entropy will begin to work faster on us. Indeed, how we then treat our bodies, has a direct bearing on how fast or slow entropy will work on us. This means that it has a direct effect on our cell structures. However, if there are those who believe that it is entropy that works within biological bodies, it is then known as ‘body enthropy’. In fact, there are many others who believe that the aging process, and entropy can be looked upon as two different things. Cell damage within us accumulates to such an extent because of its interaction with the environment around us. The random changes within our bodies, as we continue to live is, some physicists believe, the cause of entropy. However, there are many physicists who believe that e entropy and the aging process are two different things, when it comes to biological bodies. This is the law of nature, and it happens to everything that we see – including us. What was once new begins to deteriorate over a period of time until it ceases to exist. The law of entropy is the gradual disorder of things within the world and the universe as a whole. So, therefore, entropy can be described as a kind of quantitative measure of disorder. That is to say that everything that is within the universe will attain a ‘uniform temperature’. In fact, the universe, as we know it – according to many physicists – is heading toward maximum entropy. It can be described as thus: that the order of things within the world, deteriorates over a period of time. Entropy: The Second Law of ThermodynamicsĮntropy is intrinsic within the laws of nature and physics.
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