Posted on 12/20/2005 7:54:38 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.
The "13 Sisters" has not one thing to do with feminism. And any time you want to get into a verbal wrestling match- let me know so's I can dumb down enough.
Better yet- WHY don't we present both theories for what they TRULY are- man vs God or materialism vs theism. Why not show students what is REALLY at stake here? I say we show what comes from a "me first" mindset.
I have held a suspicion that some of those in here presenting themselves as "libertarians" aren't truly that at all. At worst some of you are nothing more than "stealth" lefties looking to start trouble and, at BEST, the very sort of libertarian- boozy, beer-soaked frat boy, short sighted and hedonistic thinkers who can't imagine an issue beyond your pleasure, your money, your convenience, your porn and your dope issues- who will make it an absolute impossibility to EVER see a true libertarian in DC.
YES- BOTH theories. Try to imagine an education system- supported only at the local level- where students are taught both theories and where both are actually discussed in a dispassionate and intelligent way. Imagine a generation of critical thinkers who learn a little SOMETHING, enough to make their own decision on which to believe.
It is not incumbent upon the REST of us to accept what the leftists- or YOU- tell us we MUST believe.
Like who? The handful of Discovery Institute stars? Behe? Dempski? Johnson? Not. You mean experts in fundamentalist theology who have shielded themselves from any knowledge of modern biological science, I presume? Relative DNA proximity has produced a tree of life that is, with a few micro-quibbles, identical to the tree of life produced by paleontology. This is an astonishing piece of independently derived confirming evidence as has ever been observed in the history of science. Your refusal to look at it does not a refutation make.
I beg to differ. Certain aspects of science are nothing MORE than matters of faith.
You are not differing with me. All aspects of science are matters of faith. It's just that that faith is vested in inductive reasoning tempered with an intitutionalized cynical rigor.
Belief in evolution is certainly one of those.
As is belief in any scientific theory.
It takes faith to continue to believe in that which is, to date, unprovable.
There is nothing in natural sciences that is provable. Despite all the easily accessable confirming evidence, it is still the THEORY of gravity, and it is still viewed with enough skepticism to have changed it's mind thereby make dramatic changes in our picture of the nature of the universe, within this century, and is currently being viewed with increasing suspicion due to astronomical anomolies.
Science is not at war with faith.
One might be tempted to return the compliment.
The fossil record was a great disappointment to the evolution crowd.
In your dreams. Nearly all scientists, including physicists, would tell you that we have no theory in science that has been more exhaustively, and convincingly tested than evolutionary theory. It is only outside the halls of science that there is any such "disappointment".
No such dichotomy exists. Science is not philosophical materialism, and has nothing to say, positive or negative about theism, except for that of a particular brand of scientific cranks called scientific creationists.
Why not show students what is REALLY at stake here? I say we show what comes from a "me first" mindset.
Human evolution has not produced a "me first" mindset. Humans, like most large, slow-breeding social predators exhibit a remarkable amount of co-operative and altruistic instinct compared to most of the rest of the animal kingdom, for pretty obvious reasons of genetic survival.
I have held a suspicion that some of those in here presenting themselves as "libertarians" aren't truly that at all.
What is this? What has libertianism to do with evolutionary theory?
At worst some of you are nothing more than "stealth" lefties looking to start trouble and, at BEST, the very sort of libertarian- boozy, beer-soaked frat boy, short sighted and hedonistic thinkers who can't imagine an issue beyond your pleasure, your money, your convenience, your porn and your dope issues- who will make it an absolute impossibility to EVER see a true libertarian in DC.
Good grief. This has nothing whatever to do with evolutionary theory. Haven't you been told about the dangers of drinking and typing at the same time?
YES- BOTH theories.
Whatever laymen might think, there are not two scientific theories evolution. ID does not qualify even if you pout for a week about libertarians.
Try to imagine an education system- supported only at the local level- where students are taught both theories and where both are actually discussed in a dispassionate and intelligent way. Imagine a generation of critical thinkers who learn a little SOMETHING, enough to make their own decision on which to believe.
Try to imagine an educational system--supported only at the local level--where students are taught both theories of grammar and spelling. That of an english major hired out of graduate school, and that of an illiterate street rapper.
It is not incumbent upon the REST of us to accept what the leftists- or YOU- tell us we MUST believe.
It is not incumbent upon writers of accredited science textbooks to give a tinkers poop what non-scientists think should go in science textbooks, just as it is not incumbent upon writers of music theory books to consult the deaf about music theory.
