Evolution's Thermodynamic Failure

The American Spectator ^ | December 28, 2005 | Granville Sewell

[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. ...

[Frank Sheed]

Me granny gummed corn for years and it never hurt her!

I guess you are waiting for February to be here NOW!?

F

[phantomworker]

Interesting. How do they explain evolution or lack there of?

[GSlob]

The probability of you ever winning the lottery [damn small] becomes unity once you have already won in a drawing. As it was said "we are witnessing certain type of processes because other types of processes occur without witnesses". This is THE drawback of probabilistic models.

[Born to Conserve]

This is not a scientist doing science, it is a theologian doing theology. I wish someone would tell him so.

[Mark Felton]

"How long do you suppose it would be before I could randomly generate even a simple useful program? "

I've done it. So have many others. I used a technique called evilutionary programming, or genetic algorithms.

By providing an inital set of fundamental pieces of code the technique can alayze data and create working programs.

For instance if you create a data set that provides 2 columns of data; 1 column is the area of a randomly sized circle,and the other coulumn is the corresponding radius the evolutionary algorithms can infer a relationship between the two columns and create a program that calculates the area of circle given the radius.

BTW: We did not provide it the value of pi as part of it's "pieces" of code. It calculated that ratio all on tis own.

Wonderul stuff. I suggest you do some research on it.

BTW2: I am a hard-core bible-thumping born-again Christian. I believe in the Creator. I do not believe Darwin explains the Creation of life nor the forces which drive molecules to decide they want to procreate.

The evolutionary algorithms work, but ONLY if they are given appropriate pieces of "life" to begin with, and then given a forcing function which helps decide the value of different configurations of life. The bad ones are killed, the good ones are retained and mated for a next generation.

God invented evolution, after He created life itself. No system design would be very good if it did not have an ability to adapt.

BTW3: All life forms are closely related in many ways. Evolution supports survival of the fittests which means that those characteristics which support long life and population growth are retained.

So different species have many strong points in common, except man. Man's unique strengths are singular and not found in any other species! Why? No other species has developed a spiritual nature, or the intelligence of man.

Man is unique in precisely the way God made us. Man's unique strengths cannot be explained by evolution, otherwise many other species would be on par with mankind. Dolphins would build hospitals, gorillas would worship at temples, bears would engage in bee and fish farming etc etc....

Man is man because of the spirit that God has given him.

[editor-surveyor]

"Unfortunately, out here in the real world, the probability distribution is extremely anisotropic which makes the applicability of a model based on isotropic probability distributions pretty questionable. The probability distribution of the molecular conformation phase space is extremely biased and irregular, though many creationists/ID-ists pretend otherwise for the sake of their argument."

A giant crock of baffle-gab!!!

I thought only Iche-brother could concoct such obliquely directed irrelevance. How is you Disgronificator doing today? Your muffler bearings are in from Haiti Scientific, whenever you'd like to pick them up.

[Tax-chick]

My great-uncle eats steak, too. I think there must be a technique involving having formerly had teeth ...

Looking forward to the Arrival in about the last week of January, but it's going to be a looooong month!

[Born to Conserve]

"Use the example used in the text and tell me why they are "hilarious" to you."

Um, can you tell us why the three stooges are so funny?

[muir_redwoods]

The best part of the re-opening of this old chestnut is that it shows such remarkable respect for the aged and infirm even if it's just for aged and infirm arguments. This is so old and weak I cannot muster the interest to drag out the obvious counters to it. Let the younger among us do so if need be.

[mad_as_he$$]

Man what a scary interpretation of the Second Law. This guy should be in a rubber room.

[sirchtruth]

your assertion that it was done without a creator is radical speculation on a level far above what is attributable to the average 'Area 51' freak.

...And this is what is wrong with evolutionist as well as evolution. It is NOTHING more than "radical speculation."

Good point!

[phantomworker]

But you are talking about millions of orders of magnitude here, if not billions.

You don't think mathematics can handle these "big" numbers?

[Frank Sheed]

So you told your kids that Mommy has a headache and needs to lie down while you secretly stay on the computer. It's Patrick, isn't it, doing his advanced calculus homework again!??

Does the "Arrival" have a name. 'Arrival' would do for a boy or girl as a matter of fact.

[Strategerist]

Could you tell us with your reasoning why the portion of text shown here is wrong.

Actually it was based on reading the whole thing. Had to take a break for dinner, but ome highlights:

The first formulations of the second law were all about heat:

In fact in its most basic form the second law says that in a closed system there can be no process that has as its sole result the transfer of heat from a cooler to a hotter body.

With time, the second law came to be interpreted more and more generally, and today most discussions of the second law in physics textbooks offer examples of entropy increases (order decreases) which have nothing to do with heat conduction or diffusion, such as the shattering of a wine glass or the demolition of a building.

This is more an indication of how poorly-written a lot of textbooks are than a support of this guy's case. The basic creationist problem is them directly equating entropy with laymen's notions of "randomness" or "disorder" or "complexity" which is not the case.

Natural forces, such as corrosion, erosion, fire and explosions, do not create order, they destroy it.

The above is probably his silliest claim. There are innumerable natural forces that create "order" my previous example of the formation of hurricanes being a good one....(keep in mind what I previously said about making sure not to assume that your notions of "order" or "disorder" or "complexity" correspond to what the Second Law ACTUALLY says).

alone among all natural forces -- can create order out of disorder

Notice that this obviously ridiculous claim of his is repeated and is central to his argument. There are examples of order out of disorder in the natural world occuring ALL THE TIME other than in evolution or in living things.

[VadeRetro]

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.

Whee! Somebody hand this dumb bleep a stack of bar coasters and tell him it's his Nobel Prize! I guess it doesn't take much to be published in the Spectator.

[Frank Sheed]

It's hugh. The beeber stays stuck on stune.

F

[editor-surveyor]

And of course the reaction between the strong reducing agent sodium, and the strong oxidizer, chlorine, is strictly a matter of chance then?????

(infinate laughter rolling off into the distance)

[tortoise]

A giant crock of baffle-gab!!!

So you are asserting that the phase space of molecular interaction has a flat (or nearly flat) probability distribution? That the process of chemistry is not a DAG? If so, in which universe?

Here's a nickel. Buy yourself a chemistry book. If you are feeling adventurous, look up computational chemistry.

[GOPPachyderm]

Cause that local increase in order and then freeze it so it doesn't decay into disorder!