Entropy Questions

Entropy has always been something of a head-scratcher for me. Perhaps it's denial of the idea that everything is on a downhill slide and will be forever until nothing is left.

Oh, I concede that on a macro scale, some of the points are obvious. A tree dies, the wood rots or is burned, and eventually nothing is left. Iron rusts away. Even plastic in landfills will eventually decompose. Even on a larger scale, I get that the sun will burn through its finite supply of energy/matter and go dark.

However, as much as there is the inevitable down in the cycle, there is also the up. It's not straight line. That tree started as a blossom, got fertilized and changed into a seed, grew and grew, became tall and strong before it died. It's remains feed the next tree to spring from its seeds, which feed the next, etc. And that doesn't even start to take into the account the organisms which feed on it, from bacteria and fungus on up.

It's the big picture that keeps me puzzled. Our sun may go dark, but something will still be there, as will something remain of our planet, solar system, universe. The time scale of those changes is far beyond anything that will affect anything I can even recognize as a descendant, and thus needn't ever become "real" for me. And who can absolutely say that what is left cannot change yet again into something completely new and start some cycle all over again? Entropy's an interesting theory, but how does it stop all the bodies currently in motion and prevent collisions which provide a new influx of energy? Since nobody can explain the Big Bang to my satisfaction, as in where did all that "stuff" come from just before the explosion, how can they pretend to disprove we're not heading for another one? And don't feed me all that stuff about infinity, please, not when we can't disprove curved space and haven't a clue what gravity really is and string theory isn't even as good as the mozarella strings come from. If only one or two people on the planet can claim to understand such theories, who's to say they're not fantasy and the scientific emperor is really wearing no clothes?

For my nickel, it's all still a bunch of questions, not answers. And here are a couple more.

To grossly simplify entropy, the universe is going to hell. And if that's the case, what about Heaven? It that going to Hell also? If so, what's going to happen to Hell?