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Posted on 01/26/2002 1:14:46 PM PST by Paul Ross
The Cross vs. the Swastika
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The Cross vs. the Swastika |
I vividly remember a high school conversation with a friend I’d known since we were eight. I’d pointed out that Hitler was essentially a pagan, not a Christian, but my friend absolutely refused to believe it. No matter how much evidence I presented, he kept insisting that Nazi Germany was an extension of Christianity, acting out its age-old vendetta against the Jews. Not that he spoke from any personal study of the subject; he just knew. He’d heard it so many times it’d become an article of faith — one of those things “everyone knows.”
Flash forward 25 years. A few weeks ago my last column (http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000528.html) refuted a number of familiar charges against Christianity, including the Christianity-created-Nazism shibboleth. Even though I only skimmed the subject, I thought the evidence I cited would’ve been hard to ignore; I quoted, for example, Hitler’s fond prediction that he would “destroy Christianity” and replace it with “a [pagan] religion rooted in nature and blood.” But sure enough, I still heard from people who couldn’t buy that.
Well, sometimes myths die hard. But this one took a hit in early January, at the hands of one Julie Seltzer Mandel, a Jewish law student at Rutgers whose grandmother survived internment at Auschwitz.
A couple of years ago Mandel read through 148 bound volumes of papers gathered by the American OSS (the World War II-era predecessor of the CIA) to build the case against Nazi leaders on trial at Nuremberg. Now she and some fellow students are publishing what they found in the journal Law and Religion(www.lawandreligion.com), which Mandel edits. The upshot: a ton of evidence that Hitler sought to wipe out Christianity just as surely as he sought to wipe out the Jews.
The first installment (the papers are being published in stages) includes a 108-page OSS outline, “The Persecution of the Christian Churches.” It’s not easy reading, but it’s an enlightening tale of how the Nazis — faced with a country where the overwhelming majority considered themselves Christians — built their power while plotting to undermine and eradicate the churches, and the people’s faith.
Before the Nazis came to power, the churches did hold some views that overlapped with the National Socialists — e.g., they opposed communism and resented the Versailles treaty that ended World War I by placing heavy burdens on defeated Germany. But, the OSS noted, the churches “could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, with a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or with a domestic policy involving the complete subservience of Church to State.” Thus, “conflict was inevitable.”
From the start of the Nazi movement, “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement,” said Baldur von Scvhirach, leader of the group that would come to be known as Hitler youth. But “explicitly” only within partly ranks: as the OSS stated, “considerations of expedience made it impossible” for the movement to make this public until it consolidated power.
So the Nazis lied to the churches, posing as a group with modest and agreeable goals like the restoration of social discipline in a country that was growing permissive. But as they gained power, they took advantage of the fact that many of the Protestant churches in the largest body (the German Evangelical Church) were government-financed and administered. This, the OSS reported, advanced the Nazi plan “to capture and use church organization for their own purposes” and “to secure the elimination of Christian influences in the German church by legal or quasi legal means.”
The Roman Catholic Church was another story; its administration came from Rome, not within German borders, and its relationship with the Nazis in the 1920s had been bitter. So Hitler lied again, offering a treaty pledging total freedom for the Catholic church, asking only that the church pledge loyalty to the civil government and emphasize citizens’ patriotic duties — principles which sounded a lot like what the church already promoted. Rome signed the treaty in 1933.
Only later, when Hitler assumed dictatorial powers, did his true policy toward both Catholics and Protestants become apparent. By 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced the Nazis for waging “a war of extermination” against the church, and dissidents like the Lutheran clergyman Martin Niemoller openly denounced state control of Protestant churches. The fiction of peaceful coexistence was rapidly fading: In the words of The New York Times (summarizing OSS conclusions), “Nazi street mobs, often in the company of the Gestapo, routinely stormed offices in Protestant and Catholic churches where clergymen were seen as lax in their support of the regime.”
The Nazis still paid enough attention to public perception to paint its church critics as traitors: the church “shall have not martyrs, but criminals,” an official said. But the campaign was increasingly unrestrained. Catholic priests found police snatching sermons out of their hands, often in mid-reading. Protestant churches issued a manifesto opposing Nazi practices, and in response 700 Protestant pastors were arrested. And so it went.
