Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure

... 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. ...

You've failed to address any of the science and post inaccurate accounts of what science says. I posted the relevant page from Schneider that should have cleared up your confusion of thermodynamic entropy with "info". If you read it, you failed to understand it, because you came back with:

As I explained, I declined to wade further into your "scientific claims" because you have stripped yourself of any credibility by opening your comments with mispresentation and deceipt. You have no credibility with me.

I read the Schneider piece before you ever posted it. And ya, thanks, I understood it. None of that changes the fact that what I was attributing to him is substantively identical to what TalkNonsense.org is attributing. I'm just saying that you should feel free to offer them the same correction you offered me here.

Equating DNA to car parts, chips and books is Beavis and Butthead. The physics demand DNAs production.

Oh really? For some reason I guess he thought each was a highly unprobable arrangement of the various entity's constituent micro-states'. "The physics" does, does it? The physics of what? (BTW, you're getting dangerously close to saying something that's vaguely scientific here, so I'm actually curious as to what this sentence would have said if it was finished.)

As I said before, there is no entropy diffence leading to any particular combinaiton of bases. The second law says nothing about function and that's what Sewell is claiming. Sewell is incompitent, or is deliberately lying. Take your pick. In either case he's a fiction writer.

Okie dokie, doc. BTW, there's an interesting book out called Into The Cool or something which, from what I read on Amazon.com, says that the SLoT actually requires the evolution of life, etc. (Massive simplification here.) Anyway, I think the point is that while their thesis might seem to be in conflict with the creationist one, it would also seem to be massively in conflict with what you're stating here. Perhaps you could inform the writers that every member of the NSF for the last 50 years thinks their idiots.

"If you can point to someone qualified who has debunked it in scientific terms -- not hysterical, Marxist-inspired tirades -- feel free to post a link."

See spunkets above. I think RNA preceded DNA, but as with the production of DNA, there is no entropy difference leading to any particular choice of base to add and function has no relation to entropy. Violation of the 2nd law by DNA production is the example Sewell used and that is what I debunked.

"Sewell's analysis is pretty much simple and irrefutable calculus and mathematics."

BS. He equated DNA to car parts, chips and books. That means he is claiming entropy is functionally dependent on reaction product function and purpose. It is not. Any of the 4 bases has the same probability of adding, it's 1/4. The entropy change is the same in each case and that holds as the chain continues. There's an equivalent entropy decrease in each and any addition, because one molecule results from the combination of 2. The driving force is the heat of reaction. It's that simple and there's no 2nd law violation.

The physics-the thermodynamics don't care if the reaction results in some useful function, or purpose. Whether it does, or not determines the persistence of the reaction product in any system it is a part of. Function here even determines the progression of the system beyond the simple micellar structure, because of subsequent reactions that might occur. Still the heat of reaction at each step drives the process at each step and the second law is never violated.

The 2nd law only cares that 2 molecules reacted to form one and whatever vibrational and rotational states available change as a result. It doesn't care whatsoever about complexity, information, function, purpose, order, disorder, or whatever qualitative terms are tossed about to enhance the hand waving con.

How many times have I said that I, at least, have NEVER ATTEMPTED TO DISCREDIT A VIEW HELD BY MAINSTREAM SCIENCE.

That evolution breaks the laws of thermodynamics is not a view held by mainstream science, so yes, this is exactly what you're trying to do. You can't do thermodynamics without clearly defining physical conditions and boundary conditions, period.

Just because we can't parameterize the thermodynamic details of extremely complex biological systems doesn't make all of evolutionary biology bunk. This is like saying we can't rely on any celestial mechanics because we haven't clearly defined gravity on a quantum level. Uncertainty about specific details does not translate to uncertainty of the whole theory.

Thank you for your little confession of faith.

'Belief' in mainstream science doesn't require faith, only logical examination of evidence. That the evidence isn't strong enough to support evolutionary theory might have flown in 1906, but doesn't fly in 2006.

Also, while I'd be very happy to dismantle various contributions to TalkOrigins, I think that's outside the scope of this thread.

You wouldn't be the first to try. If creationists have some verifiable evidence or good theories that mainstream science (including experts in the ToE) isn't aware of, refereed journals eagerly await their submissions. Then maybe you can have a case against TalkOrigins, which cites peer-reviewed articles and corrects their (usually minor) errors on regular basis, as pointed out by scientists. Good luck with your quest. In the mean time, science will march on. Sorry that its findings don't mesh well with some fundamentalist religous views; I don't know what tell you about this.

