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. ...

[jbloedow]

You're the one who made the original claim, without citation or documentation (to the best of my knowledge). Don't ask me to backup my claims without first backing up yours. If you want to provide a link or two to some external description of what you're talking about, I'd be more than happy to investigate it further. Perhaps it's a simple case of misunderstanding.

(BTW, you respond very quickly for a tortoise.)

[jbloedow]

You assert it is a "load of crap", but you not given a reason why.

If you look in my post (it's not far back), you'll see that I did give a reason why. It's contained in the words after "crap". You may say what you like about my argument, but you can't pretend I just made this claim and stopped there.

[Last Visible Dog]

As an atheist with no (zero) interest in religion, I support what you're saying.

Just remember - atheism is the religion of materialism.

Some BELEIVE there is a god

Some BELEIVE there is no god.

No matter how you slice it - it is a belief system and it becomes a religion when you invoke unsupported faith-based assumptions. The atheist assumption is materialism and the god-beleivers assumption is God(s).

[4Liberty]

Actually (responding to some of the above posts), I'd say I am an atheist, not an agnostic --- because there never can be "definitive proof" of a prime mover or organizer of all life/matter. As a scientist and rational thinker, you would just want to know where THAT [something someone points to, and calls a God] came from.... hence, I'd term myself an atheist, not an agnostic. Don't like to be wishy washy on these issues. So, I'm taking a "stand."

Bracing for responses... :O)

4L

[bobdsmith]

Transitional fossils. It's laughable to think that there would be a way to test/falsify those.

The existance of transitional fossils is a prediction of evolution. Also the testable predictions such as ERV patterns, fossil locations (ie predictions of no mammal fossils in the cambrian) are all testable, reproducable, etc.

It's science in the sense that what can be observed infers things. Dinosaur bones make obvious statements about creatures that lived in the past, their size, their teeth, the shape of their bones.

Yes and the pattern of distribution of certain structures across modern species genomes make an obvious statement about common descent. As does the pattern of the fossil record.

But there are all sorts of silly suppositions stated as fact where there really are no facts. Like the drawings of prehistoric creatures which show the type of skin or fur that they have.

Artists impressions. Don't confuse that with the science.

We had textbooks in school which showed drawings of what creatures looked like when there was no evidence for their outward appearance anywhere.

what creatures might have looked like sure.

[xmission]

What are ERV patterns, and how do they they show evolution to be true?

[xmission]

Found ERV "Endogenous retroviruses" ? How do they prove evolution?

[bobdsmith]

Um, where's the "program" in the case of evolution?

I didn't ask, but I could have - where is the "program" in the case of the origin of computer chips? Seems to me that this "program" analogy is being spread paper thin. However if life can be said to be following a "program" then evolution is following the same program plus some additional rules of nature (eg that tautology of "survival of the fittest"). Afterall evolution is simply a consequence of life replicating imperfectly and the better imperfects tending to be selected. If life doesn't violate the 2nd law then I don't see how evolution could.

Also, can you evos clarify something for me: if I, say, take some OJ and cranbery juice and pour both of them together in a glass and stir it for a while and stop and then I notice that the OJ and CJ are perfectly separated, that would also not be a violation of the second law, right, on a pure energy basis?

If it is possible that can happen then I am sure it wouldn't be a violation as nothing is known that violates the 2nd law.

But would it be a violation of the laws of entropy? Is there only one kind of entropy? Is there a single well accepted definition?

As far as I gather entropy is a complex term and has multiple definitions which are often mixed in a confusing way. For example entropy is a term in thermodynamics and unfortunately it is also a term in information theory meaning a quite different thing. That is a recipe for disaster in this debate where information and disorder crop up. I only use entropy in relation to disorder.

One more question: can you give me any example of observed natural processes which result in arrangements of matter of both long-term higher potential energy and statistical complexity with no guiding program or blueprint?

