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To: caffe
"One of the biggest lies by evolutionists is to claim their "theory" is somehow exempt because the universe is not a closed system?"

The universe IS a closed system; the Earth is most definitely NOT a closed system. No evolutionist is saying the Universe is not closed. Entropy can increase in the universe as a whole while order increases on the Earth. There is no contradiction.
2,229 posted on 12/22/2005 12:07:11 PM PST by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: CarolinaGuitarman
The universe IS a closed system; the Earth is most definitely NOT a closed system. No evolutionist is saying the Universe is not closed. Entropy can increase in the universe as a whole while order increases on the Earth. There is no contradiction.

For the life of me, I can't understand why the concept of the Sun is so difficult to communciate to some folks.

2,236 posted on 12/22/2005 12:30:34 PM PST by RogueIsland
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

Isaac Asimov does'nt agree -

"It is probably no exaggeration to claim that the laws of thermodynamics represent some of the best science we have today. While the utterances in some fields (such as astronomy) seem to change almost daily, the science of thermodynamics has been noteworthy for its stability. In many decades of careful observations, not a single departure from any of these laws has ever been noted." 11

If Evolution is true, there must be an extremely powerful force or mechanism at work in the cosmos that can steadily defeat the powerful, ultimate tendency toward "disarrangedness" brought by the 2nd Law. If such an important force or mechanism is in existence, it would seem it should be quite obvious to all scientists. Yet, the fact is, no such force of nature has been found.
A number of scientists believe the 2nd Law, when truly understood, is enough to refute the theory of Evolution. In fact, it is one of the most important reasons why various Evolutionists have dropped their theory in favor of Creationism.


open systems/closed systems: open thermodynamic systems exchange heat, light, or matter with their surroundings, closed systems do not. No outside energy flows into a closed system. Earth is an open system; it receives outside energy from the Sun.


Is Energy the Key?
To create any kind of upward, complex organization in a closed system requires outside energy and outside information. Evolutionists maintain that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not prevent Evolution on Earth, since this planet receives outside energy from the Sun. Thus, they suggest that the Sun's energy helped create the life of our beautiful planet. However, is the simple addition of energy all that is needed to accomplish this great feat?12

Compare a living plant with a dead one. Can the simple addition of energy make a completely dead plant live?

A dead plant contains the same basic structures as a living plant. It once used the Sun's energy to temporarily increase its order and grow and produce stems, leaves, roots, and flowers - all beginning from a single seed.

If there is actually a powerful Evolutionary force at work in the universe, and if the open system of Earth makes all the difference, why does the Sun's energy not make a truly dead plant become alive again (assuming a sufficient supply of water, light, and the like)?

What actually happens when a dead plant receives energy from the Sun? The internal organization in the plant decreases; it tends to decay and break apart into its simplest components. The heat of the Sun only speeds the disorganization process.


Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith in the ORIGINS video series.

The distinguished scientist and origins expert, Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith, puts it this way:


"What is the difference then between a stick, which is dead, and an orchid which is alive? The difference is that the orchid has teleonomy in it. It is a machine which is capturing energy to increase order. Where you have life, you have teleonomy, and then the Sun's energy can be taken and make the thing grow - increasing its order" [temporarily].13
teleonomy: Information stored within a living thing. Teleonomy involves the concept of something having a design and purpose. Non-teleonomy is "directionlessness," having no project. The teleonomy of a living thing is somehow stored within its genes. Teleonomy can use energy and matter to produce order and complexity.14


Where did the teleonomy of living things originate? It is important to note that the teleonomy (the ordering principle, the know-how) does not reside in matter itself. Matter, itself, is not creative. Dr. Wilder-Smith:

"The pure chemistry of a cell is not enough to explain the working of a cell, although the workings are chemical. The chemical workings of a cell are controlled by information which does not reside in the atoms and molecules."15

Creationists believe cells build themselves from carefully designed and coded information which has been passed from one life to the next since their original inception.
[See below for further evidence that the 2nd Law is a major problem for Evolution]

Recommended book from Eden Communications. The Illustrated ORIGINS Answer Book by Paul S. Taylor. [info]

References and Endnotes

Heat is the name of energy when it is moved from one area to another. [Allen L. King, Thermophysics (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Company, 1962), p. 5.]

Heat is transferred by virtue of a temperature difference. Work is energy transferred by virtue of a force.

Emmett L. Williams, editor, Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (5093 Williamsport Drive, Norcross, 18.

Lord Kelvin as quoted in A.W. Smith and J.N. Cooper, Elements of Physics, 8th edition (New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1972), p. 241.

Emmett Williams (1981), p. 19 (endnote above).

World-renowned Evolutionist and avid anti-Creationist Isaac Asimov confirmed that:
"Another way of stating the second law then is, 'The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!' Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself - and that is what the second law is all about."

[Isaac Asimov, "In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can't Even Break Even", Smithsonian Institution Journal (June 1970), p. 6 (emphasis added).]

