Sin, chaos, and entropy

[TonyChanYT]

Over the years, I have encountered a few Christians who relate entropy to sin and chaos. Is this justified?

I don't think so, at least not scientifically.

Given a system (e.g., a room, the planet, the universe), its entropy measures its thermodynamic state in units of J/K. When a system exists, its entropy exists and is theoretically measurable. Joules relates to dynamic energy; Kelvin relates to thermo temperature.

The second law of thermodynamics states that a system's entropy increases over time. No external physical force acts upon the closed system; it is just the nature of atoms and molecules residing inside the system.

Technically, entropy is not a force, and it does not measure the level of chaos either.

How do we understand the ratio J/K? What is this per Kelvin degree?

Given a system at any given time, its absolute entropy H is extremely difficult to calculate accurately. In solving practical problems, scientists often calculate ΔH, the change of entropy of the system over 2 instances of time, temperatures K1 at time 1 and K2 at time 2. When the temperature changes by 1 unit, Kevin, how much of the thermodynamic energy has changed? This is the unit J⋅K−1.

There is God who one day will put a stop to the current chaos and sin we observe on planet Earth. Still, the scientific measure of entropy may still continue. It measures the thermodynamic state of a closed system. It does not technically measure the amount of chaos or sin in the system.

 

[CrowCross]

Deut 29:5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet....God is in control of entropy.

 

[Josheb]

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Over the years, I have encountered a few Christians who relate entropy to sin and chaos. Is this justified?

I don't think so, at least not scientifically.

I don't think so, either.

The second law of thermodynamics states that a system's entropy increases over time.

Deut 29:5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet....God is in control of entropy.

The problem here is that the first two laws of thermodynamics apply to closed systems, and neither the earth nor creation is a closed system. The sun constantly puts energy into the earth's ecosystems, and God does the same with creation. In addition, there are categorical errors being committed because sin is not material. Physical decay is not moral, either. Neither is it willful (see below). Comparing natural decay due to a lack of energy input (sustenance, maintenance or empowerment) to the active, deadly, empowered rotting effects of sin is like comparing apples to zucchinis because they both grow out of the ground and must therefore be either fruits or vegetables or, even worse, comparing diamonds to beets or potatoes because they are both found in the ground. The failure to correctly identify categories for comparison begets the fallacy of false equivalence.

And you, @TonyChanYT, should have caught this immediately since you're so big of first order logic.

Citing Dt. 29:5 is an astute response, of sorts, but it proves the point: God "input" energy into the "system" where it otherwise did not exist and that happened to truncate what would otherwise have been the natural order of events on earth where both entropy and sin are present. Technically, the wandering Hebrews clothing could have been put in a sealed vacuum and it would last forty years. Any decay that might occur would be minimal, occur at the atomic level, and not observable by the naked human eye. That is not what Dt. 29:5 is about, though. What God did was a miracle and that, by definition, is a suspension or violation of the otherwise normal conditions. The lack of wear in Dt. 29:5 is due to willful acts on God's part, not that of the clothing.







More fundamentally, though, this question about entropy has other problems (such as the fact decay, or loss of energy and/or order is not exactly identical to chaos) but perhaps the most important for Christians is that decay and death have always existed and they exist as a good thing, while the death and decay resulting from sin is not a good thing. God uses both, and both have utilitarian value, but the latter is not morally or spiritually good. We know death existed in the garden because a plant produces according to its own kind and that necessarily entails the plant producing fruit that produce fruit that produces seeds, and the seeds are then buried where the seeds die and then produce another plant that produces more seeds. If that death does not occur, then there is no reproduction. That, however, is an entirely different kind of death than that which occurs by sin. Another example would be the cow or the baboon who happens to slip off a mountainside path thousands of feet up from the ground below. The God-made laws of creation include gravity and that cow or monkey does not technically "fall" to the ground. They are pulled to the ground by gravity. If a cow falls off a cliff it then plummets to the ground below and splatters upon impact, and then dies. We would have to say the otherwise natural laws of God's design were so different in Eden before sin's entrance that the laws of physics did not apply. A creature would not fall off a cliff. If it did fall thousands of feet (medically speaking, a fall of just 25 feet can be fatal) it somehow would not die because of the sudden stop at the end. The point being those kinds of deaths are not chaos, a loss of order, or entropy. The death of a person falling off a cliff is a much different death than the death resulting from having your sibling deliberately kill you with a rock. We call the first death an accident; we call the latter murder.

And, again, you, Tony should have caught these presuppositional errors since you're supposedly big on predicate logic and making sure everyone else does the same. I will commend this op for something rare: there's no reddit link to another self-justifying and self-aggrandizing TonyChanYT opinion!