I do not know what potential energy or statistical complexity are so I cannot.

[bobdsmith]

Found ERV "Endogenous retroviruses" ? How do they prove evolution?

They demonstrate common descent beyond doubt. The pattern of them across species fits common descent which would be against high odds if common descent was not true.

[Last Visible Dog]

Actually (responding to some of the above posts), I'd say I am an atheist, not an agnostic --- because there never can be "definitive proof" of a prime mover or organizer of all life/matter.

If you believe there is no god - you have a belief system which is just as much a belief system as that of the god-believer...since you can not prove your position, it is a belief - if you add in a materialistic assumption, I say you have a religion complete with dogma.

because there never can be "definitive proof" of a prime mover or organizer of all life/matter

I don't know about "never" in regards to prime mover/organizer/God but there never can be "definitive proof" for your atheistic belief. Just remember there is the possibility that someday there will be proof that God/prime mover/organizer exists - but your belief system, atheism, has no chance of proof because it requires proving a negative.

hence, I'd term myself an atheist, not an agnostic.

Therefore you have a belief system. Agnostic is not a belief system. I have no problem with evangelical atheists except when they try to claim their belief system is "fact" and not a belief system.

[bvw]

Yeah, true.

So to restate: What's on the unseen side of the coins? (And it's not the pawprint of Erwin Schroedinger's cat, either.)

[ml1954]

I'd guess someone has already said this, but I'm not going to read the whole damn thread to find it and I think it should be said.......

Why wasn't this published in a peer reviewed journal?

[b_sharp]

"1. Are the fossil sequences that I see used to document evo based on more than similarities, and if so with what degree of certainty is each step made? Who gets to debate the realtionship between each step, and where are the arguments made?

Simply put, fossil sequences are based on morphological similarities between any two fossils in the sequence. However, this isn't the whole of it by any means. Diagnostic features, which are features limited to related extant species and fossil species are the main criteria for morphological comparisons. On top of the morphological similarities, the stratum the fossil is found in determines the age of the fossils, which has to be sequential in direct lineages but can be 'out' to some degree in sister species. Ecologies are also considered when deriving sequences.

Here is a quick list of features found in the Cetartiodactyl sequence taken from an earlier post of mine.

The transition in fossils in a number of lines, including those of the cetartiodactyls, show much more than just 'possible' connections. If those fossils just showed one or two transitional features, there would be room for doubt. In the case of whales, we have a continuous line of fossils that show 1) an elongation of the head, 2) movement of the head/neck joint from the lower rear to rear position, 3) movement of the nostrils from the front of the snout to the top of the head, 4) change in the ear from above water use to below water use, 5) change in leg length from long to short in the front, and gone in the back, 6) change in back leg/pelvis connection from connected to unconnected, 7) change in spine from rigid to flexible. There are a few more shared features that I won't bother to list, I think this is enough for a start.

"2. I read the "Chihuahua (sp) versus Great Dane argument regarding species. I also read here in this thread "Groups that can interbreed to some degree can still be separate species. Consider lions and tigers, for example. A better definition is that species are groups that *don't* interbreed to any large degree. A more technical way to put it is that they are independent breeding populations. "
Would this not make these dogs into two different species, because they are (almost certainly) unlikey to breed?

Although different areas of evolutionary study use slightly different definitions of species, I find the most useful on these threads is the 'gene flow' definition. If there is potential gene flow between the two subspecies in question, then they are not separate species. In the case of Great Danes and chihuahuas, they would definitely not breed normally so could be considered different species, except for the possibility of genes to flow from one to the other through the intermediate sized dogs. Stop that flow somehow and you would have two separate species.

"Could physical geography be used as a reason to seperate a species?

That is the usual reason for separation. You might check out (Google) Allopatric and Sympatric speciation.

[johnnyb_61820]

I'm not sure if there has been found _heritable_ phenotypic changes, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out. We know of other environmentally-induced heritable changes. Why rule out predation-based ones?

