Dilemma between entropy and original sin?

[ContegoFides]

I have struggled with a question reconciling original sin with science, with the idea in mind that Truth does not contradict itself. The Church teaches revealed Truth, and that Truth will not contradict scientific Truth, and so I know an answer must exist to my dilemma (whether that be error in logic, or if the higher level of abstraction can be found). I’ve come up with an answer, but it is not intellectually satisfying to me.

So, here goes.

Premise 1: It is an infallible teaching of the Church that original sin brought death to all men. (CCC 402; CCC 1008; Rom 5:12, 19). Even deeper, Adam had original holiness (CCC 404) and would be preserved from death prior to the fall.

Presise 2: The second law of thermodynamics is that entropy must increase. In simple terms, the second law is an expression of the fact that over time differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential tend to even out in a physical system that is isolated from the outside world. Entropy is a measure of how much this evening-out process has progressed. If the universe is considered as a single system, overall entropy in the universe must increase.

Conclusion 1: Given premise 2, all physical bodies (planets, stars, humans) are ultimately ordered towards breaking down into their component parts in order to maintain the second law of thermodynamics; again, with the universe considered as the system. In other words, if the universe is taken as the system, ultimately everything will achieve a state of “heat death” in which everything is a universal temperature. (Interestingly enough, this will probably not happen based on current understanding of cosmology, as “dark energy” seems to be causing the universe to inflate to such an extent that the universe will likely experience a “big rip” before heat death can occur.)

Premise 3: The definition of “death” is to be rendered into component parts. For example, the death of a person is the separation of the component parts of the soul and body. CCC 1016.

Conclusion 2: Given conclusion 1, the natural prediliction for all bodies, including ours, is to eventually separate into their component parts. Given premise 3, we can conclude that the universe is intrinsically built to be oriented towards death; that is, rendering things into their component parts.

While it is true that within local systems entropy may decrease, within the universe as a whole entropy must increase.

Dilemma: The Church teaches that we brought death into the world. However, the universe appears to be oriented towards separation of component parts, and hence death. These seem to be at odds with each other.

My way out of the dilemma is supernatural - God prevented us from being allowed to die regardless of the death (or breakdown) of systems around us. However, it seems weird to think that we had some special exception to natural physical laws that otherwise seem to apply to us.

I feel like I’m missing something, made a logic error, or something.

Comments?

 

[ContegoFides]

Deleted by author

 

[ricmat]

Dilemma: The Church teaches that we brought death into the world. However, the universe appears to be oriented towards separation of component parts, and hence death. These seem to be at odds with each other.

God created the laws of the universe, and he can change them anytime he wants.

Suppose “In the beginning” that God created a universe in which entropy was not increasing. Adam and Eve sin, and entropy starts increasing.

My way out of the dilemma is supernatural - God prevented us from being allowed to die regardless of the death (or breakdown) of systems around us. However, it seems weird to think that we had some special exception to natural physical laws that otherwise seem to apply to us.

I feel like I’m missing something, made a logic error, or something.

Comments?

Why do you think that death existed for everything else, and only man had eternal life? Death entered the world with the sin of Adam and Eve. Not just death for them, but death for everything.

Our souls transcend the universe, entropy, etc. So our souls never die, even if the universe does.

Our bodies will be resurrected in the “new creation” in which none of the old natural laws need apply.

My 2 cents.

 

[ContegoFides]

Why do you think that death existed for everything else, and only man had eternal life? Death entered the world with the sin of Adam and Eve. Not just death for them, but death for everything.

Reading the CCC seems to indicate that Man earned death for himself. I am unsure what Catholic teaching is regarding death for everything else. If man’s sin brought death for everything else, then my original dilemma gets much worse.

Because we know the dinosaurs expired before we did, as did many stars before us. If so, then we could not have introduced death into the universe because death existed before us - and that would be gravely problematic in my mind. It’s much easier to believe that people didn’t die when God first created us.

God created the laws of the universe, and he can change them anytime he wants.

Agreed. However, while I fully acknowledge all Church approved miracles as being beyond science, I’ve noticed God usually doesn’t work that way. Often he works within his laws. In fact, science actually reveals more of God’s majesty. Often it is our understanding that is faulty, though it’s fully possible that God could handle such issues miraculously.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Contego,

Have you seen this, from the Angelic Doctor?

