Re: Commentary: Creationism - How Entropy challenges Evolution Theory
- From: edfredcoder@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 13 Jun 2006 21:06:09 -0700
Jason Spaceman wrote:
From the article:
------------------------------------------------------
June 13th, 2006
Few scientists have considered or pondered the full implications of
the law of entropy upon the theory of evolution.
Yes, they have. Duane Gish? Kent Hoovind? (oops, he's not a scientist!)
And, as we shall see,
entropy does occur in open systems such as our Earth.
It occures in all closed systems.
And in some open systems.
The theory of evolution teaches that matter tends to evolve towards
greater and greater complexity and order. We are so accustomed to
seeing evolution of technology all about us (new cars, boats, ships,
inventions, etc.) that we assume that nature must work the same way
also. Of course, we forget that all those new gadgets and technology
had a human designer behind them. Nature, however, doesn't work the
same way.
Nope, its stuck with evolution, which is just as good, given enough
time. Hey, could
you design a human? Hmmm? Yet evolution did. But maybe you could, too,
given a couple billion years.
The spontaneous (the unaided or undirected) tendency of matter is
always towards greater disorder -- not towards greater order and
complexity as evolution would teach.
Yet salt crystals form, extemely orderly:
Na Cl Na Cl Na Cl
Cl Na Cl Na Cl Na
Na Cl Na Cl Na Cl
Cl Na Cl Na Cl Na
No divine intervention there.
This tendency towards disorder
that exists in all matter can be temporarily overcome only if there
exists some energy converting and directing mechanism to direct,
develop, and maintain order.
It doesn't matter whether a system is open (with unlimited energy)
or
closed (with limited energy), entropy occurs in both systems.
It will occur in the closed one, it might or might not occur in the
open one.
In fact,
scientists discovered entropy here on our very Earth,
Was it discovered or invented? (Sorry, couldn't resist)
which is an open
system in relation to the sun. The difference between an open system
and closed system is not entropy but, rather, the availability of
useful energy.
If you have energy constantly being pumped into a system, and in the
massive quanties that the sun does, I'd have to say that heat death
could be somewhat difficult to come to.
Is not energy from the Sun more than sufficient to drive the evolution
of life on Earth?
Evolution by natural selection needs replicators that have random
intrisic variations pass down to offspring, which then have more
variations introduced, etc., inducing differences in "fitness," or
ability to reproduce/survive.
The problem, again, is that it is not enough just to
have a sufficient supply of useful energy for evolution to occur.
See above for what evolution needs.
There must also exist an energy converting and directing mechanism.
aka, Metabolisms!
Although actually, entropy is more so saying that a closed system will
approach "heat death," where all particles are at the same tempiture.
Which will happen, eventually, to the universe. So entropy is not
violated, as it ultimatly gets its own end of heat death.
Entropy measures the amount of energy avalible for work, mostly due to
differences in tempiture in different places. Ice melting is an example
of entropy: the tempitures in the universe are all heading toward each
other, so in a gazzilion (scratch that, jazzilion sounds cooler) years,
the universe will have achieved "heat death," where everything will
have the same tempiture. It's often said to be about complexity, but it
isn't.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
*sign* Try reading a Gish vs. Saladin debate, this issue comes up a
lot. Saladin can explain it much better than I.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ken_saladin/saladin-gish2/index.shtml
.
- References:
- Commentary: Creationism - How Entropy challenges Evolution Theory
- From: Jason Spaceman
- Commentary: Creationism - How Entropy challenges Evolution Theory
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