Is the Argument from Degrees contradictory to the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics?

[Paleophyte]

In all seriousness, though, I think that, when trying to refute the Argument from Degrees, we are arguing with a word salad.

Not exactly word salad. It was Aquinas trying to sneak god in via Platonic Ideals. The church had a long-standing hard-on for that because it played to their need for perfection. It's why they tried to have people burned for suggesting that the Earth's orbit was an ellipse. Everything in the heavens had to be perfect. It was a pretty broken notion two millennia before Aquinas plagiarized it and adding god didn't do it any favours. So less word salad than the bastard love child of bad philosophy and organized superstition.