Again, despite the monopoly and lies of evolutionist, the majority of Americans are still too smart and reject this philosophy hiding under the name of science.
Again, despite the perjuries and dissembling of stealth creationists' ID supporters, accreditation committees and textbook publishers remain too smart to consult non-scientists about what science textbooks should contain.
Bingo! Worth repeating.
"You have missed the point- adaptation is NOT evolution."
On the contray. Adaptation IS evolution, when looked at over any appreciable length of time. How can you not understand that? If generations of a biological entity can adapt/change AT ALL, it follows that it be able to adapt it's way into a new species.
You astonish me. I find it outside my realm of understanding how someone could read reams of evidence, page after page of explanations, be shown the opinions of many experts in various fields of science, and still maintain "no evidence!" It demonstrates, to me, a truly impressive affinity for denial. I must actually commend you for your capacity for closed-mindedness.
I would love to hear how the 2nd law of thermo does not conflict with evolution .
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Well, it is pretty simple really. In simplified, non mathematical terms, the 2nd Law states that in a closed system, entropy (disorder) tends to increase.
Now, you will say "Ahhhh! But evolution makes things more complex" and think that shows a violation of the 2nd Law. But you missed two VERY important words. Those words are CLOSED system. An organism, a species or indeed life as a whole is not a closed system. There is a huge supply of "negative entropy" in the sky. We call it the sun. And as long as the sun keeps shining its short wavelength light on the earth, and the earth keeps reflecting longer wavelength light back out to space, then entropy of the earth/sun system will keep increasing. So no violation of the 2nd, or indeed ANY law of thermodynamics.
Does Entropy Contradict Evolution? (#141)
by Henry Morris, Ph.D.
Abstract
There is a factor called "entropy" in physics, indicating that the whole universe of matter is running down, and ultimately will reduce itself to uniform chaos. This follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which seems about as basic and unquestionable to modem scientific minds as any truth can be. At the same time that this is happening on the physical level of existence, something quite different seems to be happening on the biological level: structure and species are becoming more complex, more sophisticated, more organized, with higher degrees of performance and consciousness.1
The popular syndicated columnist, Sydney Harris, recently commented on the evolution/entropy conflict as follows:
There is a factor called "entropy" in physics, indicating that the whole universe of matter is running down, and ultimately will reduce itself to uniform chaos. This follows from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which seems about as basic and unquestionable to modem scientific minds as any truth can be. At the same time that this is happening on the physical level of existence, something quite different seems to be happening on the biological level: structure and species are becoming more complex, more sophisticated, more organized, with higher degrees of performance and consciousness.1
As Harris points out, the law of increasing entropy is a universal law of decreasing complexity, whereas evolution is supposed to be a universal law of increasing complexity. Creationists have been pointing out this serious contradiction for years, and it is encouraging that at least some evolutionists (such as Harris) are beginning to be aware of it.
How can the forces of biological development and the forces of physical degeneration be operating at cross purposes? It would take, of course, a far greater mind than mine even to attempt to penetrate this riddle. I can only pose the question - because it seems to me the question most worth asking and working upon with all our intellectual and scientific resources.2
This, indeed, is a good question, and one for which evolutionists so far have no answer. Some have tried to imagine exceptions to the Second Law at some time or times in the past, which allowed evolution to proceed in spite of entropy, but such ideas are nothing but wishful thinking.
Being a generalization of experience, the second law could only be invalidated by an actual engine. In other words, the question,. "Can the second law of thermodynamics be circumvented?" is not well-worded and could be answered only if the model incorporated every feature of the real world. But an answer can readily be given to the question, "Has the second law of thermodynamics been circumvented?" Not yet.3
Of course, the fact that no exception to the law of increasing entropy has ever been observed does not prove such a thing never happened. It simply shows that such ideas are outside the scope of science. Evolutionists are free to believe in such "singularities" by faith, if they wish (e.g., the inflationary universe, hopeful monsters, etc.) but they have no right impose them on unsuspecting young minds in the name of science. The more common rejoinder to the apparent creation/evolution conflict, however, is simply to dismiss it as "irrelevant" on the basis of the naive and incorrect belief that entropy only increases in so-called "isolated systems" - that is, systems closed to any external organizing energy or information. Lewin expresses this curious idea:
One problem biologists have faced is the apparent contradiction by evolution of the second law of thermodynamics. Systems should decay through time, giving less, not more, order. One legitimate response to this challenge is that life on earth is an open system with respect to energy and therefore the process of evolution sidesteps the law's demands for increasing disorder with time.4
It is amazing how many anti-creationist debaters and writers try to "sidestep" this serious problem with such a simplistic cliché as this. Creationists who cite the entropy principle against the evolutionary philosophy are, time and again, dismissed as either ignorant of thermodynamics or dishonest in their use of the second law. Such charges are inappropriate, to say the least.