"The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the amount of available work you can get out of the energy of the universe is constantly decreasing. If you have a great deal of energy in one place, a large intensity of it, so that you have a high temperature here and a low temperature there, then you can get work out of that situation. The smaller the difference in temperature, the less work you can get out of it. Now, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there is always a tendency for the hot areas to cool off and the cool areas to warm up -- so that less and less work can be obtained out of it. Until finally, when everything is one temperature, you cannot get any work out of it, even though all the energy is still there. And this is true for EVERYTHING in general, the universe all over."

[Isaac Asimov in The Origin of the Universe in the ORIGINS: How the World Came to Be video series (PO Box 200, Gilbert AZ 85299 USA: Eden Communications, 1983).]


Technically and most succinctly, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that:
"The total amount of entropy in nature is increasing."

[S. Gasstone, Textbook of Physical Chemistry (New York: D.
R.B. Lindsay, "Physics - To What Extent Is It Deterministic?" American Scientist, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1968), pp. 100-111.







Emmett Williams, Ph.D.:
"Obviously Evolution involves transformation, and natural transformations require energy. Such a description of evolution as given above [refers to Huxley quote] would require tremendous quantities of energy and many energy transformations. The process of Evolution requires energy in various forms, and thermodynamics is the study of energy movement and transformation. The two fields are clearly related. Scientific laws that govern thermodynamics must also govern Evolution."

[Emmett L. Williams, editor, Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (5093 Williamsport Drive, Norcross, Georgia 30092: Creation Research Society Books, 1981), p. 10.]


The well-known chemist and Evolutionist Sidney Fox confirms this belief in increasing complexity:
"Evolution, however, has put together the smallest components; it has proceeded from the simple to the complex."

[Sidney W. Fox, "Chemical Origins of Cells - 2," Chemical and Engineering News, Vol. 49 (December 6, 1971), p. 46.]
In the context of this discussion, "order" means "arrangedness", not necessarily "uniformity". That is, adaption of the parts to the whole, and of the whole to some plan.
[Harold L. Armstrong, "Thermodynamics, Energy, Matter, and Form, Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2 (September 1978), pp. 119-121, and Vol. 15, No. 3 (December 1978), pp. 167-168, 174.]



rank Greco, "On the Second Law of Thermodynamics," American Laboratory, Vol. 14 (October 1982), p. 80-88 (emphasis added).

E.B. Stuart, B. Gal-Or, and A.J. Brainard, editors, Deductive Quantum Thermodynamics in a Critical Review of Thermodynamics (Baltimore: Mono Book Corporation, 1970), p. 78 (emphasis added).

Emmett L. Williams, editor, Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (5093 Williamsport Drive, Norcross, Georgia 30092: Creation Research Society Books, 1981), pp. 7-8.]
[Also, see: Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984), pp. 113-165.]



he 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is just as valid for open systems as it is for closed systems, says John Ross, Harvard University:
"...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."

[John Ross, letter in Chemical and Engineering News, Vol. 58 (July 7, 1980), p. 40.]

Dr. Henry Morris has proposed A COMPREHENSIVE DEFINITION OF THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS in accordance with this concept:
"In any ordered system, open or closed, there exists a tendency for that system to decay to a state of disorder, which tendency can only be suspended or reversed by an external source of ordering energy directed by an informational program and transformed through an ingestion-storage-converter mechanism into the specific work required to build up the complex structure of that system.

If either the information program or the converter mechanism is not available to that 'open' system, it will not increase in order, no matter how much external energy surrounds it. The system will decay in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics."

[Henry M. Morris, "Entropy and Open Systems," Acts and Facts, Vol. 5 (P.O. Box 2667, El Cajon, California 92021: Institute for Creation Research, October 1976).]


Ernst Mayr, Ph.D., Evolutionist:
"Living organisms, however, differ from inanimate matter by the degree of complexity of their systems and by the possession of a genetic program... The genetic instructions packaged in an embryo direct the formation of an adult, whether it be a tree, a fish, or a human. The process is goal-directed, but from the instructions in the genetic program, not from the outside. Nothing like it exists in the inanimate world."

For Further Evidence That the 2nd Law Is a Major Problem for Evolution
(including rebuttal arguments against claims that this law is wrongly applied against Evolution or that it is contradicted by growth, living systems, crystal formation, etc.)

Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984).

Emmett L. Williams, editor, Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (Norcross, Georgia: Creation Research Society Books, 1981).

Arthur E. Wilder-Smith, The Creation of Life (Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1970), and Man's Origin, Man's Destiny (Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1968).

Walter L. Bradley, "No Relevance to the Origin of Life," Origins Research, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1987), pp. 13-14 (addresses some arguments raised by Dr. John W. Patterson and Francis Arduini, etc., shows that the basic arguments used by Evolutionists against the 2nd Law have no relevance to the origin of life).


2,374 posted on 12/22/2005 8:18:55 PM PST by caffe (D)
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