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 ...
My mom (Or what's left of her) is in a container at home. You mean all I need to do, is to get that dust wet and she'll be BACK?
Indeed!
Oh What a Savior!
That is why a species will be the same in the fossil record for millions of years and dissappear then a few thousand years later re-appear as something "related" to the original.
Where are the "small changes" that make the change?
Were they preserved in Darwin's freezer?
By the above definitions, since there is not data to explain it, the gap is covered by a "guess" not by a Leap Of Faith. (You have to preserve the scientific language.)
...and are STUPID!
Then, after that, they must remember to breed, or else the family reunion won't be very big.
(HMmmm... I wonder how many times LIFE had to get started before it figgered out that it MUST reproduce?
Almost as bad as ROMERO!)
So...
You ARE saying that Paul was wrong!
Are you suggesting that what is "plainly wrong" with the theory cannot actually be identified, listed, or stated in any cogent way?
Oh no!
I wasn't replying to the ToE or it's adherants in any way, other than when THEY try to explain Spiritual things to others!
Ah... you are begining to know me!
Many have asked, "What's the C for?"
And I've replied, "Cuddly, Clever, Cool, or Charming."
"To you perhaps."
If they only have meaning to you then they're rather pointless.
You CRIDers crack me up. You can only discuss things using platitiudes, ad hominem attacks, and logical fallacies.
Oh wait -- those are the only tools available to you.
Pretty good steaks, I would imagine!
Lord KNOWS that elephants can adapt to quite a range of environments.
Likewise...
There has been, and still is, a lot of hard work going into all of the different fields of study that contribute to religion. It is an exciting field, and producing some very interesting results. You really should look into it sometime.
ONLY?
Your comprehension level seems to be a bit low.
Ping me when the Discovery Institute discovers something.
[Response to a previous post--Mammoth and Mastodon steaks sound good; people have sampled some of the frozed specimens, but 15,000 year-frozen steak is never as good as fresh.]
Bump
"Your #1 is REDUCED by selection effects, and by population bottlenecks, and in fact simply by time (there is a definite probability that, absent strong selective pressure to maintain it, a given allele will disappear from a population simply by genetic drift). I was asking how you propose -- apart from mutation -- that variation originates and is continually renewed. This isn't an answer."
You were asking what caused variation. Part of the answer is in fact that some of the variation was originally created. The fact that it is reduced through other means is irrelevant.
"#2 (transposable elements or "jumping genes") again doesn't increase variation, it just rearranges it."
Yes, in fact it does.
"Likewise #3 doesn't add variation. It just shuffles alleles and other genetic elements into new arrangements."
How is "new arrangements" not the same as "variation"?
"Your #4, cell-mediated variation, is even worse. Obviously it's drastically reduced with every generation since only one gamete from each parent contributes its cytoplasmic elements to the offspring!"
This is simply false. I think you were misunderstanding what I was talking about. I was speaking of Shapiro's Natural Genetic Engineering concept.
As for #5, this shows your severe lack of knowledge of how viruses work. The majority of viruses are NOT pathogenic. In addition, numerous retroviruses have shown to give beneficial advantages to the recipient. This is part of a natural biofeedback system. Pathogenic viruses are the exception, and they are usually simply mutant strains of non-pathogenic viruses.
"So, again, how do you increase -- or even maintain -- the variation that obviously exists in populations without mutation?"
Depending on your terminology, all of the above (except #1) are mutation, they are just not random mutation. And, contrary to what you assert, these have indeed been shown to be the origin of variety in species.
Ad hominem, right on cue.
But I'll bite. How does my using only twice in a sentence demonstrate any lack of comprehension?
FINALLY you get the point. CRIDers belong in the study of religon not science.
Getting you people to admit the truth is like pulling teeth.
Yes there is, for instance, there are archeoligical digs going on in Isreal that verify some of the historical statements in the Old Testement.
Since there exists "partial data" to substantiate the Bible, do the eveolutionists grant that it is true?
There is also "partial data to substantiate" the Theory of Evolution, so they should place them in the field of "partially verified" and teach from both.
Your ability to draw false parallels is astounding.
It seems to be what you bring to the discussion.
Just showing how accumulated changes result in big differences.
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