In the first place, the entropy principle applies at least as much to open systems as to closed systems. In an isolated real system, shut off from external energy, the entropy (or disorganization) will always increase. In an open system (such as the earth receiving an influx of heat energy from the sun), the entropy always tends to increase, and, as a matter of fact, will usually increase more rapidly than if the system remained closed! An example would be a tornado sweeping through a decaying ghost town or a cast iron wrecking ball imposed on an abandoned building. Anyone familiar with the actual equations of heat flow will know that a simple influx of heat energy into a system increases the entropy of that system; it does not decrease it, as evolution would demand. Opening a system to external energy does not resolve the entropy problem at all, but rather makes it worse!
The statement in integral form, namely that the entropy in an isolated system cannot decrease, can be replaced by its corollary in differential form, which asserts that the quantity of entropy generated locally cannot he negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not, and irrespective of whether the process under consideration is irreversible or not.5
Thus entropy in an open system always at least tends to increase, no matter how much external energy. is available to it from the sun or any other source. To offset this tendency, the external energy must somehow be supplied to it, not as raw energy (like a bull in a china shop) but as organizing information. If the energy of the sun somehow is going to transform the non-living molecules of the primeval soup into intricately complex, highly organized, replicating living cells, and then to transmute populations of simple organisms like worms into complex, thinking human beings, then that energy has to be stored and converted into an intricate array of sophisticated machinery by an intricate array of complex codes and programs. If such codes and mechanisms are not available on the earth, then the incoming heat energy will simply disintegrate any organized systems that might accidentally have shown up there.
Evolutionists have hardly even addressed this problem as yet, let alone solved it. There are, to their credit, a few theorists who have at least recognized the problem and offered certain speculations as to possible directions in which to search for a solution. The one man whose speculations have received the most attention (even acquiring for him a Nobel Prize in 1977) is Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine, who advanced the strange idea of "dissipative structures" as a possible source of new complexity in nature. He postulated that when systems somehow are "perturbed" to a "far-from-equilibrium" condition, as a result of a large influx of external energy which produces an inordinate amount of internal energy dissipation, then certain "structures" might be generated. An example would be the generation of storm cells in the earth's atmosphere by incoming solar heat.
How such "dissipative structures" could possibly produce organic evolution is completely unknown and seems quite impossible to imagine. Such systems in no way contradict the principle of entropy but rather are illustrations of entropy working overtime! The Harvard scientist, John Ross, comments:
...there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. ...there is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.6
Nevertheless, this bizarre notion of generating organization through chaos has achieved a remarkable following in recent years, not only among evolutionists anxious for a solution to the entropy problem but also among radicals desiring a scientific justification for social revolutions. For example, UNESCO scientist Ervin Laszlo has said:
What I see Prigogine doing is giving legitimization to the process of evolution - self-organization under conditions of change. ...Its analogy to social systems and evolution should be very fruitful.7
Space precludes discussion here of the melange of speculative applications that have been related to Prigogine's suggestion since he "gave legitimization to evolution," as Laszlo put it (thus admitting by inference that evolution was illegitimate until Prigogine came along with this unique remedy for entropy). Typical of these is a paper by two leading evolutionary biologists8 who speculate (without proof, either biological or mathematical) that evolution is inevitably produced in a biosphere increasing in entropy, through the mechanisms suggested by Prigogine's non-equilibrium thermodynamics. However, evolutionist Roger Lewin, reviewing their paper, calls their speculations mere "heuristic formulations" and then cites Prigogine himself as being mystified by it.
"I see how you can do this with molecules," he told Brooks, "but I don't see how you can do it with species. I don't understand the extrapolation."'
And neither does anyone else! If science is to be based on fact and evidence, rather than metaphysical speculations, then entropy does not explain or support evolution at all. In fact, at least until someone can demonstrate some kind of naturalistic comprehensive biochemical predestinating code and a pre-existing array of energy storage-and-conversion mechanisms controlled by that code to generate increased organized complexity in nature, the entropy law seems to preclude evolution altogether. The marvelously complex universe is not left unexplained and enigmatically mysterious by this conclusion, however. It was created by the omnipotent and omniscient King of Creation! If evolutionists prefer not to believe this truth, they can make that choice, but all the real facts of science - especially the fundamental and universal law of entropy - support it.