Not that Christians took this lying down; the OSS noted that despite this state terrorism, believers often acted with remarkable courage. The report tells, for example, of how massive public demonstrations protested the arrests of Lutheran pastors, and how individuals like pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (hanged just days before the war ended) and Catholic lay official Josef Mueller joined German military intelligence because that group sought to undermine the Nazis from within.
There is, of course, plenty of room for legitimate criticism of church leaders and laymen alike for getting suckered early on, and for failing to put up enough of a fight later. Yet we should approach such judgments with due humility. As Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett write in their book Christianity on Trial (to repeat a quote used in my last column), “It is easy for those who do not live under a totalitarian regime to expect heroism from those who do, but it is an expectation that will often be disappointed. . . . it should be less surprising that the mass of Christians were silent than that some believed strongly enough to pay for their faith with their lives.”
At any rate, my point is hardly to defend every action (or inaction) on the part of German churches. In fact, I think their failures bring us valuable lessons, not least about the dangers of government involvement in — and thus power over — any churches.
But the notion that the church either gave birth to Hitler or walked hand-in-hand with him as a partner is, simply, slander. Hitler himself knew better. “One is either a Christian or a German,” he said. “You can’t be both.”
This is something to bear in mind when some folk on the left trot out their well-worn accusation that conservative Christians are “Nazis” or “fascists.” It’s also relevant to answering the charge made by the likes of liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: “History teaches that when religion is injected into politics — the Crusades, Henry VIII, Salem, Father Coughlin, Hitler, Kosovo — disaster follows.”
But it’s not Christianity that’s injected evil into the world. In fact, the worst massacres in history have been committed by atheists (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot) and virtual pagans (Hitler). Christians have amassed their share of sins over the past 2,000 years, but the great murderers have been the church’s enemies, especially in the past century. It’s long past time to set the historical record straight. 
The complete text of this article is available at http://www.boundless.org/2001/regulars/kaufman/a0000541.html
Open systems still have a tendency to disorder. There are special cases where local order can increase at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. One case is crystallization, covered in Question 2 below. The other case is programmed machinery, that directs energy into maintaining and increasing complexity, at the expense of increased disorder elsewhere. Living things have such energy-converting machinery to make the complex structures of life.[emphasis added]
Praise the Lord!
The bolded text in your quote is what I've been trying to tell you for the past two+ days. That's why evolution does NOT violate the 2LoT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Biological organisms are capable of spontaneous localized decreases in entropy at the expense of "increased disorder elsewhere." THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT, Sparky! That's why evolution does NOT violate the 2LoT.
The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction
Cutting and pasting disparate responses results in your replies not making much sense. The 2LoT has nothing to do with "specified complexity," "information," or any other specious terminolgy you wish to interject. The 2LoT deals with thermodynamics. Period.
Been there; done that. Graduated, too. It is rated in the Top 25 in the US.
Only someone that truly doesn't understand the Second Law would even claim the formation of a hurricane or ice crystals compares to evolution:
The ice example (and the hurricane example) is thermodynamically irrelevant to the origin of life. When ice freezes, it releases heat energy into the environment. This causes an entropy increase in the surroundings. If the temperature is low enough, this entropy increase is greater than the loss of entropy in forming the crystal. But the formation of proteins and nucleic acids from amino acids and nucleotides not only lowers their entropy, but it removes heat energy (and entropy) from their surroundings. Thus ordinary amino acids and nucleotides will not spontaneously form proteins and nucleic acids at any temperature.
Nice attempt at changing the subject. We were discussing Evolution and how it relates to the 2LoT. The above is a discussion of reactions related to abiogenisis, which is BY DEFINITION outside of the scope of Evolutionary Theory, which is concerned with the speciation of biological organisms. The point is that given a biological organism, the processes by which it is born, consumes "food," reproduces, and dies goes on, generation after generation, with DNA changes accumulating all the while, and there isn't a single step in the process where you've been able to point out that requires the entropy of the Universe to decrease. Thus there is no violation of the 2LoT.
