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Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Topic Started: Apr 20 2008, 05:25 PM (454 Views)
Soulless
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I've seen the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being used as an argument against the validity of evolution. Firstly, what is the 2nd Law?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is commonly known as the Law of Increased Entropy. While quantity remains the same (First Law - neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed.), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time. Usable energy is used for productivity, growth and repair. In the process, usable energy is converted into unusable energy, meaning 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, disorganisation, randomness and chaos increase.



The following is taken from http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF001.html


Claim: The second law of thermodynamics says that everything tends toward disorder, making evolutionary development impossible.


Response:
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.
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raisemeup

Soulless,
First, you should know that talkorigins is a very unreliable evolutionary propaganda site whose stated purpose is to refute “creationism” regardless of the truth of their arguments. I would not trust them as far as I could throw a potato chip. Like many evolutionary sites that claim to be “scientific”, they are completely ignorant of creation theory and go on their merry way refuting straw men instead of the real thing. As far as evolution goes, they have no objectivity whatsoever and will defend it even if their arguments are completely irrational. Such it is with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Let's start with a statement of the 2nd law by Isaac Asimov - " Another way of stating the second law then is: ‘The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!’ Viewed that way, we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself -- and that is what the second law is all about.”
[Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 6]

Notice that he says "all we have to do is nothing and EVERYTHING deteriorates", NO exceptions! Nowhere in the universe have we EVER observed a continual spontaneous increase in complexity, period. The fact that life is suppose to have spontaneously formed all by itself is clearly in violation of this observed law of matter/energy (the 2nd law). AND the law applies to both closed and open systems. The introduction of the sun's energy is necessary, but NOT a sufficient condition to break this law because the sun's energy does nothing except to "deteriorate collapse, break down" and "wear out".

Our rooms are an open system, with energy from the sun flowing into them. If I am to believe your argument, we should not be surprised and even expect our rooms to get more orderly and complex all by themselves simply because it is an open system with sunlight flowing in. Certainly, spontaneous levitating boulders would be no problem for the second law either because they have sunlight shining on them! We can add energy to a china shop by letting a live bull loose inside, but I doubt you would suggest that a bunch of broken china are more orderly than the nicely arranged dishes before the bull was let loose.

Order can only arise if there is a designed mechanism or machinery which can convert the energy into complexity. That is why the second law was devised in the first place. The 2nd law states that things left to themselves will "deteriorate collapse, break down and wear out". Living things, and their supposed components before they were living, have been left to themselves and therefore they must "deteriorate collapse, break down and wear out". Reproduction, heritable variation and selection have NEVER been shown to increase complexity (in the form of CSI – complex and specified information) in living things. This is a figment of an evolutionist’s imagination and not science. Evolution does not occur because for one, the 2nd law forbids it.
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Soulless
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I'm sorry. I almost stopped reading your post and dismissed it as more uninformed garbage. I should have. You have no understanding of the difference between entropy and disorder. You ignore the difference (or simply do not understand the relevance) between a closed and an open system. You quote mined Sir Isaac Asimov either in ignorance (you simply read it on some Christian website and failed to check the accuracy) or deceit (you knew it was a quote mine and used it regardless). I'll actually supply the rest of the comment made by Sir Isaac.

"Another way of stating the Second Law, then, is: The universe is constantly getting more disorderly.
Viewed that way, we can see the Second Law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself, it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order; how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself and that is what the Second Law is all about.
You can argue, of course, that the phenomenon of life may be an exception. Life on earth has steadily grown more complex, more versatile, more elaborate, more orderly, over the billions of years of the planet's existence. From no life at all, living molecules were developed, then living cells, then living conglomerates of cells, worms, vertebrates, mammals, finally Man. And in Man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe. How could the human brain develop out of the primeval slime? How could that vast increase in order (and therefore that vast decrease of entropy) have taken place?
The answer is it could not have taken place without a tremendous source of energy constantly bathing the earth, for it is on that energy that life subsists. Remove the sun, and the human brain would not have developed, or the primeval slime, either. And in the billions of years it took for the human brain to develop, the increase in entropy that took place in the sun was far greater than the decrease that is represented by the evolution required to develop the human brain."
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raisemeup

I had taken this site for abandoned and while I was cleaning up some links I noticed that I had actually gotten a reply. And what a reply it is! Really now! How typical of an evolutionist response – arrogant, condescending with the use of hateful and derogatory language thrown in while never addressing any of the issues. In debate circles, one automatically recognizes that when someone utilizes ad hominem tactics, they have no evidence to back up their arguments.

Another common tactic evolutionists use when they haven’t a clue is to simply accuse the other side of “quote mining” when no such thing has taken place. My quote was not intended to paint Asimov as a creationist. Of course he believes in evolution! And your addition to the quote does absolutely NOTHING to change its meaning. Notice that he says “the phenomenon of life MAY be an exception”. Apparently he doesn’t know. Without going into all of his other writings, in the end he is just taking it on FAITH that evolution has occurred and somehow has circumvented the laws of science.

In addition, he states that it “could not have taken place without a tremendous source of energy…” I totally agree!!! As you admit in your first sentence, you apparently didn’t read my response closely enough. Energy is NECESSARY but NOT SUFFICIENT. It is not enough to simply use a lame excuse that because the Sun’s entropy has increased, that automatically allows a decrease elsewhere in the universe! If that was the case, as I pointed out in my response, why don’t we see levitating boulders and my room cleaning itself! Indeed, any decrease in entropy you could dream up would be valid.

Why don’t you try addressing the issues, instead of attacking the messenger and blindly following evolutionist propaganda?
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