. . . because RNA is a simple chemical.
I’m tellin’ ya.
My single word rebuttal of this garbage is this:
Entropy.
It’s all you have to say to these guys and they immediately get defensive.
One big issue with these probes we send to Saturn and Jupiter’s satellites are that entropy holds - things are getting more chaotic, not less. Entropy holds on Mars too - it had an atmosphere, and water, and now it doesn’t.
If entropy ISN’T always increasing, several of their models fall apart pretty violently.
On Earth, however, entropy does not hold. Species adapt.
They hate hearing this. Earth has moved from chaos to order, while all the other evidence they find out there in space suggests entropy always increases.
I hate to get Biblical here, but it is interesting to note that the Christian ‘Creation Myth’ is nothing more than the story of God declaring the law of entropy suspended on Earth. A one sentence synopsis of Gen 1 is this:
In the beginning there was the Word, and from it Order, and it was good.
The suspension of the law of Entropy may be the first evidence of Intelligent Design.
No, "they" don't, because what you're saying is nonsense that was demolished decades ago. There is no law of thermodynamics that requires entropy to increase on a local scale. The Second Law only applies to the universe, or to completely isolated thermodynamic systems. The Earth is neither of those things.
Fail.
Order out of chaos happens all the time outside of living beings. When salt water dries formerly random molecules of NaCL form regular, organized, predictable crystals. You can’t reliably make such broad statements about all applications of the laws of thermodynamics as you have here.
Nicely put.
Need time to fully grok......(rereading an old favorite).
Cheers,
KYPD
On Earth, however, entropy does not hold. Species adapt.
...
Only if you exclude the Sun from the thermodynamic system.
Your statement is ridiculous. If entropy always increases, then there would be no planets, no stars, no galaxies, no elements heavier than lithium and beryllium.
Entropy decreases in systems where there are forces at play capable of capturing or converting energy into complexity.
Gravity causes matter to clump, entropy decreases in those localities. Large clumps form stars, smaller clumps around stars form planets, entropy decreases in those localities. Stars fuse light atoms into heavier atoms, decreasing entropy in that locality. Many stars eventually explode distributing heavy elements throughout the universe, which then condense into stars and rocky and gaseous planets, entropy decreases in those localities. Elements on cooling planets react with other chemicals, with energy input from starlight and residual heat energy from the planets’ cores to form complex molecules, entropy decreases in those localities.
The entire Universe refutes your hypothesis. The only thing required for entropy to decrease is capture of energy, and there is plenty of energy and ways to capture energy available. Mars is dead because it is too far from the sun and has cooled to the point where there is insufficient local energy for complex chemicals to react.
“The suspension of the law of Entropy may be the first evidence of Intelligent Design.”
There is no suspension. Life only appears to us as a temporary reversal of entropy since it is compelled to expend energy on new structures to compete with other life for the greatest share of energy. When you go from single cells to trees, the energy efficiency per area of the planet skyrockets. However, that tree now blocks sun to small organisms so they are forced to grow taller to compete. Animals compete for the plants, predator animals compete for those animals, etc.
It seems anti-entropic since we have so much energy here. However, 100% of energy on the planet is from the sun or latent heat in the core. Eventually all life on this planet will stop when those sources stop releasing energy. The remaining life will adapt and consume all that is left until the last microbe on this planet breaks down the last molecule with any potential energy (originally created with energy from the sun).
You see, life doesn’t suspend entropy. It simply takes us on another, more creative route towards the inevitable “zero-ing” of all potential energy in the Universe...
A common argument against biological evolution is that the theory contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. The second law says that disorder, or entropy, always increases or stays the same over time. How then can evolution produce more complex life forms over time? The answer is that the second law is only valid in closed systems with no external sources of energy. Since the Earth receives continual energy from the Sun, the second law does not apply.
I don’t think they “hate hearing this”, it’s just nonsense. Entropy only applies to closed systems. So, you can talk about the entropy of the universe as a whole, since that is a closed system. Or you can talk about the entropy of some theoretical system that has no inputs, and that is fine too.
Talking about the entropy of anything else, though, is foolishness, since everything else in the universe is an open system. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking molecules, living organisms, planets, solar systems, or galaxies, none of them actually exist “in a vacuum”, so to speak.
Since they are open systems, the evidence you cite is simply a local decrease in the entropy of the larger, closed system that is our universe. The entropy of the whole universe is still increasing, so there is no violation of the law.