Rensberger also fails to distinguish between order and complexity. Crystals are ordered; life is complex.
Where did "Rensberger" pop into this dialogue? I NEVER brought up "Rensberger." I don't even know who he is. This is what happens when you cut and paste disparate responses into your reply; it ends up making no sense. I've tried to warn you about that before, but I guess I failed.... FWIW, the 2LoT is about THERMODYNAMICS, not "complexity" or "information," or any other specious terminology you want to interject.
My concern is not with pre-biotic compounds or with primitive-earth pathways to proteins (good luck!) but with misinterpretations of the second law of thermodynamics. I’ve heard such crazy statements about the impossibility of such things as complicated molecules arising from simpler ones "without a mechanism", implying the necessity for human or divine intervention in each specific case. (Creationists certainly would agree that the second law is part of the original creation and surely they must include all the laws of chemistry.)
Unfortunately, many many people who have no knowledge of chemistry are making erroneous statements that involve the most basic principles of the subject to large audiences in speeches or on the Internet. Such misinformation gives a false basis for the hearers’ judgment. The correct foundation in chemistry is not complex and is fascinating in its many aspects
Atoms and molecules inherently attract one another. Among molecules, the attraction is usually weak. However, many kinds of atoms so strongly interact with one another that they "bond", i.e., form extremely powerful associations in very specific ways to yield molecules so stable that energy at temperatures of a thousand or two thousand degrees can’t tear them apart again. Molecules are not atoms randomly stuffed into tiny packages. When three or more atoms join to form a molecule, they are arranged in precise order, normally unchanging over time, and with a relatively fixed geometric relationship. Finally, many kinds of molecules can strike other kinds very violently and form totally new types of molecules – another mode of formation of new complex ordered structures due to the same innate nature of atoms to form strong bonds..
A simple example is the reaction of hydrogen gas with oxygen, tragically illustrated when the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg dirigible burned in 1937. Hydrogen has a great inherent tendency to bond strongly with oxygen and form water even a small energy of activation, in the form of a spark affecting only a relatively few molecules, causes the two substances to start to react, resulting in an enormous evolution of energy. This is exactly as the second law predicts: some of the chemical potential energy in hydrogen and oxygen molecules tends to be spread out when the less-energetic water molecules are formed. Yet, water is more complex than the simple elements and its atoms are arranged in an exact geometric pattern as all chemistry students know so well. (HOH is simply depicted, hydrogens in gray and oxygen, red, in the New York University link, http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/library/water/water.gif)
There are millions of possible syntheses like that of water being formed from the elements, i.e., there are millions of "intricate" compounds that have less energy in them than the elements of which they are composed. That sentence is a quiet bombshell. It takes a while for it to fizzzz before its significance explodes. It means that the second law energetically FAVORS -- yes, inexorably predicts – complex, geometrically ordered molecules can form from utterly simple atoms of elements. In such syntheses, the second law favors orderly, precisely arranged big units over the smaller, simpler parts. This is a fact, not an opinion. It negates popular statements such as "the second law says that all systems fundamentally tend toward disorder and randomness".
In the foregoing I am only pointing out the relationship of the second law to well-established and thoroughly-measured basic chemical energetics. I do NOT mean to imply that in the laboratory we can simply toss hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in a reaction vessel and come out with a batch of DNA. No way! (The practical lab processes would be enormously more complex, impossible at present.) However, looking only at the energy relations, not the detailed steps of synthesis, we can see that virtually all of the 50,000 or so substances in our bodies would be energetically following the demands of the second law if they had been formed from the elements. Each of them contains less energy than the elements of which if is composed.
To summarize this important conclusion that is known by very few who are not chemists: Energetically, the second law of thermodynamics favors the formation of the majority of all known complex and ordered chemical compounds from the simpler elements. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the second law does not dictate the decrease of ordered structure in its predictions, it only demands a "spreading out" of energy in all processes.
Also, to repeat the caution: The foregoing only describes energetic relationships involving the second law. It does not mean that most complex substances can be readily synthesized just by mixing elements and treating them in some way.
