The Law of Decay
By: Date: June 4, 2019 Categories: Uncategorized
Entropy

It was a complete disconnect. My first undergraduate class of the day was Physics, where I learned the laws of thermodynamics:

First Law: Energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, so you can never get ahead. 

Second Law: Entropy – or disorder – always increases, so you can’t even break even.

Third Law: The entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches heat death, so you can’t get out of the game.

The above laws are a scientific equivalent to the old adage of no one avoiding death or taxes.

After considering the above “laws” of the physical universe, I walked a short distance across the quad into another building for my class in Biology, where I learned the law of natural selection:

Over many generations, natural selection causes everything to move toward higher degrees of adaptation and design, from single cells, to fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and finally – us. 

As I headed to lunch, I said, “One of these subjects is lying.”

The Law of Entropy is sometimes called the Law of Decay. If I leave my car parked outside and never wash it, it will turn dull, dirty, and eventually rust. If I leave it there long enough, it will fall apart. Longer still, and it will turn to dust and blow away. 

If the Law of Decay is correct, then life must be a miracle. Some source of energy and information from outside of the system must intervene for it to exist. Not just energy, but energy and information. Heat a pot of amino acids as long as you want, but without the information within the genetic code, no life can spawn in it. 

The physical universe consists of matter and energy. E=MC2 means that energy is accelerated matter, and matter is just energy that slowed down a whole bunch, because its entropy increased. The Third Law predicts that the next stage after matter is death.

There is no way we get life in this world, without intelligent intervention and a source of energy that comes from outside the universe. I find it easier to believe in God than in a universe that doesn’t follow its own laws.

So what does the Bible say about all this? Glad you asked.

Revelation 21:1

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and first earth had passed away.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Eternal life is an oxymoron according to physics, unless we think about what the laws of physics actually say. Since life does exist where it cannot exist from within the system, the Law of Decay indicates that life originates from a power and intelligence that is outside the universe. 

Or God. God works for me.