My favorite explanation for evolution runs this way. You have two computers, and one unfinished computer in the corner. To make an operating system for it, you pirate half the code from one and half the code from the other system and randomly mish mash them together. And hope that it works. (Hopeful monster). Or it's an asexual system, the first system copy&pastes it's o.s. onto the new system.. how many of these could go on without errors? Not many, and not reliably. Evolution is the same way, no matter how badly they try to say it isn't. And it is a religion. It takes faith to believe in it.
They really hate it when you point out that their god is an amoeba.
How convenient to misstate the 2nd Law, eh? :-) The REAL 2nd Law says something more like, to paraphrase, "all complex systems require outside energy input and/or an outside entropy sink to keep from degenerating." Or IOW, "all living things must eat." We get our outside energy from the Sun, via plants & other tasty animals that also eat them, & give off heat in the process, which is radiated out into space. Computers use 110 volts & likewise heat up in the process. The Thermodynamics Police are happy.
Please check out these links, from The Ultimate Creation vs. Evolution Resource (12th ed.):
Ummm... You paraphrased wrong. All enthalpy transfers generate entropy. Thermodynamics says nothing about complexity and what you said doesn't make sense. Entropy and complexity are not the same thing, though I have seen it repeatedly used that way here.
Two points: First, evolution says nothing about the creation of increasingly complex information structures; it can go either way. It just turns out that our environment sometimes allows slightly more complex systems to survive as more sophisticated organisms are usually more adaptive. Second, I don't think entropy means what you think it means, and "complexity" is utterly non-descriptive when talking about thermodynamics. Everything involving thermodynamics is in terms of entropy and enthalpy; there are only four components to the Gibb's free energy equation, and "complexity" isn't one of them.
No, definitely not.
"To paraphrase, 'All complex systems degenerate into entropy.'"
No, the proper paraphrase is that the entropy in any CLOSED SYSTEM increases. The earth is not a closed system, since energy comes from the sun. It's the energy from the sun that allows complex systems to form on earth.
"How convenient to forget that, eh? Evolution states just the opposite, 'Entropy degenerates into complex systems.'"
Do you honestly think that we mechanical engineers would allow biologists to "forget" (disregard) the laws of thermodynamics? Not bloody likely!
"I've always thought this was an interesting question... no-one has ever seriously explained it away."
I just did. And literally thousands of people knowledgable about thermodynamics have tried to explain this simple fact (that earth isn't a closed system, so entropy on earth need not always increase) to folks like you, but y'all (Southern expression) simply aren't listening.
"And it is a religion."
No, evolution is a testable scientific theory.
If one BELIEVED in evolution, one would indeed need faith. But scientifically oriented people like me don't BELIEVE in evolution. We simply recognize it as by far the most compelling theory for why plants and animals look like they do...and, in a larger sense, have the DNA they have.