More from the same source:
You see now that the second law of thermodynamics is a powerful tool for predicting what tends to happen in an incredible number of different kinds of events. In addition you now know the many ways it can be hindered by activation energies.
Both are keys to life, to us as living organisms. Without the directional energy flow predicted by the second law – from more intense, concentrated, or having greater internal content to diffused, spread out, or lesser internal content, we wouldn’t have the possibility of obtaining energy from food molecules, storing it in our ATP or similar substances, and using it for our chosen purposes. Without activation energies (or, technically, without the molecular mechanisms responsible for the phenomena), NO chemical substance could be stable even for microseconds.
You could go even further back -- to the formation of matter from energy after the big bang -- to be amazed at the generality of the second law and the importance of activation energies in the beginnings of matter. That's the domain of cosmologists and astrophysicists, but nevertheless that also is (or was) a domain ruled by the second law. The original incredibly concentrated energy of the universe did not stay in a small region. It tended to diffuse in space and to form lower-energy matter that further decreased the concentration of energy. That's really following the predictions of the second law big time! Also, comparable in effect to activation energies protecting chemical compounds, were what physicists call potential energy wells (PEWs) that protected fundamental particles like protons and neutrons from immediate destruction by the enormous energies present everywhere after the big bang.
Then, after protons and neutrons and other fundamental units were forced together by fusion to form elements (protected from reversion to the original particles by PEWs), we are on more familiar ground for the chemist. Fortunately, there were "mistakes" where hydrogen became compressed and resulted in suns where the fusion process didn't stop but continued to give out energy (that then followed the second law). Elsewhere, the enormous energies of the early universe (far less than shortly after the initial big bang) could cause elements to unite and form the lesser-energy solid matter that is still present in the earth and planets (e.g., the ubiquitous silicates of rocks) -- higher energy elements forming lower energy substances, just according to the second law.
Subsequently as well, the elements and simple compounds could be transformed into those that were more complex under the purview of the second law and the protection of activation energies.
That’s a remarkably powerful insight about how the world worked……and works.
I believe the author is a retired professor of Chemistry at a major University.
The lurkers will note that unlike "Sparky" and his sources, I do NOT quote out of context. I do not misrepresent (or misunderstand) what the author is saying.
There is no conflict between the 2LoT and Evolution.
Looky here, smarty-pants. My Rev. Billy-Bob comic book says otherwise. Now who am I going to believe? A good, bible-believing, snake-handling, tongue-speaking man like Rev. Billy-Bob, who had the good sense to avoid your Satanic schools ever since the 4th grade, or some eee-voooo-luuu-shunist jackass like you?
Game, set, and match. And what's the "ordering principle" that tells the atoms how to combine? Their electron orbitals. What determines those? The laws of Quantum Mechanics. And so proceed where Physicist doesn't fear to tread but I do.
All life and physical systems on this planet will become more disorderly, decay and die. That is the implication of the Second Law and evolution completely contradicts this established law of science.
“The universe is thus progressing toward an ultimate ‘heat death’ or, as it is technically defined, a condition of ‘maximum entropy’ . . And there is no way of avoiding this destiny. For the fateful principle known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which stands today as the principal pillar of classical physics left intact by the march of science, proclaims that the fundamental processes of nature are irreversible. Nature moves only one way.” [Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein (1957), pp. 102-103.]
"Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd... The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life." (Duane Gish, Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of California at Berkeley)
I agree that it applies. I do not agree that you know what it is or how to apply it. Furthermore, you're showing a doctrinaire resistance to learning anything beyond the few miserable quotes which you delude yourself as supporting your position. This resistance does not stem from any concern for, or interest in, matters of science. You pretend that it does only as a matter of cover for your attacks.
Not until the sun burns out, OK?
You are unfamiliar with the Second Law. Get a physics book, or use the links provided repeatedly throughout this thread.
It speeds up entropy.
I hate to go into "tallhappy" mode, but you simply don't know what you're talking about. Entropy does not have a speed.