A thing may be incorruptible in three ways.

First, on the part of matter–that is to say, either because it possesses no matter, like an angel; or because it possesses matter that is in potentiality to one form only, like the heavenly bodies. Such things as these are incorruptible by their very nature.

Secondly, a thing is incorruptible in its form, inasmuch as being by nature corruptible, yet it has an inherent disposition which preserves it wholly from corruption; and this is called incorruptibility of glory; because as Augustine says (Ep. ad Dioscor.): “God made man’s soul of such a powerful nature, that from its fulness of beatitude, there redounds to the body a fulness of health, with the vigor of incorruption.”

Thirdly, a thing may be incorruptible on the part of its efficient cause; in this sense man was incorruptible and immortal in the state of innocence. For, as Augustine says (QQ. Vet. et Nov. Test. qu. 19 [Work of an anonymous author, among the supposititious works of St. Augustine]: “God made man immortal as long as he did not sin; so that he might achieve for himself life or death.” For man’s body was indissoluble not by reason of any intrinsic vigor of immortality, but by reason of a supernatural force given by God to the soul, whereby it was enabled to preserve the body from all corruption so long as it remained itself subject to God. This entirely agrees with reason; for since the rational soul surpasses the capacity of corporeal matter, as above explained, it was most properly endowed at the beginning with the power of preserving the body in a manner surpassing the capacity of corporeal matter.

 

[ricmat]

Because we know the dinosaurs expired before we did, as did many stars before us. If so, then we could not have introduced death into the universe because death existed before us - and that would be gravely problematic in my mind. It’s much easier to believe that people didn’t die when God first created us.

But the things God created were “good”, and then after man was created they were “very good.” Perhaps when things became very good, death indeed stopped.

Agreed. However, while I fully acknowledge all Church approved miracles as being beyond science, I’ve noticed God usually doesn’t work that way.

I suspect that the creation of the universe (and of man) falls into the category of miracles. And after all, both were one time events. So even if God doesn’t usually work that way, to say that he might have worked that way in these cases seems to me to be reasonable.

Often he works within his laws. In fact, science actually reveals more of God’s majesty.

Amen to that. I’m an engineer by training, and have always been a science geek. We should find God not just in beauty, music, art, etc. but also in science. Just as only a few people find God through music (for example) because of the specific knowledge and skills required, so also with science. But for those of us who care to look, certainly, creation as revealed through science is awesome in every respect.

Often it is our understanding that is faulty, though it’s fully possible that God could handle such issues miraculously.

Amen to this also. Our understanding (scientific) is often faulty. Such has it been throughout history, and so it will be forever. But nonetheless, what we think we understand about science sometimes brings us closer to God. IMO that’s why God gives us science as a tool for our use. And for that (bringing us closer to God), let us give thanks.

 

[Slowlearner]

CCC 1008 “Death is a consequence of sin. The Church’s Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of the affirmations of Scripture and Tradition, teaches that death entered the world on account of man’s sin. Even though man’s nature is mortal God had destined him not to die. Death was therefore contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin. “Bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned” is thus “the last enemy” of man left to be conquered.”

I’m a bit confused because the first and third sentences talk of death generally, allowing the interpretation that such death includes death of animals. However, second and fourth sentence are limited to man, allowing interpretation that this paragraph only applies to death of men. Maybe animals could die before man’s original sin?

I’m no help, sorry.

 

[ContegoFides]

I’m a bit confused because the first and third sentences talk of death generally, allowing the interpretation that such death includes death of animals. However, second and fourth sentence are limited to man, allowing interpretation that this paragraph only applies to death of men. Maybe animals could die before man’s original sin?

Right, this was my reading too. I saw that only people were in a state of original holiness before the fall; so only we were immortal in body. That’s much easier to accept than the idea that there was no death at all before the fall.

Does anyone know if there is more magesterial teaching on this?

 

[cranster]

Just a thought. Why couldn’t it be that when man sinned against God the entire universe and everything in it were disordered from beginning to end to allow death, and decay. God isn’t bound by time, why must the effects of sin be bound only from the moment of the first sin forward? and maybe now everything we experience and view in the universe is viewed through the lens of the corruption of sin?

