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To: Remedy
Don't let the title of this link frighten you away from reading all of the material. Thermodynamics vs. Evolutionism

This is the classic bait & switch argument. Here's how I respon to that at Creation/Evolution: The Eternal Debate:

Here's the prototypical 2LoT debate:

Creationist: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (2LoT) makes evolution impossible. The 2LoT says that everything tends to disorder, but evolution creates order out of disorder. Therefore it's impossible.

Evolutionist: You've got it half-right, but halfway isn't nearly enough if you want to understand the real issue. Living things must keep total disorder at bay on a molecular level, and to do this they must move molecules around. This takes work, which requires energy input and waste heat output. So the 2LoT tells us that all living things must eat. It implies nothing more than that!

Creationist: Oh, um, did I say the 2LoT prevents evolution from happening? I meant that even though the 2LoT does not prevent evolution from happening, it's not sufficient to explain it. There also has to be a "programmed energy transfer mechanism". After all, if you lay in the sun, it doesn't mean you can stop eating - you have to get your energy in specific ways for it to help your body to keep disorder at bay.

Evolutionist: Well, duh. Nice try at changing the subject!

Creationists can be notoriously sloppy about how they structure their arguments, but it seems they are really trying to make two different claims:

  1. The 2LoT makes abiogenesis impossible
  2. The 2LoT makes subsequent evolution of structures of increasing complexity impossible

Claim #1 is answered when we realize how small were the first RNA strands that were able to catalyze metabolic functions including their own replication, thus rising above the molecular "noise" to create self-sustaining colonies. (These molecules don't need any outside "information storage mechanism" nor "programmed energy transfer system" to keep the process going.) Some of these are small enough that they could have arisen initially by pure chance.

Once colonies of reproducing chemicals exist, it makes sense to think of them as populations - competing and cooperating within & between populations in a "free market chemical economy". As any economist will tell you, in any free market specialization is inevitable because of Comparative Advantage. There are greater rewards to be found in (and therefore selective pressure towards) specialization. In the chemical "economy", we see that RNA can catalyze reactions, and it can also store information. So can RNA's close cousin, DNA. But DNA is much better at storing information than is RNA, and RNA is a better catalyst than DNA. Proteins & peptides can be more efficient at catalyzing reactions than either RNA or DNA, but generally cannot store the information needed to direct their own replication. There is nothing in the 2nd Law that prohibits these kinds of specialization, except that these chemicals must have a source of energy. The "programmed energy transfer mechanism" that a more complex & tightly-integrated economy would eventually find indispensible, would at first simply be another such advantageous specialization: ATP, a precursor to RNA nucleosides, also turns out to be a very efficient store of energy on its own, and today it's used as a widespread "energy currency" throughout all kinds of cells. Similarly, our economy was originally based on barter, with one useful commodity or service being traded directly for another; but as it evolved certain versatile commodities such as gold and silver became used more as the basis for money than did anything else.

Claim #2 is particularly vague. Creationists never define exactly what they mean by "evolution of structures of increasing complexity". Do they mean species whose genomes have more base pairs than their parent species? More genes than their parent species? More chromosomes than their parent species? More random-looking letter sequences than in their parent species' genes? Higher number of cells in their bodies than that of their parent species? More differentiated cell types than their parent species? More organs than their parent species? More neurons in their brains than their parent species?

Standard, well-known processes explain all of these phenomena - gene duplication and hijacking, recombination, chromosome doubling (mostly in plants), etc. And remember: None of these are prohibited by the 2nd Law, as long as the organisms remember to eat dinner!

That's why creationists' 2nd Law of Thermodynamics arguments fail.


119 posted on 02/15/2003 1:20:15 PM PST by jennyp (http://crevo.bestmessageboard.com)
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To: jennyp
Claim #1 is answered when we realize how small were the first RNA strands that were able to catalyze metabolic functions including their own replication, thus rising above the molecular "noise" to create self-sustaining colonies. (These molecules don't need any outside "information storage mechanism" nor "programmed energy transfer system" to keep the process going.) Some of these are small enough that they could have arisen initially by pure chance.

You are making the claim. Name the RNA sequence and how it came about.

166 posted on 02/16/2003 1:29:55 PM PST by AndrewC
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