Raw solar energy alone does not decrease entropy—in fact, it increases entropy . . .
Everything increases entropy.
. . . speeding up the natural processes that cause break-down, disorder, and disorganization on earth (consider, for example, your car’s paint job, a wooden fence, or a decomposing animal carcass, both with and then without the addition of solar radiation).
None of your examples refer to entropy except that every performance of work increases entropy.
And the fact still remains that the earth lives in the outflow of energy from the sun to space rather the way an old-timey mill lives in the downflow of water over a waterfall.
IOW, all you need is a source of potential energy to tap. I gave you another post on the subject here, still unanswered. The early universe was all potential and no order. The concrete proof is still shining upon us all the time 15 billion years later in the form of the CMB. Things have run down a bit but there's a lot more order and complexity.
Not one thing you just wrote negates the fact that the Second Law completely contradicts evolution. You've admitted the Second Law applies to life on this planet. Life on this planet is becoming more disorderly, decaying and will eventually die. That is the implication of the Second Law. Evolution contradicts this established law of science.
You can't use the point you're trying to prove in your proof. You have failed to demonstrate any such "fact" as you claim.
Evolution is your religion. You accept it on blind faith.
We have a 400-reply thread here for all to see. I have shown evidence. You have shown faith. Please leave science alone. You don't give a rat's butt about it.
You've proved you're brainwashed or a liar.
One more time, Sparky: read & weep:
The second law of thermodynamics and evolution
The second law of thermodynamics and evolution
Introduction
Many fundamentalist Christians see the theory of evolution as a threat to their faith, evidently because it is not explicitly included in Genesis. (They also misunderstand the scientific application of the word "theory" that the chemist uses in discussing atomic theory or the kinetic molecular theory of gases, ideas as unquestioned by all chemists as evolution is by professional biologists.) This is tragic because it cuts off sincere individuals who are not scientists from understanding the powerful relevance of one of the most important concepts in all of science.
Most disquieting to chemists who are interested in thermodynamics are the misleading statements about the second law and chemistry that creationist spokespeople have made. A few emphases from previous pages in the present Web site and from www.secondlaw.com that bear on this unfortunate situation are developed below. At the end of this page are superior links to presentations of the second law of thermodynamics and its irrelevance to creationists’ arguments against evolution. [emphaisis added]
"A watch must have required a watchmaker; a car could not have formed itself from parts."
(The following includes some excerpts from the previous section, "Obstructions..")
The above statements in italics from creationists are certainly true, but they have nothing to do with the behavior of atoms and molecules. Car parts in a junkyard don’t speed inside the yard at a thousand miles an hour, constantly colliding with each other, fusing together with a similar part (or different ones) so violently that enormous quantities of energy are given out – enough to make them white hot.
Why give a silly illustration like that? Anyone knows that it is not an inherent quality of metal parts to spontaneously join with similar or quite different parts to form complex new arrangements. Yet, this IS precisely the normal behavior of most of the chemical elements that constitute the world and the universe. The value of the second law of thermodynamics is that it quantitatively describes the energetic aspects of the chemical elements and the compounds they form. The chemical potential energy bound in most of the 20,000,000 known kinds of molecules is LESS than that in their elements. Thus, energetically, the second law says that the majority of compounds now known could spontaneously form from the corresponding elements. Watches or cars are not lower in thermodynamic energy than the total energy of their individual components. Therefore, the second law says that it is completely inappropriate to compare them with chemical compounds and elements.
Incessantly moving at a few hundred to two thousand miles an hour at ordinary temperatures. hydrogen and many other atoms behave in a fashion that is impossible for car parts: Most atoms spontaneously "bond" when they vigorously collide, forming extremely powerful associations in very specific ways. These new arrangements can be molecules so stable that thermal energy transfer at temperatures of a thousand or two thousand degrees can’t tear them apart again. Molecules are not atoms randomly stuffed in a package. When three or more atoms join to form a molecule, they are arranged in precise order, normally unchanging over time, and with a relatively fixed geometric relationship. Finally, many kinds of molecules can strike other kinds very violently and produce totally new types of molecules – another mode of formation of new complex ordered structures due to the same innate nature of atoms to form strong bonds. Amino acids when simply melted with other amino acids (to make them move more rapidly) form huge new compounds. These are NOT useful or valuable proteins, but are "proteinoid" in that they have hundreds to thousands of amino acid units firmly joined in many of the same kind of bonds that hold proteins together.
