Sunday 9 October 2016

Christ and the second law of thermodynamics

Have I lost you already? I promise this won't be as boring and tough as it sounds.
This was inspired by a talk given in a family presentation during sacrament meeting this morning so a big thank you to Brother Lomax. 
The second law of thermodynamics is sometimes referred to as Entropy, it's something you'll know about even if you can't name it. Think of an old abandoned house, nobody lives there and nobody causes it any harm yet it still crumbles and falls apart. Think of cheese that you left in the fridge before you went on holiday, no one has done anything to it yet its mouldy and rotten when you get home. So, that force, that strange thing that slowly and inevitably wears everything down is entropy, it destroys thing purely through time. Google (via the Boston University physics department) defines the second law of thermodynamics and entropy as 'The second law of thermodynamics can be stated in terms of entropy. If a reversible process occurs, there is no net change in entropy. In an irreversible process, entropy always increases, so the change in entropy is positive.'
Are you still with me? I know this doesn't make much sense in terms of the Gospel but I promise we're getting there. So let's take the first part of that explanation 'if a reversible process occurs, there is no net change in entropy' from this we can boil it down to mean that the only way for entropy to not increase is for there to be a reversible process. In the Gospel we have that reversible process, we have the healing power of the atonement. Mosiah 3:19 tells us that the natural man is an enemy of God, that we can't cast it off until we become a saint through the atonement. Now, if entropy is a natural process of the universe then it is also part of the natural man, simply put it's why we age, therefore entropy is an enemy of God. We know that the last thing Heavenly Father wants for us to waste away, to succumb to the natural man and allow ourselves to be worn down in earthly matters. Christ's atonement was to allow us to become more, to become greater than the natural man, this is our reversible process. What greater way to reverse the wearing down effects of the mortal life than to submit to your Heavenly Father and allow yourself a second chance. We will not waste away with this planet, the earth is dying - I think we all on some level agree with that. When we see starlight, what we're actually seeing is millennia old light from a dying star, do we wish to fade out completely and be forgotten like an old light bulb or do we wish for our mortal life to be like that of a star? Burning brightly for a short amount of time, driven slowly by that inevitable force of entropy that counts down our time here, only then to again burn brightly even after we die? 
Let's look at that second part from a gospel perspective, 'In an irreversible process, entropy always increases, so the change in entropy is positive' if entropy is a force bearing down on us, encouraging us to waste away our time here, to slowly just crumble like an old wall then in gospel terms, are we not looking at the adversary? An adversary who desperately wants to be an irreversible process, always increasing? 
Yet this doesn't have to be the way. We don't have to give in to this spiritual entropy, this wasting away of our souls. We have the beautiful healing power, the boundless forgiveness and the great promises of Christ's atonement to act as our reversible process. 

Mosiah 3:19 
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

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