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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: Drammach
Indeed, thou art Machiavellian.. ;o)

How DAST thou speak evil of a beloved (see Pat!) fellow congregant!
PH has stood the test of time, he indeed is an E of the highest magnitude and ONLY an E!

There is no need to parade as a misinformed (but lovable) C type!


--EvoDude

521 posted on 12/29/2005 6:56:47 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: freedumb2003
That is why there is no vision in the deep, deep ocean. There was no evolutionary need for it.

Huh? Have you no knowledge of the lights that have EVOVLED on the deepsea creatures??? Their eyes work just FINE!!

(But them stupid cave fish DEVOVLED their eyeballs. Go figger!)

522 posted on 12/29/2005 6:59:38 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: ThinkDifferent
I am a leaf on the wind

Come on: take a stand!

523 posted on 12/29/2005 7:01:10 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: freedumb2003

Was that one of those mid-mounted engines? What did they call that? I had a 1974 Fiat 124 Sport. Terrible. They entropy in use after the first 10,000 miles.


524 posted on 12/29/2005 7:01:48 AM PST by Free Baptist
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To: Ichneumon; Dan(9698); Coyoteman

THERE!

THAT oughtta hold 'em a while!

525 posted on 12/29/2005 7:06:23 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Ichneumon
No, it isn't, but thanks for sharing your misunderstanding of biology with us.

You're dumb; we're not: end of story.

526 posted on 12/29/2005 7:07:45 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Ichneumon; Zuriel
The desire for such a comforting possibility is a strong incentive to believe that it is true, regardless of the poor evidence for it.

Then you have 'evidence' of poor evidence?

527 posted on 12/29/2005 7:09:52 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: stacytec
The second law of thermo is science not math. It is one of the most important laws in physics. Evolution on the other hand is forging science with a bunch of assumptions. The second law of thermo debunks the assumptions.
528 posted on 12/29/2005 7:12:14 AM PST by Angry_White_Man_Syndrome (I'm Okies love Dubya 2's "other half")
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To: Elsie

Elsie, I like your tagline, but are you a TROLL?


529 posted on 12/29/2005 7:13:11 AM PST by phantomworker (It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.)
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To: Ichneumon
No, I don't, but thanks for sharing your ugly slurs with us -- it makes it quite clear to the lurkers who actually is driven by "contempt" here.

"I know what I am, but what are you?"

530 posted on 12/29/2005 7:13:39 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Ichneumon
I love the example of the snowflake as I live in Minnesota and see heaps of this 'nonrandom order' out my window right now. The nonrandom order creates evenly distributed blanket in my yard and sometimes becomes more even more ordered into snowmen, with the help of an intelligent designer, a four-year old boy.

Then at some point, it changes to yet another form as the snowman gradually becomes a part of my lawn and gardens. The order imposed by atmospheric conditions changes to another form of hydrogen and oxygen.

I rechecked Gerald Schroeders text and note that he did not use the word "always" reverts to disorder. My bad - my apologies to Mr. Schroeder. In fact, he notes that "Life beats the odds of chaos over cosmos, but not by defeating the second law of thermodynamics. Nothing does that. Life wins by OUTWITTING the second law."

I see the hand of a creator/intelligent designer. You see eons of time and feel it is appropriate to call people names. You indicate that creationists are "smug" but I think that is a case of Mr Kettle not recognizing similarities to Mr. Pot.
531 posted on 12/29/2005 7:14:26 AM PST by GOPPachyderm
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To: editor-surveyor
And there is as much chance of Ichy understanding that as there was of the Pharisees understanding the Lord's parables.

Oh, they understood all right. That's why they wanted to kill Him!!!

532 posted on 12/29/2005 7:16:33 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: caffe
I really think you should study more; your questions border on insanity.

Well, permit me to try again. You referred to "the absolute truth of conflict between the laws of thermodynamics and evolution". So if the laws of thermodynamics conflict with evolution, even presumptively, let alone absolutely, then why doesn't life itself?

Surely the thermodynamic cost of, say, changing a DNA base pair cannot be greater than the thermodynamic cost of, say, creating a molecule of ATP (the cell's energy source). Yet a typical animal must create, what, millions?, billions?, trillions?, of ATP molecules every single hour. I don't know what the numbers are exactly, but surely in the space of hours a human has created more molecules of ATP than the number of DNA base pair differences that separate humans and chimpanzees.

Life overcomes entropy -- concentrates negative entropy -- in the first instance, prior to and apart from evolution. So how does evolution contradict thermodynamics without life itself doing so first?

533 posted on 12/29/2005 7:17:42 AM PST by Stultis (I don't worry about the war turning into "Vietnam" in Iraq; I worry about it doing so in Congress.)
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To: thomaswest
Most of them don't even speak English properly. Hey!

Justh cause we lisppst a bit is no reaston to rag on usth!

534 posted on 12/29/2005 7:18:00 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: thomaswest

I once knew a snake so poor that he didn't have a pit to hiss in.


535 posted on 12/29/2005 7:18:36 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Strategerist
If people simply threw up their hands and gave up and said "Gee, God musta done it" regarding either the formation or tracks of tropical systems we wouldn't have the complex computer models that we have now that do a generally good and ever-improving job of forecasting them.

Just because people believe in God made it does not mean they will not try to figure out how.
536 posted on 12/29/2005 7:22:21 AM PST by Angry_White_Man_Syndrome (I'm Okies love Dubya 2's "other half")
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To: Elsie
A one-time-event, of course, is NOT repeatable; but if E is as it is claimed: Science - then it CAN be verified. We C's merely ask that it be done.

It will eventually be possible to directly verify it when the technology is available. A number of hurdles are still in the way, but they could be jumped at any time. One main hurdle currently is the problem of deriving the protein shape produced by any given sequence of DNA.

Once such hurdles are overcome it will be possible to simulate the expression of genes on a computer. It will be possible for example to take a known gene and randomly alter it and see if that alteration is a valid gene. Imagine doing one million different alterations and counting how many of them produce valid genes, and then being able to determine how they differ. This will allow evolutionary pathways between different genes to be found, something that is currently outside the ability of technology and knowledge.

The long term goal would be to simulate the growth of entire organisms on a computer based on their DNA. The benefit of doing this on a computer rather than real life is that time is no longer a contraint. A fast enough computer could simulate one million generations of a population of bacteria in a matter of seconds for example.

537 posted on 12/29/2005 7:22:46 AM PST by bobdsmith
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To: johnnyb_61820

"my new book, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations"

No doubt a Best Seller. Looking forward to a Hannity interview.

ROFLMAO


538 posted on 12/29/2005 7:25:07 AM PST by conservative barking moonbat
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To: mad_as_he$$
By this guys logic should we be running out of stuff to make new people with? But the population on earth continues to grow?
This statement shows your misunderstanding for physics. It is impossible to run out of "stuff." Mater can neither be created or destroyed.
539 posted on 12/29/2005 7:26:25 AM PST by Angry_White_Man_Syndrome (I'm Okies love Dubya 2's "other half")
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To: freedumb2003
Do you use a random phrase generator? So many words to convey no content.

Cease and Desist!

As legal representative of the author of DILBERT, we have noticed that your post has a certain, shall we say, appearence of QUOTEMINING of a recently published creative work.

While quite possible that ideas can spontaneously form in separate minds, the timing in THIS instance is highly suspect.

In the future, you MUST give the REQUIRED credit where it is due.


Canwe, Sueem and Howe

Since 1893




540 posted on 12/29/2005 7:34:48 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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