A simple example is the reaction of the behavior of elements is that of hydrogen gas with oxygen (that was tragically illustrated when the Hindenburg dirigible burned in 1937). Hydrogen atoms have such a great inherent tendency to form strong bonds with oxygen and form water that a small energy of activation, in the form of a spark affecting only a relatively few molecules, causes the two substances to start to react, resulting in an enormous evolution of energy. This is exactly as the second law predicts: some of the energy in hydrogen and oxygen tends to be spread out when the lesser-energetic water is formed. Yet, water is more complex than the simple elements and its atoms are arranged in an exact geometric pattern.
There are millions of compounds that have less energy in them than the elements of which they are composed. That sentence is a quiet bombshell. It means that the second law energetically FAVORS -- yes, predicts firmly -- the spontaneous formation of complex, geometrically ordered molecules from utterly simple atoms of elements. Popular statements such as "the second law says that all systems fundamentally tend toward disorder and randomness" are wrong when they refer to chemistry, and chemistry deals with the structure of all types of matter.
To summarize this important conclusion that is known by very few who are not chemists: Energetically, the second law of thermodynamics favors the formation of the majority of all known complex and ordered chemical compounds directly from their simpler elements. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the second law does not dictate the decrease of ordered structure in its predictions, it only demands a "spreading out" of energy in all processes.
Also, to repeat a caution: The foregoing only describes energetic relationships involving the second law. It does not mean that most complex substances can be readily synthesized just by mixing elements and treating them in some way. The second law has nothing to do with pathways or procedures of synthesis.
Most complex molecules may require the expertise of one or of many chemists to put them together in a laboratory. However, so far as the second law of thermodynamics is concerned, not only water but cholesterol, DNA, the anti-depressant in St. John’s Wort and millions of other complex substances contain less energy than their constituent elements. Therefore, thermodynamically, their formation from those elements would be a spontaneous process, energetically favored by the second law.
"The Law of Disorder"
As part of their attempts to challenge evolution, some religious writers have included comments to the effect that the second law – what they have called "the law of disorder" – strictly prohibits the chance formation of complicated stuctures from simple parts, including complex molecules from simple ones. This site, and especially http://www.secondlaw.com, have shown repeatedly that it is fallacious to view the second law as a predictor of disorder. The second law concerns energy, not patterns of objects. The second law states that energy tends not to be restricted to one or a few energy levels in atoms and molecules, but to be dispersed to as many such levels as possible – rephrased in homely terms involving molecules, "Intense or concentrated energy tends to spread out and diffuse".
In that spreading-out process, macro objects sometimes are displaced and moved to random arrangements that humans subjectively define as "disorder". A violent wind not only can break a window in a building and blow the papers in an office all over a square mile, but also destroy the building itself. However, this is an incidental consequence of dispersing and spreading out of the energy in a tornado, not an event that is due to the innate nature or behavior of inanimate objects in the absence of such an energy flow. Moving common objects around so they fall in disorder is a singular and accidental aspect of the universal tendency of energy to diffuse, not the general thrust or meaning or requirement of the second law that applies to objects.
Further, the second law is a tendency, not an instantly effected edict. Its predictions might not come true for millions or billions of years. These kinds of delay are due to the second law being obstructed and hindered by what chemists call "activation energies". All the biochemicals in our bodies except inorganic substances are protected and kept from oxidation or other disastrous reaction by activation energies. Almost all the materials from which our orderly prized artifacts are made are similarly kept from rapid oxidation in air. The second law is a powerful generality, but it is often blocked (to our human advantage) in chemical substances, chemical reactions, and physical events in everyday life.