[Virginia-American]

The analogy I find useful is eddies in a stream. Anomolous results can occur in a limited space for a limited time. But like an eddy, they will soon vanish into the main current leading toward the ocean, or heat death.

Eddies aren't selected by their success in reproducing. So I don't see the usefulness of your analogy; in fact, it's quite misleading.

[johnnyb_61820]

So evolution is a preprogrammed process? I think I've heard of that before. What's it called.... oh yeah -- ID.

[Stultis]

Found ERV "Endogenous retroviruses" ? How do they prove evolution?

Well, that's explained in (just a small portion of) Ichneumon's Legendary Post #52:

Human/ape common ancestry:

This is just a taste of the massive amount of evidence for ape/human common ancestry, the amount for evolution in general (including between different specific animal families) would (and does) fill innumerable encyclopedias worth of volumes:

Background: Retroviruses reproduce by entering a cell of a host (like, say, a human), then embedding their own viral DNA into the cell's own DNA, which has the effect of adding a "recipe" for manufacturing more viruses to the cell's "instruction book". The cell then follows those instructions because it has no reason (or way) to "mistrust" the DNA instructions it contains. So the virus has converted the cell into a virus factory, and the new viruses leave the cell, and go find more cells to infect, etc.

However, every once in a while a virus's invasion plans don't function exactly as they should, and the virus's DNA (or portions of it) gets embedded into the cell's DNA in a "broken" manner. It's stuck into there, becoming part of the cell's DNA, but it's unable to produce new viruses. So there it remains, causing no harm. If this happens in a regular body cell, it just remains there for life as a "fossil" of the past infection and goes to the grave with the individual it's stuck in. All of us almost certainly contain countless such relics of the past viral infections we've fought off.

However... By chance this sometimes happens to a special cell in the body, a gametocyte cell that's one of the ones responsible for making sperm in males and egg cells in females, and if so subsequent sperm/eggs produced by that cell will contain copies of the "fossil" virus, since now it's just a portion of the entire DNA package of the cell. And once in a blue moon such a sperm or egg is lucky enough to be one of the few which participate in fertilization and are used to produce a child -- who will now inherit copies of the "fossilized" viral DNA in every cell of his/her body, since all are copied from the DNA of the original modified sperm/egg.

So now the "fossilized" viral DNA sequence will be passed on to *their* children, and their children's children, and so on. Through a process called neutral genetic drift, given enough time (it happens faster in smaller populations than large) the "fossil" viral DNA will either be flushed out of the population eventually, *or* by luck of the draw end up in every member of the population X generations down the road. It all depends on a roll of the genetic dice.

Due to the hurdles, "fossil" retroviral DNA strings (known by the technical name of "endogenous retroviruses") don't end up ubiquitous in a species very often, but it provably *does* happen. In fact, the Human DNA project has identified literally *thousands* of such fossilized "relics" of long-ago ancestral infections in the human DNA.

And several features of these DNA relics can be used to demonstrate common descent, including their *location*. The reason is that retroviruses aren't picky about where their DNA gets inserted into the host DNA. Even in an infection in a *single* individual, each infected cell has the retroviral DNA inserted into different locations than any other cell. Because the host DNA is so enormous (billions of basepairs in humans, for example), the odds of any retroviral insertion event matching the insertion location of any other insertion event are astronomically low. The only plausible mechanism by which two individuals could have retroviral DNA inserted into exactly the same location in their respective DNAs is if they inherited copies of that DNA from the same source -- a common ancestor.

Thus, shared endogenous retroviruses between, say, ape and man is almost irrefutable evidence that they descended from a common ancestor. *Unless* you want to suggest that they were created separately, and then a virus they were both susceptible to infected both a man and an ape in EXACTLY the same location in their DNAs (the odds of such a match by luck are literally on the order of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1...), *and* that the infections both happened in their gametocyte cells (combined odds on the order of 1,000,000 to 1) *and* that the one particular affected gametocyte is the one which produces the egg or sperm which is destined to produce an offspring (*HUGE* odds against), and *then* the resulting modified genome of the offspring becomes "fixed" in each respective population (1 out of population_size^squared)...