RWP and Quark both recognized Sewall's claim rubbish and RWP provided a link to a more substantial refutation in post 1360. I'm sure there are others on this long thread that did the same. It would be a rarity if any member of the National Science Foundation failed to agree that Sewall's analysis and claim is rubbish. That, considering Sewall's claim is old and has been solidly refuted for close to, or over 50 years at least.

I'm on the editorial advisory board of Wiley-published journal, and I have been thinking of writing a letter questioning the judgement of whoever approved publoication of Sewell's nonsense in a math textbook. It's not just that it's unscientific, it's completely irrelevant to the subject matter of the textbook.

I've alread referred to RWP's terribly impressive link to Perakh's tantrum-pretending-to-be-science post on pandasbum.com or whatever. After the first page of insults and the second page on nitpicking irrelevancies I got a little bored. I'm afraid the scientific journals I read tend to have a different approach to science than Dr. Perakh.

Ping me when you refer to me, jerk.

If I have any criticism of Perakh, is that he wasted too much time on Sewell's article. Sewell made one substantive claim - that components of the entropy separately obey the Second Law - and that claim is demontrably false. The rest of his article, and the appendix, is what we technically refer to as 'handwaving'.

By the way, it's interesting you read science journals, because by pure coincidence, I fly faster than a speeding bullet.

You're that genius who dismissed the last 2,500 years of epistemology as nonsense, right? Haven't I squished you enough times already. Well, you've got determination, I'll give you that.

I invite anyone to review any of my previous exchanges with you and see how you fared with those.

As in this case, 99% of your contributions are insults. Maybe I'll write Wiley about that.

Sorry, geniuses, I've got to leave you to your disinformation campaign unattended now. Have offline activities to attend.

Remember, keep those hands over your ears, and go "I can't hear you" for as long as possible. And don't ever, ever, ever expose yourself to dangerous ideas you don't already agree with.

You're that genius who dismissed the last 2,500 years of epistemology as nonsense, right? Haven't I squished you enough times already.

Evidently I must have made an impression on you, but I'm afraid I don't even remember who you are. But I have a short memory for blowhard delusional moronic creationists; there are too many of you here to keep straight.

Sorry, geniuses, I've got to leave you to your disinformation campaign unattended now. Have offline activities to attend.

Run hide. Not surprising that when someone else pinged me back to the thread, you disappear.

I can't believe I'm wasting more oxygen on you. Don't remember me, eh? Whatever.

I disappeared because I have a family to attend to on the weekend (in particular). And all you have ever posted is ad hominem vitriol. You think I'm intimidated by you???? I don't recall you ever posting a scientific or even intellectual claim. Anyone can go back and look.

In fact, I once asked you to cite a single solitary example of how you have ever treated anyone who disagreed with you on evolution with dignity. There was no answer.

I am strongly considering reporting you to your Dean. If your behaviour towards your students is in any way comparable to your behaviour on this board, the only place you belong in a classroom is in the corner with a black conical hat on your head.

Just curious: which journal are you supposedly on the board of? The Journal of Slandering Your Critics? Or the Journal of Insulting Everyone In Sight When You Can't Come Up With An Argument?

For the record, I'm going really to try hard to ignore you from now on. You don't deserve the time of day. If you want to take that as some sort of testimony to your manhood, go ahead. Your record is clear for all to see. Not only are your posts just borderline pathological, but you have demonstrated that you are not even conversant with the various topics I have engaged you on.

Well gee. I guess you didn't bother to actually read my post. I provided both general web pages, and links to web-based library sources where hundreds of peer reviewed articles concerning eye evolution are available. I suppose you want me to purchase those articles for you now and summarize them?

What? I never claimed to have read the journal articles. It was 100% clear that I was responding to the general web pages (I put there links prior to each comment). What part of that was so hard to understand? Maybe you're the one who didn't bother to read my post.

Seriously, since what I did read was not exactly tantalizing, I'm a little reluctant to shell out my hard-earned creationist coin for more of the same. Can you give some better links to stuff that actually claims to have solved some of the major evolutionary problems towards eye evolution. I'm assuming there's at least 1 source outside of a journal that attempts to summarize this. As I said, all the ones I did read (from your links) seemed just to underscore that this was a big problem for evolution still.

(Oh, the slandering "Right-Wing Professor" doesn't think I can understand scientific journals, so never mind.)

I don't recall you ever posting a scientific or even intellectual claim. Anyone can go back and look.

They'd find out you're a liar. Just in the last 20 posts, I've been engaged in a discussion of speciation and the fossil record and the original intent of the 14th amendment; and I've countered some false creationist claims about the Big Bang.

