The 2nd law of Thermodynamics does not apply. It states:
The earth is not an isolated system with a defined amount of energy; it is receiving constant electromagnetic energy input from the Sun (approximately 43 MJ on every square meter of the earth per day). And energy from cosmic rays. And matter and energy from collisions with meteors, asteroids. And the 40 tons of matter added to earth each day.
We're far from fitting the criteria of an isolated system that is required for application of that law of thermodynamics.
Question - since virtually everywhere on earth recieves energy from the Sun, wouldn’t your interpretation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics render the law virtually never applicable? Because energy is always going to be coming in from the sun unless you are conducting a test in lab conditions where you can block out the suns energy. Doesn’t this interpretation then create a loophole that swallows the law almost entirely.
Yes, the earth is a “system driven far from equilibrium”, as witness the many forms of weather phenomena. The complex processes of thunderstorms, for example, are analogous ( ANALOGOUS, I say! ) to the complex chemistry that takes place in the oceans, and one must think along these lines for any theory of the origin of life. It’s very difficult, though. For example, in weather models, do they find that rain showers and thunderclaps spontaneously develop as the model unfolds? I don’t think so.
‘This does seem to be a valid point—do creationists still use this argument? Am I missing something here?’
The Second Law can be stated in many different ways, e.g.:
* that the entropy of the universe tends towards a maximum (in simple terms, entropy is a measure of disorder)
* usable energy is running out
* information tends to get scrambled
* order tends towards disorder * a random jumble won’t organize itself
It also depends on the type of system:
* An isolated system exchanges neither matter nor energy with its surroundings. The total entropy of an isolated system never decreases. The universe is an isolated system, so is running down— see If God created the universe, then who Created God? for what this implies.
* A closed system exchanges energy but not matter with its surroundings. In this case, the 2nd Law is stated such that the total entropy of the system and surroundings never decreases.
* An open system exchanges both matter and energy with its surroundings. Certainly, many evolutionists claim that the 2nd Law doesn’t apply to open systems. But this is false. Dr John Ross of Harvard University states:
… 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 thermodynamics 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.
Open systems still have a tendency to disorder. There are special cases where local order can increase at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. One case is crystallization, covered in Question 2 below. The other case is programmed machinery, that directs energy into maintaining and increasing complexity, at the expense of increased disorder elsewhere. Living things have such energy-converting machinery to make the complex structures of life.
The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction. Just standing out in the sun won’t make you more complex—the human body lacks the mechanisms to harness raw solar energy. If you stood in the sun too long, you would get skin cancer, because the sun’s undirected energy will cause mutations. (Mutations are copying errors in the genes that nearly always lose information). Similarly, undirected energy flow through an alleged primordial soup will break down the complex molecules of life faster than they are formed.
It’s like trying to run a car by pouring petrol on it and setting it alight. No, a car will run only if the energy in petrol is harnessed via the pistons, crankshaft, etc. A bull in a china shop is also raw energy. But if the bull were harnessed to a generator, and the electricity directed a pottery-producing machine, then its energy could be used to make things.
To make proteins, a cell uses the information coded in the DNA and a very complex decoding machine. In the lab, chemists must use sophisticated machinery to make the building blocks combine in the right way. Raw energy would result in wrong combinations and even destruction of the building blocks.
I suggest that thermodynamic arguments are excellent when done properly, and the ‘open systems’ canard is anticipated. Otherwise I suggest concentrating on information content. The information in even the simplest organism would take about a thousand pages to write out. Human beings have 500 times as much information as this. It is a flight of fantasy to think that undirected processes could generate this huge amount of information, just as it would be to think that a cat walking on a keyboard could write a book.