second law of thermodynamics (its an easy one)

[gf]

Hello.

I spoke to a Creationist, whom stated that the second law of thermodynamics, goes against Evolution. As the Universe decays.


Now, it dawned on me, that this is not a rare event, as most Creationist proclaim this, not at least, a certain Mr Kent Hovind. So i thought we could have a discussion about this.


The second law of thermodynamics does not claim that everything is "winding down" / decays / crumbles / or similar. What it does state is that you get entropy, and it seems that this is where we get a problem. Either most people do not know what this means, or they dont want to know what it means.

To claim that entropy equals decay, is to go from Physics to Opinion.


And this is the important part of it.
The second law of thermodynamics only states, that entropy occurs in different stages.


And this is it. If you claim, state or otherwise say in any way that it "decays", or "improves", you go from Physics, to your own opinion.



So it does not go against Evolution, it rather enhances evolution, as Evolution also, does not mean improve, but means change.



Opinion anyone ?

Perhaps you need some background information about this, but this is more or less the main thing that most Creationist seems to be confused about.

[ShadowRishi]

Now about gravity being negative energy. With the little that I understand about gravity, I thought gravity was a force, not energy. Gravity is simply a property of mass. Without any mass, there cannot exist any gravity. When you refer to gravity as energy, does that mean that gravity can exist without any mass? If gravity is energy, does that mean that mass and gravity are (theoretically) convertible to each other? What exactly does negative energy mean?

Hmm... I'm going to make a thread about this in more detail, I think. It would be beneficial to some of the community members.

First off, force implies energy; that is to say, you cannot have force without energy.

(if you want to get really, really technical with the mathematical terminology, energy is defined as the path integral from one spatial location to another of the force function with respect to displacement)

If the system does not have:

"1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity

There is no such thing as a "direction" given by a "program" on the planet. You are, in essence, anthropomorphizing the scientific laws; that is to say you are treating scientific laws as though they only come into play at certain times.

Scientific laws do not choose when to apply; they are always at work (least ways, the general laws of physics that we are talking about do).

The program, that is to say, is the laws of physics themselves, and they know no boundaries.

2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy."

Scratch what I said below; I'm going to assume you've never had a post-ninth grade science course.


Please, try to make an effort to understand basic science before you try to deal with more complex theories and ideas in science.


Thermodynamics is the study of how heat --a very specific type of energy-- is created (chemical reactions evolves energy from electron bonds), how it can do work (use energy to accelerate masses), what happens to the energy, et cetera.

We are talking about a system of biological organisms that receive (for our purposes) an unlimited amount of energy from the sun. You are using 150 year old scientific theory; prior to our understanding of cosmic rays and how they provide energy to Earth, we thought that the earth had a whole lot of energy, and then slowly becomes hotter. Please, remove this idea from your mind! The planet is a lot more complicated than that. (The planet is our system, by the way)

I would argue that the 2nd Law would prohibit self organization.

And I would argue that you have no idea what on earth you are talking about.


Please, if you've never taken a course on thermodynamics --let alone physics itself-- then kindly admit that you may --that is to say, there is a chance-- have no idea what you are talking about.

[QED]

If the system does not have:

"1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity

2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy."

I would argue that the 2nd Law would prohibit self organization.

I beleive Timothy Wallace set out these two conditions in his essay titled Five Major Evolutionist Misconceptions about Evolution as an attempted rebuttal of Mark Isaak's: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution in the Talk Origins Archive.

The fact is, contrary to the simplistic claim often parroted by evolutionists like Isaak, any increase in organized complexity (i.e., decrease in entropy) invariably requires two additional factors besides an open system and an available energy supply. These are:

1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity
2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy.

The "parroting of evolutionists" seems to have prompted Wallace to tell everyone that energy alone will not generate organized complexity (as if a field with nothing but itself to interact with could order anything else!). This is of little value in establishing what kind of interactions could generate the appearance of "organized complexity". micatala's snowflake is a good example as is a Bnard cell

Bnard cells are convection cells that appear spontaneously in a liquid layer when heat is applied from below. They can be obtained using a simple experiment first conducted by Henri Bnard, a French physicist, in 1900. The experiment illustrates the theory of dissipative structures.

"Dissipative structures" can clearly establish themselves without intelligent design, all they require is an energy or chemical gradient and materials that respond differentially within such gradients. Wallace has given us nothing that can distinguish biological evolution from any other self-organizing dissipative system and hence is unable to impose his own favored limits on biological evolution.