"The second law says that complicated molecules can’t form spontaneously"
(This question is treated in greater detail and more technically in the last half of the previous section, "Obstructions to the second laws make life possible…")
Of course, the most complex substances that we know are produced by organisms. The photosynthetic example often cited by creationists is as follows: Trees make sugars and cellulose as well as the green chlorophyll and the colored chemicals that we see in Fall leaves, among hundreds of other compounds. They use energy from sunlight by means of intricate chemical processes to synthesize the complex higher-energy content substances just mentioned from lesser energy compounds like carbon dioxide and water. But the second law says that the opposite process – of higher-energy compounds changing into lesser-energy substances – is what tends to happen by itself, spontaneously, without outside aid from any energy source. Therefore, photosynthesis is a thermodynamically non-spontaneous process.
Religious writers are familiar with the general process of photosynthesis but are unfamiliar with chemical thermodynamics. They claim that the second law not only says that it is impossible for more complex substances to be spontaneously formed from simpler materials, but also a non-spontaneous process like photosynthesis that produces complex substances requires the presence of an organism, such as a plant.
Neither claim is true. As has been discussed adequately in a previous portion of this essay about the second law and evolution, "A watch must have … a watchmaker", the spontaneous formation of millions of far more complex compounds than their elements is energetically favored by the second law. This is true whether the new molecule is more or less complicated than its starting materials because the second law is concerned only with energy. All other requirements or consequences are not within the purview of the law.
It is equally erroneous to state that complex substances cannot be formed non-spontaneously from simpler without the intervention of an organism, "a patterning mechanism". Again, as has been discussed, the formation of patterned molecules is inherent in the nature of atoms combining with one another, no external template or help from a living organism is required by any physical law. "Non-spontaneous" simply means the addition of energy to a system of elements or compounds during the process of forming a new compound. Chlorophyll and substances as complex as chlorophyll have been synthesized in the laboratory, in glass vessels without the presence of any organisms in the reaction. Although that process was extremely difficult and took many person-years to complete, the principle was clear long before the chlorophyll project was undertaken: The non-spontaneous syntheses of greater-energy, complex substances from lesser-energy simple molecules without the aid of organisms is not prevented by the second law. It is just not favored. Over the past two centuries, hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of complex substances – admittedly less so than chlorophyll -- have been made similarly in laboratory glassware.
The spontaneous and non-spontaneous formation of complex compounds in space
Finally, it should be recognized that both spontaneous and non-spontaneous reactions to form complex substances are common in outer space. The two most prevalent elements there are hydrogen and carbon with considerably smaller quantities of oxygen and nitrogen. Although relatively few atoms or molecules are present per cubic inch, in untold quadrillions of cubic miles of space there are many millions of tons of each.
Organic compounds are those substances that contain carbon. (Because they differ so much from organic compounds in their properties, carbon monoxide, dioxide and the carbonates are not included.) The simplest organic compounds, called alkanes and composed only of carbon and hydrogen, contain portions or sections with one carbon atom holding two or three hydrogen atoms. Spectroscopic evidence for these characteristic alkane sections has been found throughout space. Alkanes with two to five carbon atoms joined to one another (and hydrogens attached to each carbon) are all lesser in energy than their elements. (Structures are in: http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/library/hydrocarbons/ ). Therefore, the second law says irrefutably that they could be formed spontaneously from carbon and hydrogen with the net evolution of energy. Their structural pattern is not vastly complex but it is far more so than the elements.
In contrast, those quite complicated alkanes with six or more joined carbon atoms in their molecules have greater energy than the elements from which they are composed. Thus, their formation would require the input of energy from outside themselves – intensely powerful ultraviolet or even x-rays, each of which are plentiful in many parts of the universe. Syntheses of these longer alkanes would be a process that is thermodynamically non-spontaneous. Spectroscopic evidence is not able to determine the number of carbon atoms in the total alkanes whose fragments are clearly present in space. However, spontaneously or non-spontaneously formed, they are complex and they are out there!
Far more complicated types of compounds that contain either carbon and hydrogen alone, or those elements with oxygen, have been detected in space: PAHs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. As in the case of the alkanes, the thermodynamic category of formation of the two groups of PAHs are different. If oxygen is present in the PAH (and this cannot yet be decided spectroscopically) the substances are less energetic than the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen elements from which they were formed. Thus, they were formed spontaneously strictly in accord with the second law of thermodynamics.