I am strongly considering reporting you to your Dean. If your behaviour towards your students is in any way comparable to your behaviour on this board, the only place you belong in a classroom is in the corner with a black conical hat on your head.

LOL! Yep, go tell my Dean, a biologist, that I'm actively defending evolution on a conservative forum from false and misleading attacks by creationists like yourself. He'll be furious.

Not only are your posts just borderline pathological, but you have demonstrated that you are not even conversant with the various topics I have engaged you on.

Oh yeah, I'm not conversant with thermodynamics. It's just amazing I've been able to snow everyone on that. Must be the quarter century of researching, publishing and teaching in the field; or maybe the fact I've been the thermodynamics reviewer for the last few editions of the largest selling physical chemistry text in the country?

Sorry for delay in response.

First, just for clarification, Quirky's argument was that there is no theory of abiogenesis, so Sewell's argument that the theory violates SLoT fails on its face. Your argument is that you can analyze the sequence of events that make up abiogenesis and show that there is no SLoT. Which of these 2 contradictory arguments do you think is the better on? (Quirky's seems to be the one more popular with TalkOrigins and other evolutionary pamphleteers.)
Which theory of abiogenesis are you using when you "debunk" Sewell's argument? Which experiments confirmed this theory. Can you cite any external scientific analysis of the thermodynamics (including stat. mechanics) involved?

Second, your other analysis seems to ignore completely the development of Information Theory, and to mistakenly assume that the primary SLoT objection to information-adding mutations is thermal. (Though you seemed to be somewhat familiar with the notion in an earlier post.) Your posts seem to mix up various notions of thermodynamics, including statistical mechanics, and information theory. It's not at all clear you have familiarized yourself with the arguments you are "debunking".

Outside of "evolutionary science", the first step in responding to your critics is to demonstrate that you have digested their arguments. The second is to demonstrate you are familiar with the science involved, including the various subtleties and nuances at issue. I'd invite you to go back to steps 1 and 2.

By the way, you previously stated, if I'm not mistaken, that the genome contains no information? Surely this is a rather "innovative" suggestion? I believe you're in a fairly small minority on this one. (See TalkOrigins and also Dr. Edward Max (???) for evo sources who disagree, and yes, Dr. Schneider. I tried to find a link that discusses genome/DNA information outside of the current debate. This looked interesting: http://helix.biology.mcmaster.ca/721/outline2/node56.html.

(One interesting point it mentioned here is that if you use the Shannon-Weaver index to measure "complexity", then your "complexity" increases when you add random noise (TalkOrigins mentions this but dishonestly suggests this rebuts the primary argument). Obviously evolutionary critics aren't talking about this type of complexity. Also, remember that information is only meaningful if there is an interpretation mechanism, so to talk about information solely in terms of the bits in the message outside of the receivers interpretive "filter" may not be a complete understanding of the issue.

Listen, I really don't think this attempt to do serious science in this format is helping anyone. I'd be happy to keep trying to make sense of your posts and keep responding to them, but my primary objective here is to avail myself of the best arguments available, and since your posts began with a misprepresentation the evidence contained in my previous posts, and your other posts have had the problems I've pointed out, I don't really think much light is being shed here.

The bottom line is: if evolutionists don't want to respond to the argument that there is an apparent SLoT problem for evolution with a serious, respectful, quantitative, scientific answer, the argument won't go away. When people see that all you have are ad hominems and ad hoc half-answers, that tells them far more about you than anything else.

Well good for you. I knew it was possible. It's good to see you've graduated beyond calling people "jerks" and "blowhards" .

LOL! Yep, go tell my Dean, a biologist, that I'm actively defending evolution on a conservative forum from false and misleading attacks by creationists like yourself. He'll be furious.

If he discovers that your idea of "defending" includes insulting everyone in sight who disagrees with you without provocation, trying to bully them with spray-on ridicule, and belittling every criticism without support, then I think he might reconsider. Or is that how you approach "education" in your department? What do you do when a student honestly asks you about a problem in evolutionary theory? Do you make him strip down to his underwear in front of the class and say "I'm a creationist freak" in front of everyone? I wouldn't be surprised. If your Dean is a Darwinist Dogmatic like you then I suspect he would approve of this.

Oh yeah, I'm not conversant with thermodynamics. It's just amazing I've been able to snow everyone on that.

The only "snowing" I saw was a link to a so-called "refutation" by Mark Perakh which was more of a tantrum. This qualfies as "science" in your department I suppose. Actually, I wasn't referring to thermodynamics, since I've never actually debated that with you.