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Right, this was my reading too. I saw that only people were in a state of original holiness before the fall; so only we were immortal in body. That’s much easier to accept than the idea that there was no death at all before the fall.

Does anyone know if there is more magesterial teaching on this?

Contego,

I’m not sure, but I’ll keep my eyes open for something that can help you.

If you’ll accept my sense of things, although i could be wrong, I have an impression that it wasn’t ever proposed that animals didn’t die before the fall. So, it might not be something that is discussed much.

I’ll say this – that all of creation has been warped by original sin has more to do with man and about man than what went on with plants and animals. A tree falling in the forest before original sin wasn’t something that was disordered. Nor would be a man cutting down a tree. But a tree falling down *onto *a man would have been disordered, and that kind of stuff only happened after original sin. Likewise a lion killing and eating a gazelle wouldn’t have been something disordered in creation, but a lion killing an eating a man would.

VC

 

[itinerant1]

I have struggled with a question reconciling original sin with science, with the idea in mind that Truth does not contradict itself. The Church teaches revealed Truth, and that Truth will not contradict scientific Truth, and so I know an answer must exist to my dilemma (whether that be error in logic, or if the higher level of abstraction can be found). I’ve come up with an answer, but it is not intellectually satisfying to me.

So, here goes.

Premise 1: It is an infallible teaching of the Church that original sin brought death to all men. (CCC 402; CCC 1008; Rom 5:12, 19). Even deeper, Adam had original holiness (CCC 404) and would be preserved from death prior to the fall.

Presise 2: The second law of thermodynamics is that entropy must increase. In simple terms, the second law is an expression of the fact that over time differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential tend to even out in a physical system that is isolated from the outside world. Entropy is a measure of how much this evening-out process has progressed. If the universe is considered as a single system, overall entropy in the universe must increase.

Conclusion 1: Given premise 2, all physical bodies (planets, stars, humans) are ultimately ordered towards breaking down into their component parts in order to maintain the second law of thermodynamics; again, with the universe considered as the system. In other words, if the universe is taken as the system, ultimately everything will achieve a state of “heat death” in which everything is a universal temperature. (Interestingly enough, this will probably not happen based on current understanding of cosmology, as “dark energy” seems to be causing the universe to inflate to such an extent that the universe will likely experience a “big rip” before heat death can occur.)

Premise 3: The definition of “death” is to be rendered into component parts. For example, the death of a person is the separation of the component parts of the soul and body. CCC 1016.

Conclusion 2: Given conclusion 1, the natural prediliction for all bodies, including ours, is to eventually separate into their component parts. Given premise 3, we can conclude that the universe is intrinsically built to be oriented towards death; that is, rendering things into their component parts.

While it is true that within local systems entropy may decrease, within the universe as a whole entropy must increase.

Dilemma: The Church teaches that we brought death into the world. However, the universe appears to be oriented towards separation of component parts, and hence death. These seem to be at odds with each other.

My way out of the dilemma is supernatural - God prevented us from being allowed to die regardless of the death (or breakdown) of systems around us. However, it seems weird to think that we had some special exception to natural physical laws that otherwise seem to apply to us.

I feel like I’m missing something, made a logic error, or something.

Comments?

Generation and corruption is natural for this universe as it has been created by God. Adam and Eve were preserved from this natural process of death by a special grace, which theologians call preter-natural. Original Sin resulted in the loss of this preter-natural state and consigned our first parents and the rest of mankind to the natural processes of nature. So, the sin of Adam brought natural death to himself and his descendants. The rest of organic creation was never preserved by special Divine action from the natural processes of generation and corruption.

 

[ContegoFides]

Itinerant,

What you say is my reading of the Catechsim and makes sense according to right reason. Do you know of any authorities that put it as succinctly as you did?

 

[itinerant1]

Itinerant,

What you say is my reading of the Catechsim and makes sense according to right reason. Do you know of any authorities that put it as succinctly as you did?

For a concise, yet very informative treatment of Catholic doctrines, I have always relied on Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Dr. Ludwig Ott. For more involved discussions, I go to the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

[luke6895]

The whole of creation was altered by the fall of man including laws of science.