It is an amusing sidenote that the anti-depressant ingredient in St. John’s Wort, listed as hypercin and the precise structure given in the Merck Index, is an oxygen-containing PAH. These are complex substances that are important here on earth. It is still questionable, of course, that molecules with this precise structure are in space, but because it is energetically completely possible, it and many comparable materials may be present there.
PAHs composed only of carbon and hydrogen contain more energy within their molecules than do elemental carbon and hydrogen. Therefore, their synthesis from the elements is thermodynamically non-spontaneous. Nevertheless, these PAHs detected in space would have been formed "automatically", i.e., without any organismic intervention (!). Energy would have been supplied to the process, probably via powerful bursts of radiation from many kinds of stellar and similar sources.
Even more convincing evidence of the existence of PAHs in space and in other parts of the universe is their presence in meteorites that have fallen to the earth. Extremely careful isolation of carbon-containing substances from some meteorites has proved the presence of specific polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Cyanide compounds, formed from the elements of carbon and nitrogen, have been shown by spectroscopy to be prevalent in all comets, along with ice (spontaneously formed from hydrogen and oxygen). All cyanides are considerably higher in energy content than carbon and hydrogen and thus they must have been formed non-spontaneously thermodynamically.
In summary, there is ample evidence for the existence of complicated, orderly molecules in outer space. They were formed without an organism’s assistance because no such organisms have been found associated with them in meteorites and, of course, none can thrive in the energetic conditions of outer space. The "automatic" formation of complicated, orderly substances both spontaneously and non-spontaneously is simply the consequence of normal chemical laws and the second law of thermodynamics. (The intense energy sources in space make possible non-spontaneous synthesis there.)
A superior list of links to scientific views of evolution as well as to the whole spectrum of creationist sites is in http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/other-links.html
A scientific analysis of the problems creationists face in asserting that the second law is somehow an obstacle to evolution is http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/probability.html
A brief, but very substantive, response to creationists’ attributing false implications to thermodynamics is http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/creationism.html
A well-reasoned summary, "The Second Law of Thermodynamics in the Context of the Christian Faith" by a chemical physicist, who is also a devout Christian is in his Web page http://www.shawangunk.com/scichr/essays/thermo.html
An equally good paper, "Entropy, God and Evolution" by a physicist, also a Christian, is in http://www.escape.ca/~acc/reading/evol.html
| For info from NASA on substances in space: http://web99.arc.nasa.gov:80/%7Eastrochm/ |
References
Free energies of formation of chemical substances are most easily found in the CRC Press Handbook of Chemistry and Physics in Section 5 under "Standard Thermodynamic Properties ….". The DG values listed are for free energies of formation from the elements. Where DG values are missing and DH and S are printed, the DG can be calculated from the Gibbs equation, as shown in any general chemistry text.
Do you have some reasoned, thoughtful objections to the foregoing analysis, or are you going to subject us yet again to a flurry of your out-of-context quotes and unsupported assertions based on a fundamental lack of understanding of Thermodynamics?
The author has presented compelling detailed evidence at the molecular level to show that the 2LoT in no way precludes evolution. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting: "YES IT DOES YES IT DOES YES IT DOES......" proves absolutely nothing other than your unwillingness to entertain evidence that contradicts your apparently delusion beliefs about how Chemistry and Thermodynamics work.
BTW, how are your pals on the newsgroup doing on coming up with an answer to this? Called in the "Big Guns" yet?
The above detailed explanation of Evolution and the 2LoT illustrates why no real scientist is going to waste time "debating" some internet broadcast crackpot; real science is in the details, and whatever amount of time and space it takes to get it right is what it deserves. Delusional beliefs, on the other hand, can be compressed into swell-sounding sound-bites that fit into a "radio" debate format very nicely.
And that is why your much-touted Enyart will never show his face in a forum such as THIS. He will get exposed and demolished the same way you have been, despite your efforts to pretend otherwise.
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