But of course, you don't remember. I guess when you treat other people as animals you wouldn't really remember them. Just ask the Nazis or Communists. At least you're being consistent with your beliefs (treaing people like animals, that is.)

Perhaps you could post a link to a non-insulting, non-vitriolic, non-juvenile, scientific posting you have done on this topic. I would be interested to see what the best arguments on your side are. You do have arguments?

For the record, our last interchange was on the topic of Dr. Alvin Plantinga's "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism" wherein he demonstrated that if evolution is true, there is no scientific basis for believing we can trust our faculties that tell us that evolution is true. This is a very brief summary. Dr. Plantinga is a massively respected philosopher. You couldn't even get your head around the topic, apparently, and dismissed it, and all other epistemology, as nonsense or something. Deep. I've actually noticed that the evolutionists on this board appear to be almost completely illiterate when it comes to philosophy, which is sort of surprising. But not really I suppose.

Well good for you. I knew it was possible.

The correct answer on your part would have been 'I'm sorry; I posted a falsehood about you".

What do you do when a student honestly asks you about a problem in evolutionary theory? Do you make him strip down to his underwear in front of the class and say "I'm a creationist freak" in front of everyone? I wouldn't be surprised.

Actually, I've never had a student ask me about a 'problem in evolutionary theory'. I know of a very small group of IDer students on my campus, and they asked me to be their faculty advisor. I declined, told them I don't agree there are any substnatial problems with evolutionary theory, and found an alternative advisor for them.

I treat with respect those who deserve respect. Based on your behavior on this thread, you are not in that category...

I guess when you treat other people as animals you wouldn't really remember them. Just ask the Nazis or Communists. At least you're being consistent with your beliefs (treaing people like animals, that is.)

...and the gratuitous comparison with Nazis and communists, and the silly accusation that I treat people like animals - I have no reason to insult my cat - is just one of many examples why not. You act like a jerk, and then whine when poeple answer in kind.

Arguments on what?

Don't remember the exchange, but the argument sounds specious. We don't trust our faculties because of a priori philosophical arguments; we trust our faculties because experience tells us we can do so. Evolution is true; we can trust our faculties (usually); and figuring out how the two must be compatible is Plantinga's problem, not mine.

That evolution breaks the laws of thermodynamics is not a view held by mainstream science, so yes, this is exactly what you're trying to do.

To repeat for the umpteenth time: my argument has never been that "the SLoT proves evolution wrong". My argument is that there is definitely a prima facie case that SLoT as it is commonly understood presents an apparent problem for evolution. Unlike you people -- and this is telling -- I am trying to find out what the best responses from the other side are but, as Dr. Hoyle attests, biologists -- evolutionary biologists in paricular -- tend to have an extremely, how shall we say, casual approach to these sorts of topics.

Your response is a perfect example: "It's an open system, so the problem is solved." What? As Sewell argues: if something is highly improbable in a closed system, it's also highly improbable in an open system unless there's something about that open system which makes it less improbable. (RWP might call this hand-waving; I call it logic.) If this argument were valid, anytime you found an apparently spontaneous reduction in entropy on planet earth, you could just say "it's the sun, it's the sun" and run away. Only in biology...

If evolutionists want to respond in a way that doesn't smack of a child who just got caught doing something wrong and show why there is no problem, that's fine. But don't 1) ridicule the very suggestion, and 2) provide stupid half answers.

Just because we can't parameterize the thermodynamic details of extremely complex biological systems doesn't make all of evolutionary biology bunk.

I've never made such a claim. Not sure what you're referring to here.

'Belief' in mainstream science doesn't require faith,

Sorry, I've posted too many times on this silly little "we don't use faith thing". This is "high school" stuff. Spend a little time studying and thinking about the differences between mediated and unmediated knowledge. How much evolutionary evidence are you personally familiar with. Ever seen an artist's rendition of Pakicetus from bone fragments? etc.

You wouldn't be the first to try.

I asked you before how much of your stuff you personally verified from a critical point of view. No answer yet. You could start with the whale evolution page. That's supposed to be one of their better ones.

Why don't you go read the argument before forming an opinion on it? That's how most academics operate. Apparently the response you posted last time was also done without having read it. Very interesting approach!

"Evolution is true" is just your "confession of faith". It communicates no information.

Plantinga's argument has withstood scrutiny by people who, unlike you, understand these issues. And yes it is your problem. Because you are supposedly a product of evolution, which means every means you employ to study evolution is a product of the system you are studying, which means any faculty you have is only as effective as evolution made it. Go read the piece and you'd understand. Maybe.

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