Alma 12

(September 22, 2014)

                I am a fan of science (I imagine that has come through over time), and I am a fan of religion.  I especially enjoy trying to figure out what the two are saying that is consistent.  Elder Oaks advises us to understand that both support each other, but we must be careful not to let either water down the other.  I try to take that counsel to heart.

                When I read about corruption (as in this chapter), my mind always goes to the concept of entropy.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics is so prevalent in the world that we know that it is almost impossible to consider any alternative.  But what if entropy was merely the consequence of the Fall?

                Suddenly, without entropy, the idea of immortality and Heaven and so many other things becomes easy to accept rather than contrary to the understood laws of the universe.  I have often thought that one of the things that we would learn on the other side of the Veil would be just how difficult and complex it was to introduce entropy into this world.

                In our universe as we perceive it today, like repels like.  Order becomes disordered.  But in my experience, that is not the case in our spiritual lives.  As our spiritual lives become ordered, they tend to increase in order.  As they become disordered, they tend to increase in disorder.  Likewise, when we are righteous we tend to gravitate towards others who share our values and beliefs, while when we are unrighteous we tend to find the presence of righteous people uncomfortable.

                It speculate (and that really all I can do at this stage) that this attraction of opposites and repulsion of likes and increase of disorder over time is a condition unique to mortality and this Fallen world (however broadly you want to define world – whether planet, universe, galaxy, or whatever).  On the other side, I imagine that conditions will change – not because the Second Law of Thermodynamics isn’t a true scientific principle today, but that it is a condition brought about much like a magnetic field is brought about through the application of a current and when the current is turned off the field ends and conditions return to normal.