The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science

Heritage Foundation ^ | 2/7/08 | John G West, Ph.D.

[wintertime]

Conservatives who are uncomfortable with cur­rent debates over science and public policy need to realize that the debates are not going to go away, because scientific materialism raises fundamental challenges to the traditional Western understanding of human nature and the universe. Scientific mate­rialism is central to arguments over moral relativ­ism, personal responsibility, limited government, and scientific utopianism.

For the above reason we need to get out kids OUT of the government schools and into Christian school groups. Christian children needed to be trained and reared up in the arguments they will need to refute materialism.

If our colleges and universities are to be transformed and reformed it can only be through the students themselves. Students must be well prepared to defend their religious worldview from the attacks sure to come from their atheistic, Marxist, and materialist professors.

We should also learn a lesson from the Marxists. If they think schools are important for their agenda, then Conservatives ( Christian and non-Christian) should too. Conservatives can do this by organizing scholarship foundations that would support private schools, and by working to permanently shut down all government K-12 schools.

[Jim W N]

I'm sorry - I did mean the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Second Law of Thermodynamics - Increased Entropy The Second Law of Thermodynamics is commonly known as the Law of Increased Entropy. While quantity remains the same (First Law), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time. How so? Usable energy is inevitably used for productivity, growth and repair. In the process, usable energy is converted into unusable energy. Thus, usable energy is irretrievably lost in the form of unusable energy. "Entropy" is defined as a measure of unusable energy within a closed or isolated system (the universe for example). As usable energy decreases and unusable energy increases, "entropy" increases. Entropy is also a gauge of randomness or chaos within a closed system. As usable energy is irretrievably lost, disorganization, randomness and chaos increase.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics finds a tendency towards maximum randomness refuting Darwinist evolutionist theories.

Thanks for the advice about "learning a little science". I believe I have. However, you don't need to be a genius to understand this basic scientific truth. The scientific evidence of intelligent creation far outweighs the giant "leaps of faith" (right over scientific laws) required to believe Darwin's evolutionist theories. In the end, true science is also usually the friend of common sense, unlike the liberals.

[Coyoteman]

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics finds a tendency towards maximum randomness refuting Darwinist evolutionist theories.

Thanks for the advice about "learning a little science". I believe I have.

Perhaps a little more study is in order. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not prohibit evolution. That is an error that crept into creationist literature decades ago and has persisted there ever since, in spite of being refuted time after time by scientists.

The Index to Creationist Claims, edited by Mark Isaak, deals with this claim in some detail here:

1. The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because
   
   
   • the earth is not a closed system; sunlight (with low entropy) shines on it and heat (with higher entropy) radiates off. This flow of energy, and the change in entropy that accompanies it, can and will power local decreases in entropy on earth.
   • entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. (Aranda-Espinoza et al. 1999; Kestenbaum 1998) Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size (Han and Craighead 2000).
   • even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system.

   In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.
   
   

2. The only processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection. All of these are seen to happen all the time, so, obviously, no physical laws are preventing them. In fact, connections between evolution and entropy have been studied in depth, and never to the detriment of evolution (Demetrius 2000).
   
   Several scientists have proposed that evolution and the origin of life is driven by entropy (McShea 1998). Some see the information content of organisms subject to diversification according to the second law (Brooks and Wiley 1988), so organisms diversify to fill empty niches much as a gas expands to fill an empty container. Others propose that highly ordered complex systems emerge and evolve to dissipate energy (and increase overall entropy) more efficiently (Schneider and Kay 1994).
   
   
3. Creationists themselves admit that increasing order is possible. They introduce fictional exceptions to the law to account for it.
   
   
4. Creationists themselves make claims that directly contradict their claims about the second law of thermodynamics, such as hydrological sorting of fossils during the Flood.

[Jim W N]

In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.

Wow, really? I thought the scientific method contained a body of evidence and examples that created a preponderance of evidence. Got ANY examples?

The only processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection.

Gee, well, once again, got a problem there friend. Darwin's theory of evolution requires a jump from one species to another. I'd ask you again for evidence of this but its highly unlikely you have any. This is something that has never been evidenced or proved in the scientific community.

How about another reference?

Dr John Ross of Harvard University states: … there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. … There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself. (John Ross, Chemical and Engineering News, July 7, 1980, p. 40; cited in Duane Gish, Creation Scientists Answer their Critics Institute for Creation Research, 1993. Return to text.)

