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Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure
The American Spectator ^ | December 28, 2005 | Granville Sewell

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: creation; crevolist; evolution; intelligentdesign; law; mathematics; physics; scientificidiocy; thermodynamics; twaddle
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To: Mark Felton
Nonsense. Most of the greatest scientists the world has ever known believed in God and/or were Christian.

Would you care to argue the statement before you? Add another "begging the question" and 1/2 "Strawman" to the tote board.

Is there not a creationist among you that will discuss the topic at hand? That can answer a question directly? So far, I have zero.

Whether or not scientists are Christians (as am I) has as much to do with religious belief as my T-shirt does with the price of gold in Antartica.

C.S. Lewis made compelling arguments in Mere Christianity and The Reluctant Believer. They are great philisophical arguments. They are NOT scientific arguments.

My statement stands: All religion boils down to: "because I think so."

321 posted on 12/28/2005 9:06:41 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
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To: phantomworker
" This is hocus pocus. There is no basis for this..."

HuH? You just said there is no basis for physics?

Are you educated?

322 posted on 12/28/2005 9:07:06 PM PST by Mark Felton ("Your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.")
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To: connectthedots; Coyoteman
Based on those definitions, evolution is not a theory; it is a model.

Very wrong. While evolutionary biology contains some models within it, it is far more than that, and very well matches the definition of "theory" that Coyoteman provided.

323 posted on 12/28/2005 9:07:10 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: Mark Felton; phantomworker
][This is hocus pocus. There is no basis for this..."]

HuH? You just said there is no basis for physics?

Work on your reading comprehension. That's not what he said. He said that there is no basis to the claim that six physical constants are a "recipe" for a Universe.

Are you educated?

He certainly appears to be, which is more than I can say for some other folks.

324 posted on 12/28/2005 9:08:55 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: freedumb2003
All religion boils down to: "because I think so."

I agree with you, including the Religion of Darwinism as taught by many.

325 posted on 12/28/2005 9:10:00 PM PST by Dan(9698)
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To: editor-surveyor
No person who has experienced the holy spirit has ever believed in the lie of evolution. Those who have not think that they can fake it, but they fake only themselves.

f.christian is that you?

Why do you post babble and prattle? Why do you continue to hide behind obtuse and self-referential twaddle? Such a statement is born by no no evidence, no argumentation, no nothing except your own narrow bigoted perspective.

ou really need to stay off these threads. Until you learn how to argue, you hurt your own side.

And please, don't try to come back with some sort of silly non-sequituer. It doesn't work, it doesn't wash and it doesn't advance your position.

326 posted on 12/28/2005 9:11:16 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
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To: Mark Felton; Ichneumon

I'll bet your feeble faith that I am a lot more educated than you are, dude!

Didn't you just read post 320? Apparently you have already discussed this at length and just want to rehash it. Why? It seems like you just want to be confrontational and don't want to listen to reason and discuss rationally. What do you get out of that?

Ichneumon:

I already pointed out to you the flaw in this argument back on 12/22, and asked you to support your shaky and unsupported assumption, if you could. You failed to respond. Why are you now reposting the same argument while pretending that its inherent fallacy has not already been called to your attention?


327 posted on 12/28/2005 9:12:52 PM PST by phantomworker (I trust my intuition and speak my truth... Don't accuse me of your imagination!)
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To: Dan(9698)
I agree with you, including the Religion of Darwinism as taught by many.

Begging the Question. I will keep throwing the flag and monitoring the tote board.

Can't you guys do anything but change the subject?

328 posted on 12/28/2005 9:12:59 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
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To: Zuriel
I'm jumping to conclusions?

Indeed, since you have jumped to a number of false conclusions about me, and about what I've written.

My observations are from your own testamonies, which are summed up here: God did not create what exists.

There you go again. I have said no such thing.

You allude to a 'God experience'. Yet your own testamonies give him no credit. He either created it all, as he said, or it's all a lie. Or do you straddle the fence when it is convenient?

What are you babbling about here? Why don't you address something I've actually written, instead of what you hallucinate I've said?

Calling me a 'know it all' too?

The label fits you far better than it fits me. You jump to wild conclusions based on, well, nothing. I, on the other hand, have spent the thread pointing out where certain folks (*cough*anti-evolution-creationists*cough*) have overstated their case, jumped to faulty conclusions, and/or made confident claims which are contrary to fact.

Well, from one 'know it all' to another, goodnight. I must rest; for an early departure, my steed awaits.

Rest well.

329 posted on 12/28/2005 9:13:17 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: BereanBrain
Why can't man, with all his 21st Century wisdom, create anything from scratch that can 1) reproduce and 2) feed itself and 3) be smart enough to survive?

And why is it that those who profess most to believe in evolution are the ones fighting so hard against one of its major principles?

These left-wing nuts expend billions of other people's resources to protect species that cannot survive on their own, and thus thwart the "Survival of the Fittest" axiom of Darwin's Religion. They accuse man of wiping out species, but who is guilty of wiping out the millions or billions of species made extinct before man even existed?

