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 ...
Dude, I think you are in over YOUR head!
Tautology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In logic, a tautology is a statement that is true by its own definition. All true statements of logic are tautologies.
Outside logic, it sometimes means a useless tautology, that is, one that is uninformative (or in colloquial terms, stating the obvious). This definition is imprecise, as all statements are informative in some context.
In traditional grammar, a tautology is a redundancy due to superfluous qualification, often leading to the schoolboy definition of "saying the same thing twice".
OK, I'll play the game: MA & Ph.D., Anthropology, splitting archaeology and physical anthropology subdisciplines. In physical--lots of courses in evolution, osteology, and human races leading to two of four fields for Ph.D. exams being human osteology and fossil man.
Employed as an archaeologist, lots of years (we won't go into how many but an honorary member of the SGA--Society of Geriatric Archaeologists).
And now you, any training in "evo" or anything close, like science, for example?
It may be that a poster can gain or lose "creds" by his resume -- but better his postings tell the tale of credence given him. Buckhead was not a typographic examiner -- just a lawyer familiar with typography from some casework he did. The expertise in typography he showed the nation in the Rathergate fiasco was NOT on his resume.
Now to return to the argument of Intelligent Design.
I read the book "Darwin's Black Box" and believe that there are valid observations in it.
When I was in High School, the parts of a cell were, the cell wall, the nucleaus, and protoplasm.
It is obvious that there has been a lot learned since Darwin's time and my time in High School. That there are other observations on what is in a cell and how they work is not an attack on previous theory, except as it is taught as dogma.
It only expands the universe of study to have other explanations and theories both right and wrong. How can science advance if nobody presents anything new.
How is it teaching "Creationism" or "Religeon" to point out that there is additional information that should be considered?
...and yet, they keep saying stupid things like these
- yeah, I guess when they point out the big elephant in the room, the absolute truth of conflict between the laws of thermodynamics and evolution,
There is no conflict, sorry, and no amount of confused babbling by the creationists will change that.
I really wish creationists would try to *learn* some science (*real* science, not the cartoon-version they present in the creationist pamphlets) before they attempt to critique it.
Here, read this and gain an actual education on the subject before you try again: Thermodynamics, Evolution and Creationism
For a short summary, here's part of a post of mine on the subject:
Once again, I see that the creationists are having trouble distinguishing between the concepts of "entropy", "order", "information", and "complexity". They are *NOT* the same, but creationists seem to like to use them interchangeably, leading to all sorts of "fall on their face" fallacies. Hint: This is the fundamental reason why the creationist "argument" attempting to use the Second Law of Thermodynamics in order to "disprove" evolution is completely flawed. The SLoT applies to *entropy*. Evolution applies to *information*. The Second Law of Thermodynamics makes *no* restrictions on whether *information* is "allowed" to increase, decrease, or whatever. So the creationists really need to give it a rest.And:
all the evolutionists cultists can say, is well - make up a big lie , using scientific jargon that means absolutely nothingIn fact, ID is far easier to believe as it doesn't violate other proven laws (conservation of entropy etc)
There's no such law as the "conservation of entropy". You just made that up. Try again.
If you meant to say "the second law of thermodynamics", I'm afraid that your creationist sources are very confused about what it actually says. It is no impediment to evolution. In fact, if the creationist misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics was actually correct, it would be against the laws of physics for snowflakes to form, babies to be born, and so on. Even AnswersInGenesis.org lists the "thermodynamics" argument on their Arguments we think creationists should NOT use page.
...to you, because you don't understand it.
or call names
...says the guy who calls people who actually know the subject, "cultists"...
> Atheism.. = Denial of God, or Denial of Religion ???
I was intrigued to hear the answer from my atheist colleague to my argument that, without the morality imposed by God, anything could be justified as "moral", it being then a fluid concept. This is the essence of the leftists' "moral relativism", for those who doubt the logic. Also, does anyone doubt that Hitler's extermination of the Jews or Stalin's purges didn't follow the clear logic of their warped "morality"?
Anyhow, the atheist argued that one didn't need to believe in God to conclude that, for example, murder was "morally wrong."
"Why," I asked.
To make his long-winded answer short, he adopted the "greater good" argument, to the effect that "society's greater good" helped sculpt what would be considered moral. In this way, he justifies the value of abortion to himself, I note. I would also point out that I see these "greater good" arguments as some sort of emotional evolutionism argument.
Of course, his argument is tragically flawed. For example, what if a devastating disease was limited to one genetic subset of the population, but was mutating rapidly, and would likely be able to infect the general population in a matter of time. By his argument, the extermination of the currently infected population subset could be justified for the greater good of the society. Hitler's argument against the Jews was not too far from this point, in that case the disease was "being Jewish" and the mutation was "interbreeding with the so-called Aryans."
Where I was going with this response is that, in the absence of a faith in a transcendent God, the atheist is nonetheless forced to adopt a faith in some transcendent concept (like communism), or else he is forced to accept the law of the jungle as the ultimate morality.
Hey, I'd prefer an atheist like my carpool buddy to a militant Islamist who believes that his god would gladly have him exterminate the infidel. So I'm not partial to generic "deity-based religion" over generic "atheism". What I am partial to is the Judao-Christian God, before whom all men are equal, to whom all men are called to serve, and to whom all men will ultimately answer.
Dude, (LOL) you presented a general tautology as proof of a theory, without any proof that the tautology was related to the issue.
I would expect such a person as him/her to revert to Philosophy as an expedient alternative..
On the other hand, simple Denial of God would / could result in a belief in something like Buddhism..
Can't argue with that.
Think I'll be out for the night also.
You don't make sense.
I hope you followed all of my responses to this thread. I'm on your side. :-)
That something that big is able to get airborn -- I think God DOES hold it up. ;)
New things are being presented all the time. A lot of it is evolutionary stuff.
How is it teaching "Creationism" or "Religeon" to point out that there is additional information that should be considered?
This question doesn't make sense, Dan.
The question is the spontaneous creation of organization doing work. That's why the spontaneous formation of a 747 is a problem. Finding orderly circles in nature is not a problem.
""That was accomplished through solar energy, with no intelligent designer at all."
I have to laugh at that! LOL!
I mean if the ToE says that any organism from one Class will evolve into an organism from another Class, which is not true, btw, then it must also be true that, according to the ToE, solid rock turned into solar energy.
I gave a run at explaining it here
[snip]So what the aych-ee-double-toothpicks does this have to do with evolution? Energetically, the second law of thermodynamics favors the formation of the majority of all known complex and ordered chemical compounds directly from their simpler elements. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the second law does not dictate the decrease of ordered structure by its predictions. It only demands a "spreading out" of energy when such ordered compounds are formed spontaneously. The Second Law does NOT prohibit the spontaneous formation of complex structures from simpler parts. It is simply incorrect to view the Second Law as a predictor of disorder.
Congratulations, you're entirely wrong, and you have grossly misunderstood the little you have "learned" about the subject.
Here, get a clue:
Creationist Claim CC201: Phyletic GradualismEvolution as Fact and Theory, by Stephen Jay Gould
Creationist Claim CC200: There are no transitional fossils.
Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record
Transitional Fossil Species And Modes of Speciation
On Creation Science and "Transitional Fossils"
The Fossil Record: Evolution or "Scientific Creation"
Evolution and the Fossil Record
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ
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