Posted on 12/28/2005 3:01:53 PM PST by johnnyb_61820
... the idea that the four fundamental forces of physics alone could rearrange the fundamental particles of nature into spaceships, nuclear power plants, and computers, connected to laser printers, CRTs, keyboards and the Internet, appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics in a spectacular way.
Anyone who has made such an argument is familiar with the standard reply: the Earth is an open system, it receives energy from the sun, and order can increase in an open system, as long as it is "compensated" somehow by a comparable or greater decrease outside the system. S. Angrist and L. Hepler, for example, in "Order and Chaos", write, "In a certain sense the development of civilization may appear contradictory to the second law.... Even though society can effect local reductions in entropy, the general and universal trend of entropy increase easily swamps the anomalous but important efforts of civilized man. Each localized, man-made or machine-made entropy decrease is accompanied by a greater increase in entropy of the surroundings, thereby maintaining the required increase in total entropy."
According to this reasoning, then, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room are rusting into scrap metal -- and the door is open. In Appendix D of my new book, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations, second edition, I take a closer look at the equation for entropy change, which applies not only to thermal entropy but also to the entropy associated with anything else that diffuses, and show that it does not simply say that order cannot increase in a closed system. It also says that in an open system, order cannot increase faster than it is imported through the boundary. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I've also asked the same question (If evolution contradicts the SLOT, how doesn't life itself regardless of evolution?) several times here, and in other threads, without effect. Oh, yeah, one creationist here asserted I was crazy or ignorant for asking it, but he never actually addressed the question.
Wow!
This thread is going too fast for moi.
I've learned a lot through all the links on these threads, but still have a lot of catching up to do.
I shall contribute when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place. I'm almost there. LOL!
It's fairly obvious that something we observe happening is consistent with the laws of physics. What specific process do you think violates thermodynamics? Mutation, selection, metabolism, learning. Feel free to be as specific as you like.
I always thought it was rather foolish to bet against something that has already happened and which continues to happen right in front of us, but who knows...?
The City of Las Vegas is built on the assumption that large numbers of such people exist, and have money....
;-)
Let's rewind the tape and double the bet.
It's fustrating to argue this subject. I think the method you use there is the best though - pointing out that evolution no more contradicts the 2nd law than life processes do.
Want to bet the reply will be something like "fish turning into lizards"?
I've been asking all day, but not one of the 2nd Law wizards has even attempted to explain how evolution is different from observable life processes.
I'm particularly interested in learning, which I think butts up against the information theory argument. If learning doesn't violate the Second Law, then evolution doesn't. The processes are commensurate.
See y'all next year. Have a happy.
I'd try hard to be insulted, but I'm too busy laughing.
Have some good beer and cheap bubbly on deck. First my wife and I ring in the New Year ;-) ;-) :-P Good Night and have a Happy and Healthy Celebration. :^)
You too, b, and all others, I'm logging out to begin laying out the repast!
Cheers!
...talk to all of you next year!
Every living thing, whether evolving, devolving, or just hanging out, must remember to eat.
"By at least conventional definition any populational change in the organism is "evolution"."
Yes, it is true that evolution is the most equivocated word on the planet. I was referring to evolution as a generative phenomena.
"Again, HUH? You wanna just throw out population genetics entirely? (This would make you a bit of an oddball even among creationists.)"
Population genetics does not rely on the variation being the result of random mutation. It simply relies on variation being existant.
"Thousands and thousands of experiments, both on wild and laboratory populations, documenting the spread of mutations through populations"
Oh, you're talking about the existance of degenerative mutations. Certainly, they exist. But when we talk about "variation within a population" I am talking about naturally variable parameters that are not degenerative. It is the assumption of evolutionists that this variation arises by random mutation. It is only the bad assumptions of evolution that assumes these are both in the same class.
"I just said in general that there is available variation in a population/species, allowing it to evolve much faster than if it had to wait on new mutations to occur. This is uncontroversial even to creationists. (Indeed they insist on it. Indeed they may claim this is the only kind of evolution that happens.)"
You are actually wrong on both counts. As I said, if it is already existent within the population, then there is not much of an arms race occurring, is there? In fact, Creationists believe that evolution occurs much faster than evolutionists do. They simply believe that it is planned adaptation as apposed to unregulated/unaided evolution.
"I think I'm correct is saying that "selection" is never the "reason" (in the sense of being the cause of) variation. Selection, as noted, will tend to reduce variation."
Well, it's not supposed to :) However, modern genetics has gone to calling anything remotely Lamarckian "selection-induced" in order to cover their tracks.
"Mutation on the other hand does cause variation. What other mechanism do you propose, btw?"
1) Natural heterozygous variation
2) Transposon-mediated variation
3) Recombination-based variation
4) Other sorts of cell-mediated variation
5) Viral-induced variation
6) Degenerative mutations
See:
http://www.nwcreation.net/articles/recombinationreview.html
http://www.grisda.org/origins/54005.pdf
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Happy New Year! (To both cretoid and evos)
Indeed it is.
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”
Most Access DBs are (quick and dirty).
So am I.
Happy New Year to all!
Thanks for this information. It offers quite an insight.
You're excused. But how does your quote from Corinthians demonstrate what is "plainly wrong" with the theory of evolution?
Are you suggesting that what is "plainly wrong" with the theory cannot actually be identified, listed, or stated in any cogent way?
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