Then repeat that for *each* shared endogenous retrovirus (there are many) you'd like to claim was acquired independently and *not* from a shared ancestor...

Finally, you'd have to explain why, for say species A, B, and C, the pattern of shared same-location retroviruses is always *nested*, never *overlapped*. For example, all three will share some retroviruses, then A and B will both share several more, but if so then B *never* shares one with C that A doesn't also have (or at least remnants of).

In your "shared infection due to genetic similarities" suggestion, even leaving aside the near statistical impossibility of the infections leaving genetic "scars" in *exactly* the same locations in independent infections, one would expect to find cases of three species X, Y, and Z, where the degree of similarity was such that Y was "between" X and Z on some similarity scale, causing the same disease to befall X and Y but not Z, and another disease to affect Y and Z but not X. And yet, we don't find this in genetic markers. The markers are found in nested sequence, which is precisely what we would expect to see in cases of inheritance from common ancestry.

Here, for example, is an ancestry tree showing the pattern of shared same-location endogenous retroviruses of type HERV-K among primates:

This is just a partial list for illustration purposes -- there are many more.

Each labeled arrow on the chart shows an ERV shared in common by all the branches to the right, and *not* the branches that are "left-and-down". This is the pattern that common descent would make. And common descent is the *only* plausible explanation for it. Furthermore, similar findings tie together larger mammal groups into successively larger "superfamilies" of creatures all descended from a common ancestor.

Any presumption of independent acquisition is literally astronomically unlikely. And "God chose to put broken relics of viral infections that never actually happened into our DNA and line them up only in patterns that would provide incredibly strong evidence of common descent which hadn't actually happened" just strains credulity (not to mention would raise troubling questions about God's motives for such a misleading act).

Once again, the evidence for common descent -- as opposed to any other conceivable alternative explanation -- is clear and overwhelming.

Wait, want more? Endogenous retroviruses are just *one* type of genetic "tag" that makes perfect sense evolutionary and *no* sense under any other scenario. In addition to ERV's, there are also similar arguments for the patterns across species of Protein functional redundancies, DNA coding redundancies, shared Processed pseudogenes, shared Transposons (including *several* independent varieties, such as SINEs and LINEs), shared redundant pseudogenes, etc. etc.

...actually there's more, but that should do it.

[ml1954]

Why wasn't this published in a peer reviewed journal?

Maybe because it has no merit. AS must be financially desperate to risk making itself into a laughingstock.

[johnnyb_61820]

Similar arguments have been made, though not this one precisely. You should see "Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life" in Cell Biology 2004.

I think the reason that such things as the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't appear in peer-review is that there is a large prejudice against it. Even the biggest anti-evolution screeds in peer-reviewed literature cannot go so far as to suggest that evolution did not happen, even with the best evidence and arguments. Just see what happened in the Sternberg case -- and Sternberg was just the editor, and common ancestry wasn't even questioned!

For example, in the "Chance and Necessity" article mentioned above, they simply had to conclude that it may be some cause that is not previously investigated, using methods that are not readily available. Similarly, when the creationist Lambert pointed out that the fidelity of DNA replication relies on enzymes coded by DNA itself, and without those enzymes the cell would deteriorate into error catastrophe (thus pointing out a circular dependency), he could not say that it was evidence against evolution (which it was), but only that it was an "unresolved problem in theoretical biology".

[Virginia-American]

It's mathematically impossible for bees to fly..

Bees fly.

Therefore, there is something wrong with the math. QED

(actually, in this case, I suspect that the math is fine, but that it's applied to an incorrect physical model. Garbage in, garbage out.)