REFERENCES
1. Sydney Harris, "Second Law of Thermodynamics" Field Enterprise Syndicate, as appearing in San Francisco Examiner, January 27, 1984).
2. Ibid.
3. Frank A. Grew, "On the Second Law of Thermodynamics," American Laboratory (October 1982), p.88.
4. Roger Lewin, "A Downward Slope to Greater Diversity," Science (Volume 217, Septernber 24, 1982) p. 1239.
5. Arnold Sommerfeld, Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics (New York Academic Press, 1956), p. 155
6. John Ross, Letter to the Editor, Chemical and Enqineeeinq News (July 7, 1980), p.40.
7. Ervin Laszlo as quoted by Wil Lepkowski in "The Social Thermodynamics of Ilya Prigogine.", Chemical and Engineering News (Volume 57, April 16, 1979), p.30.
8. Edward Wiley and Daniel Brooks, "Victims of History - a Non-Equilibrium Approach to Evolution," Systematic Zoology (Volume 31, No.1, 1982).
9. Roger Lewin, op cit.
*Dr. Henry M. Morris is Founder and President Emeritus of the Institute for Creation Research.
Anyone familiar with the actual equations of heat flow will know that a simple influx of heat energy into a system increases the entropy of that system; it does not decrease it, as evolution would demand. Opening a system to external energy does not resolve the entropy problem at all, but rather makes it worse!
The statement in integral form, namely that the entropy in an isolated system cannot decrease, can be replaced by its corollary in differential form, which asserts that the quantity of entropy generated locally cannot he negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not
And he makes the same mistake you do: introducing energy from a source external to an otherwise closed system increases the amount of energy in the system to do work with, without a need for net payment in work expended within the system, there is a net payment in work, to ship the energy in, but the closed system wasn't the part of the whole system that paid the piper. If the amount of work you can get out of a system goes up, the entropy goes up--by definition. You should not take seriously the theories of a president of ICR freighted with math words, without benchchecking the math against the definitions of the theories in question.
As Harris points out, the law of increasing entropy is a universal law of decreasing complexity, whereas evolution is supposed to be a universal law of increasing complexity. Creationists have been pointing out this serious contradiction for years, and it is encouraging that at least some evolutionists (such as Harris) are beginning to be aware of it.
This is also incorrect in two ways, first of all, it isn't inherent in in evolutionary theory that evolution must produce more complexity. It seems to be a general trend along a couple of dimensions, but nothing about evolutionary theory insists on it. Second of all, the application of information entropy, such that you can even speak meaningfully of complexity in this context, isn't clearly a sound enterprise, although there are some science folks floating around recently who seem to be able to put up an argument that the two notions of entropy can be convolved--I wouldn't put money on it just yet.
You increase entropy when you make less energy available to do work. This is basically a law about processes that are mathematically continuous, and it has a clear correspondance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Trying to creep the argument over to information entropy in a mathematically discrete domain is an enterprise littered with extremely doubtful correlations.
If the amount of work you can get out of a system goes up, the entropy goes up
I should have said entropy decreases.
The predictions of common design aren't the same as those of common descent. Unless you believe that the designer changes His designs over time to match the predictions of common descent, in order to trick paleontologists and biologists into believing that common descent is true.
Let me know when you have some testable predictions of common design, and then we can check the fossil record and the bio-molecular evidence to see if your predictions are met. We'll wait.
My post was to point out the absurdity of an argument based on the premise that the theory of evolution is wrong based on the fact that there have been no demonstrable instances of evolutionary changes in the past 150 years, yet, we all have an unyielding faith that in spite of a two thousand year-long wait, Jesus will return.
So, if we are to discard the notion of evolution based on the lack of evidentiary facts spanning a period of 150 years to support it, then how do we believe the reality of Jesus, when we have an even longer period of time lacking the same evidentiary facts?
That's the primary difference between the words "faith" and "science", and the twain should never meet in either a classroom or a place of worship.
Turned on its head, the creationist argument of "what has evolved these past few centuries?", could be turned into "what has God created these past few thousands of years?"
Well, millions of species, apparently, since only a few-thousand at the most absurdly optimistic stretch could have been on the ark, and there are now 20+million species. The standard creationist mantra is that speciation is impossible so God must have been hard at work since the disembARKation. (stand by for some blather about "adaption within kinds not being macroevolution")
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