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To: js1138
Tell me what process assumed by evolution violates the 2nd Law. Be specific. Mutation, selection, whatever. The evidence has been around for decades. Every phenomenon required to make evolution possible can be observed. Name one that can't.

Ahh.... there you go again: I've already stated I don't know how many times that I am not stating that a process of evolution violates the 2nd Law; I'm stating that when you people claim there is not even an issue worthy of scientific inquiry you are ignorant or lying.

That said, I think the concern is that random mutations resulting in an increase in information in the genome would appear, at least intuitively, as a spontaneous increase in complexity, order, and -- more importantly -- a decrease in entropy.

Some person has an interesting discussion of this here: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ukatheist/articles/complexity.htm. This guy is on your side, but interestingly, he does seem to take the question seriously (!!!), and the scientific counterexamples he cites are from 1996 and 1998. Using the old math, this does not qualify as 'decades'. I'm not familiar with the experiments yet, so can't comment on them. But you will notice that evolutionists have been claiming the argument is stupid before this apparent evidence existed, suggesting that the assertion was one of faith at least up until that time.

Also, by your standards, this guy is an atheist activist and has an agenda so should probably be disregarded.

Anyway, he claims that information theory requires an increase in genomic complexity as inevitable, which is a little curious.

Also, he claims there is no connection between information entropy and thermodynamic entropy, which I believe is false.

Moreover, your original assertion was that there was no process involved in evolution that was different in kind from those processes involved in life itself. As this writer recognizes, the increase in information in the genome involved in evolution is precisely that difference. Even if it can be explained, at least in a non-quantitative manner, your original assertion would appear to be falsified.

1,373 posted on 01/04/2006 12:57:55 PM PST by jbloedow
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To: jbloedow
As this writer recognizes, the increase in information in the genome involved in evolution is precisely that difference. Even if it can be explained, at least in a non-quantitative manner, your original assertion would appear to be falsified.

Is the author trying to say then that a given DNA molecule can't have a lower entropy than a DNA molecule in its parent, due to thermodynamic grounds? Um, ok.

Good Lord, I've heard some wacky creationist arguments before, but the argument this author promulgates is way off the deep end. Maybe this mathematics professor should take a physics class or two before writing a book about it.

1,377 posted on 01/05/2006 8:37:55 PM PST by Quark2005 (Divination is NOT science.)
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To: jbloedow; js1138; Quark2005
"I've already stated I don't know how many times that I am not stating that a process of evolution violates the 2nd Law"

Well here it is right here.

"I think the concern is that random mutations resulting in an increase in information in the genome would appear, at least intuitively, as a spontaneous increase in complexity, order, and -- more importantly -- a decrease in entropy."

Entropy is defined as the log of the number of states available to a system times a constant. How does the realization of any particular possible states, or combinations thereof, violate the 2nd law?

" the increase in information in the genome involved in evolution is precisely that difference."

The "information" involved is the states available, nothing else. Here the states are simply combinatorial possibilities, the persistence of which depends on the viability of the machine their function depends on. Note that in this case that any and all "info" that is contained in the set of combinatorial possibilities is true and each contributes equally to "complexity", regardless of it's effect on the overall machine's viability.

1,384 posted on 01/06/2006 1:05:06 PM PST by spunkets
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