You and many others (myself included until I learned and thought my way out) have been duped by myths the liberals been teaching as fact in school for decades (evolution and Keynesian economic theories being just a couple of examples).

[ReignOfError]

The Earth is not a closed system.

[ReignOfError]

>>>In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.

Wow, really? I thought the scientific method contained a body of evidence and examples that created a preponderance of evidence. Got ANY examples?

[wagglebee]

Perhaps you should learn a little science before you try to lecture folks on it, eh?

How about we lecture you about mathematics:
Your beloved Darwinists have murdered well over ONE BILLION human beings in the last century.

Maybe you should just go back to your anti-FReeper site and tell the other atheists that Christians are drying to interfere with the Satanic Darwinist agenda again.

[Jim W N]

A snowflake disproves the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? I don’t think so. You’ll have to do better than this. The liberal “scientists” (so called) have been trying for decades and have come up empty. Maybe ReignOfError will go where no man has gone before...but I doubt it.

[Jim W N]

How do you do that (tag to watch later)?

[ReignOfError]

A snowflake disproves the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

No one here is trying to disprove the 2nd Law. Just to explain why it does not refute evolution.

The far more narrow point of the snowflake was that you demanded ONE (emphasis yours) example to support Coyoteman's statement that "order from disorder happens on Earth all the time." I gave you an example that happens billions of times a day.

[ReignOfError]

Science wasn’t the problem with the Nazis, the Soviets, or the Chinese. If it were, why didn’t Britain or America become murderous totalitarian states? And don’t say that it’s because Americans are so religious, because so were the Germans, Russians and Chinese.

The problem, in a word, is utopianism. The belief that humans can build a perfect world, and that any act to bring that about is an acceptable means justified by the ends. Utopians hang their hats on a variety of hooks — “Religion” and “science” being the most popular. In both cases, they are perverted to serve utopian goals.

I am not afraid of religion, and I am not afraid of science, but I am afraid of any group of people who believe that they can use either to perfect mankind, if only given unlimited power to do so. There will always be good and evil, there will always be some folks richer than others, and there are always well-meaning folks who want the best for the most people, but disagree on how to achieve that.

Politics is a state of permanent dynamic tension, and there will never be a finish line. The wisdom of the masses is often wrong, but it corrects itself better and more easily than a rigid dogmatic utopian elite.

[ReignOfError]

Correction for the sake of accuracy; Jim didn’t demand “ONE example,” he demanded “ANY examples.” ReignOfError apologizes for the error.

[Jim W N]

You're going to have to do better than this. The 2nd law states there's tendency toward maximum randomness and is certainly one of many scientific laws and facts that refute your evolution.

The existence of snowflakes does not suspend this law. Molecules of water changing into crystal is a change of energy form not a jump from chaos to order.

What about species that necessarily has to jump from one to another for evolution to hold? Again, there is not only a lack of a preponderance of evidence, there is no evidence. Why do you hold on too such gibberish? I dare say,

...because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: (II Thessalonians 2:10, 11).

I hope you are not counted among these.

[Coyoteman]

Darwin's theory of evolution requires a jump from one species to another. I'd ask you again for evidence of this but its highly unlikely you have any. This is something that has never been evidenced or proved in the scientific community.

That's another easy one. Speciation has been observed on any number of occasions. How about if I provide an example of speciation that has all of the transitionals (that creationists claim do not exist) still in place?

Ring species provide unusual and valuable situations in which we can observe two species and the intermediate forms connecting them. In a ring species:

• A ring of populations encircles an area of unsuitable habitat.
• At one location in the ring of populations, two distinct forms coexist without interbreeding, and hence are different species.
• Around the rest of the ring, the traits of one of these species change gradually, through intermediate populations, into the traits of the second species.

A ring species, therefore, is a ring of populations in which there is only one place where two distinct species meet. Ernst Mayr called ring species "the perfect demonstration of speciation" because they show a range of intermediate forms between two species. They allow us to use variation in space to infer how changes occurred over time. This approach is especially powerful when we can reconstruct the biogeographical history of a ring species, as has been done in two cases. Source

Additional information from the same source (footnotes omitted and emphasis added):

Ensatina salamanders

One well-studied ring species consists of salamanders in the Ensatina eschscholtzii group, distributed in mountains along the west coast of North America. In 1949, Robert Stebbins described a fascinating pattern of geographical variation in these salamanders:

• Two distinct forms of Ensatina salamanders, differing dramatically in color, coexist in southern California and interbreed there only rarely.
• These two forms are connected by a chain of populations to the north that encircles the Central Valley of California, and through this ring of populations the color patterns of the salamanders change gradually.

