Deism, Theism and the demands of entropy

I've been thinking about the issue of entropy in a deist universe. For those unfamiliar with deism, it is the belief in God as a Creator who only acts to put the system of the Universe in motion, and subsequently does not intervene.

According to Newton's laws of thermodynamics, any enclosed system like deism will continuously degrade until it reaches 100% entropy and, because nothing then changes, time stops. These was elequently explained by Professor Brian Cox in his recent Wonders of the Universe documentary. Since time is defined as a sequence of change, when everything ceases to change, time ceases to pass.

This is a highly nihilistic view of the universe - one in which everything is destined to get worse and worse until all life and all meaning is eventually destroyed. Of course, this isn't the way that deists see the world. They see themselves as rational, progressive people. They think that abandoning the belief in an interventionist God is necessary to tame the more superstitious aspects of monotheism.

However, they fail to appreciate the full meaning of being created by an ultimate being. For if God created the universe, then all meaning within the universe is bestowed by God, and nothing in the universe can have meaning except in relation to God. From God we have everything, and without God we are nothing. Thus deism is impossible. It is impossible to limit God in the way the deists seek to do. Because without God, who gives life to the universe, the universe would shrivel and die, in the manner which Professor Cox describes. The laws of reason demand it. The universe did not give life to itself, and it cannot sustain life on its own.

It is only by God's continued activity in the universe, by his continuous process of creation, that the universe can continue to exist indefinitely - or until God chooses to bring about its conclusion. In the language of Newtonian physics - God's action in the universe creates new energy gradients, because God acts from outside the system, pushing back entropy, creating order. Hence, in the words of the Qur'an, God is not only the creator, but the also the sustainer, of the universe.