Hypocrites.

330 posted on 12/28/2005 9:14:06 PM PST by Auntie Dem (Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Terrorist lovers gotta go!)
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To: freedumb2003
Until you learn how to argue, you hurt your own side.

Let him.

331 posted on 12/28/2005 9:14:31 PM PST by Ichneumon
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To: editor-surveyor

Reply:
LOL. I love your 'tomcat' reaction, so wonderfully reasoned and evidence-based. Another keeper from you.

Actually, I know a tiny bit about signal processing. The matters come up in MRI systems. MRI makes use of the proton's magnetic moment, and interrogating their 'spins' via electromagnetic waves. It is a bit complex, but from basic physics, it is possible to understand. I do not think "God did it" is a good explanation for how MRI works. Perhaps you have a better explanation?

I am not sure what you mean by 'bleating'. I do understand that valuable information is provided in MRI, CT and other medical systems that utilize electromagnetic wavesand or photons. My impresion is that real people--patients and doctors--utilize the E/M spectrum for valuable purposes. The E/M spectrum also gives us radio, and a window into the universe beyond Earth. [And, unfortunately, cell phones.]

You are funny. Bleating and blathering, it is a fact that e/m waves exist, evolution has happened, and it is a fact that I doubt that you understand either one.


332 posted on 12/28/2005 9:14:56 PM PST by thomaswest (just curious)
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To: Ichneumon

LOL.

I think you have been around long enough to remember f. christian. This stuff reminds me of that.

The other night, when I challenged the Bible on an intellectual level (you know, the {poof} crowd gets to trot out anything they want and say "'cause God said so") I was told I would burn in hell.

I might, but it won't be for pointing out logical contradictions.


333 posted on 12/28/2005 9:17:54 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
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To: editor-surveyor; freedumb2003

Don't bother with freedumb2003. He is so stupid he didn't even know there was such a thing as a scientific model until two days ago.


334 posted on 12/28/2005 9:18:07 PM PST by connectthedots
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To: Ichneumon; Zuriel
How does that square with your denial of eternal life?

"Okay, I'll bite, where do you think I've denied such a thing?"

Right Here

Zuriel: The grave awaits us all. Some of us are positively convinced that that is not the end.

Ichy: "The desire for such a comforting possibility is a strong incentive to believe that it is true, regardless of the poor evidence for it.

As I said, you'll say what is expdient. I fully expect you to try to wiggle from the obvious meaning of your words above, but you're wasting your time; we see through you.

335 posted on 12/28/2005 9:19:00 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: Ichneumon

The second law of thermodynamics indicates a tendency towards disorder - closed or open system. And if order should randomly occur, unless something happens to "freeze" that order, it has a tendency to go back to a state of disorder. This would appear to present a problem for evolution in achieving greater states of complexity.

Gerald Schroeder stated it this way in his most recent book: "In any situation where order is not imposed, momentary order always degrades to chaos."
He suggests there is the additional need of the imposition of order from an outside source.

Isn't it possible that someone could hold an opinion other than yours and not be "pig-ignorant"? And let's say that you don't think anyone should have an opinion other than yours, is there pleasure in calling them "pig-ignorant." It doesn't strengthen your argument.


336 posted on 12/28/2005 9:21:07 PM PST by GOPPachyderm
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To: connectthedots

I mis-read and misquoted. I pointed out my error in a follow-up post. You are a liar. If you are a true Christian that damns you to hell, by your own belief system ("Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness").

Out and out lies now. You creationists are getting desperate.

You still can't argue or debate. You just make noises.



337 posted on 12/28/2005 9:22:26 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
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To: freedumb2003

If you're outside of the realm of experience, don't waste my time and yours by trying to respond to my posts; they are for the knowing, not the unknowing.


338 posted on 12/28/2005 9:23:05 PM PST by editor-surveyor (Atheist and Fool are synonyms; Evolution is where fools hide from the sunrise)
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To: editor-surveyor
If you're outside of the realm of experience, don't waste my time and yours by trying to respond to my posts; they are for the knowing, not the unknowing.

Do you use a random phrase generator? So many words to convey no content.

But I might start collecting your posts -- If I line them up back to back I'll bet they would make a REALLY funny thread. Kind of a stream of consciousness thing.

This thread is making me work. Tracking the number of logical fallacies used by Creationists and now gathering up your posts for the FR Funnies I will probably launch. And of course, keeping an eye on the liars (not you).

339 posted on 12/28/2005 9:27:26 PM PST by freedumb2003 (American troops cannot be defeated. American Politicians can.)
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To: thomaswest
Your example does not posit an argument for evolution. Oil and water separate, but don't you need things to come together, in a very specific and intricate method(krap, can't use that word, implies intelligence) way?
340 posted on 12/28/2005 9:29:19 PM PST by ImaGraftedBranch ("Toleration" has never been affiliated with the virtuous. Think about it.)
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