Stebbins thought that this situation arose when an ancestral population of salamanders, in northern California, expanded southward along two fronts, one down the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the other down the coastal mountains. The two groups gradually became different as they moved south. When they met again in southern California, the two expanding fronts were so different that they rarely interbred, and were therefore different species. More recently, a team of researchers led by David Wake has examined genetic relationships among salamander populations using DNA sequences and other molecular traits, and the genetic evidence has supported Stebbins' hypothesis. The geographical variation, when combined with the inferred history revealed by the molecular traits, allows us to envision the small steps by which a single ancestral species in the north gave rise through evolutionary divergence to two species in southern California.

You are batting .000 so far. Try again?

[b_sharp]

"You're going to have to do better than this. The 2nd law states there's tendency toward maximum randomness and is certainly one of many scientific laws and facts that refute your evolution."

Could you please state a scientifically acceptable definition of the 2LoT and explain in detail how it prevents Evolution?

You are aware I hope that your body decreases entropy each and every day and has done so since you were conceived? If you as an entity can reduce entropy then the reduction of entropy is far from impossible, as you so ferociously claim.

"The existence of snowflakes does not suspend this law. Molecules of water changing into crystal is a change of energy form not a jump from chaos to order"

The 2LoT is all about energy and the change from low entropy to high entropy. Look it up.

"What about species that necessarily has to jump from one to another for evolution to hold?"

The way this is worded suggests you do not understand evolution. Could you possibly reword it such that it does not imply saltation?

How can you argue against evolution using a physical law as part of your argument when you clearly do not understand either?

[js1138]

The existence of snowflakes does not suspend this law. Molecules of water changing into crystal is a change of energy form not a jump from chaos to order.

DNA and RNA are crystalline and can exist as crystals with no loss of functionality. What law of physics prevents crystals from forming?

[ReignOfError]

You're going to have to do better than this. The 2nd law states there's tendency toward maximum randomness and is certainly one of many scientific laws and facts that refute your evolution.

My evolution?

The second law doesn't refute evolution, no matter how much you ignore the arguments. I'm over repeating them.

The existence of snowflakes does not suspend this law.

To repeat myself, you're the only person talking about invalidating or suspending the 2nd law. Coyoteman and I are saying that, in the words of that noteworthy physicist Inigo Montoya, i do not think it means what you think it means.

Molecules of water changing into crystal is a change of energy form not a jump from chaos to order.

¿Que? Are you trying to tell me with a straight face that a snowflake is not more ordered than a jumble of water droplets? Yes, that's a shallow approach to the notion of entropy -- which I offered as a response to a shallow reading of entropy.

What about species that necessarily has to jump from one to another for evolution to hold?

Wait a minute. That goalpost was right here a minute ago. What does that have to do with the 2nd law?

(II Thessalonians 2:10, 11).

I'm not interested in scripture as a scientific argument.

[ReignOfError]

You are aware I hope that your body decreases entropy each and every day and has done so since you were conceived?

I don't know about that. I can certainly produce more chaos now than I could when I was a zygote. :)

[Jim W N]

These are salamanders you're talking about right? You're not talking about fish that somehow morphed into animals or monkeys that somehow morphed into man, right? The ever-searched-for-and-never-found (nor findable) "missing link" (fraudulent "findings" notwithstanding)?

Your examples cite variations of a species of which there is no argument and plenty of evidence. There is no evidence in science of creatures jumping from one species to another which is absolutely required for evolution to be true. It is therefore certainly easy to maintain that there is not one shred of scientific evidence of a fish becoming an animal or of a monkey becoming a man.

Next.

[Jim W N]

Could you please state a scientifically acceptable definition of the 2LoT

I've already done that. See Post 22

and explain in detail how it prevents Evolution?

Do I get paid to do this? Listen up class. Entropy is a gauge of randomness or chaos within a closed system. As usable energy is irretrievably lost, disorganization, randomness and chaos increase.

You are aware I hope that your body decreases entropy each and every day and has done so since you were conceived? If you as an entity can reduce entropy then the reduction of entropy is far from impossible, as you so ferociously claim.

"Entropy" is defined as a measure of unusable energy within a closed or isolated system (the universe for example). As usable energy decreases and unusable energy increases, "entropy" increases. My body does not decrease entropy every day. You and I deteriorate every day and someday we will die, the ultimate entropy and disintegration. Science and reality have a strange way of matching, unlike your amazing theories.