[El Gato]

Why should we think that random mutation accounted for all of the developments in life?

Because when the mutations are favorable, in one way or another, they are selected for, when they are not favorable, they are usually disastrous, they are selected against. "Favorable", at the stage of complex life, say from the the amoeba on up, means more likely to survive to reproduce, or just more likely to reproduce.

Pretty much the same at lower levels, except that the concept of "reproduce" becomes more chemical or biochemical than biological. But the principal is the same.

This guy's version of the first and seconds laws of thermodynamics are not the ones I was taught in an Engineering Thermodynamics. And not just taught in the sense of memorizing something, but of understanding. Don't think I could reproduce the logic here, it has been 35 or so years ago, and it's not an area I work in.

Combined Law of Thermodynamics

For energy E, temperature T, Entropy S, pressure P, and volume V, (The little 'd' stands for delta or change in)

However, people decrease entropy all the time, an air conditioner does it, but always at the expense of doing work (using energy) and increasing entropy in the larger system.

[ROTB]

The Devil is in the details ...

[babygene]

"However, people decrease entropy all the time, an air conditioner does it, but always at the expense of doing work (using energy) and increasing entropy in the larger system."

It interesting you picked an refrigeration example. (bad choice)

They don't refer to the performance of an air conditioner in efficiency. They refer to it as "coefficient of performance". Usually it's about 400%. The reason this is "OK" is that they move heat from one place to another. They do not generate heat from some other form of energy.

[be4everfree]

Ok, I am trying to understand this 2nd law.

Would it be correct to say that all matter, in a closed system, is degrading so to speak ?

This sounds like the basis for "carbon dating".

[Doctor Stochastic]

This guy's version of the first and seconds laws of thermodynamics are not the ones I was taught in an Engineering Thermodynamics.

Nor are they the ones I learned in graduate chemical thermodynamics courses.

[TalonDJ]

This guy's version of the first and seconds laws of thermodynamics are not the ones I was taught in an Engineering Thermodynamics.

That is funny because they are the same ones I learned in Engineering Thermodynamics. Putting them in equation form does not contradict the article. Saying "people decrease entropy all the time" supports an intelligent design as the only verifiable way things in a local space can contradict entropy. But even the refrigerator example does not really contradict it. Take a 'fridge, hook it to a battery and put it in a 'closed system'. For a while it will decrease the local entropy of a part of the system, until finally it runs out of batteries and breaks down. And even while it is working the total disorder of the close system will be increasing. And when the power runs out even the local order will degrade away. BUT none of that contradicts what he said. The whole refrigerator example requires first a human to wander up to the closed system and stuff a really HUGE piece of order into it, a refrigerator. Lets say the statistical order of the refrigerator (the likelyhood of it forming randomly) is the amount of 'order' added to the system at the start of the experiment. Moving a little heat around, in a probability sense, is a drop in the bucket compared to the order increase of stuffing a refrigerator into the box in the first place.