[Confused]

If the system does not have:

"1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity

2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy."

I would argue that the 2nd Law would prohibit self organization.

I beleive Timothy Wallace set out these two conditions in his essay titled Five Major Evolutionist Misconceptions about Evolution as an attempted rebuttal of Mark Isaak's: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution in the Talk Origins Archive.

The fact is, contrary to the simplistic claim often parroted by evolutionists like Isaak, any increase in organized complexity (i.e., decrease in entropy) invariably requires two additional factors besides an open system and an available energy supply. These are:

1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity
2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy.

The "parroting of evolutionists" seems to have prompted Wallace to tell everyone that energy alone will not generate organized complexity (as if a field with nothing but itself to interact with could order anything else!). This is of little value in establishing what kind of interactions could generate the appearance of "organized complexity". micatala's snowflake is a good example as is a Bnard cell

Bnard cells are convection cells that appear spontaneously in a liquid layer when heat is applied from below. They can be obtained using a simple experiment first conducted by Henri Bnard, a French physicist, in 1900. The experiment illustrates the theory of dissipative structures.

"Dissipative structures" can clearly establish themselves without intelligent design, all they require is an energy or chemical gradient and materials that respond differentially within such gradients. Wallace has given us nothing that can distinguish biological evolution from any other self-organizing dissipative system and hence is unable to impose his own favored limits on biological evolution.

Did I not just cover this on the last page?

[Fisherking]

If the system does not have:

"1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity

2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy."

I would argue that the 2nd Law would prohibit self organization.

I beleive Timothy Wallace set out these two conditions in his essay titled Five Major Evolutionist Misconceptions about Evolution as an attempted rebuttal of Mark Isaak's: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution in the Talk Origins Archive.

The fact is, contrary to the simplistic claim often parroted by evolutionists like Isaak, any increase in organized complexity (i.e., decrease in entropy) invariably requires two additional factors besides an open system and an available energy supply. These are:

1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity
2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy.

The "parroting of evolutionists" seems to have prompted Wallace to tell everyone that energy alone will not generate organized complexity (as if a field with nothing but itself to interact with could order anything else!). This is of little value in establishing what kind of interactions could generate the appearance of "organized complexity". micatala's snowflake is a good example as is a Bnard cell

Bnard cells are convection cells that appear spontaneously in a liquid layer when heat is applied from below. They can be obtained using a simple experiment first conducted by Henri Bnard, a French physicist, in 1900. The experiment illustrates the theory of dissipative structures.

"Dissipative structures" can clearly establish themselves without intelligent design, all they require is an energy or chemical gradient and materials that respond differentially within such gradients. Wallace has given us nothing that can distinguish biological evolution from any other self-organizing dissipative system and hence is unable to impose his own favored limits on biological evolution.

I would ask what the 'program' is when snowflakes are formed. Certainly, at least from a subjective standpoint, snowflakes are much more structured and comples than water droplets or diffuse water vapor. Would Fisherking say that the formation of snowflakes violates the 2nd law or his 2 assumptions about how the 2nd law operates?

It sure doesn't. The link I provided earlier went over this example along with others like it showing how snowflakes sing to the tune thermodynamics just like everything else.

Not far into the more lengthy of his two Talk.Origins essays ("The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability"), Steiger attributes to "creationists" a:

wide-spread and totally false belief that the second law of thermodynamics does not permit order to spontaneously arise from disorder.
...which he then attempts to dispute by means of a grossly erroneous generalization:
In fact, there are many examples in nature where order does arise spontaneously from disorder: Snowflakes with their six-sided crystalline symmetry are formed spontaneously from randomly moving water vapor molecules. Salts with precise planes of crystalline symmetry form spontaneously when water evaporates from a solution. Seeds sprout into flowering plants and eggs develop into chicks.
The "order" found in a snowflake or a crystal has nothing to do with increased information, organization or complexity, or available energy (i.e., reduced entropy). The formation of molecules or atoms into geometric patterns such as snowflakes or crystals reflects movement towards equilibriuma lower energy level, and a more stable arrangement of the molecules or atoms into simple, uniform, repeating structures with minimal complexity, and no function. These are not examples of matter forming itself into more organized or more complex structures or systems (as postulated in evolutionist theory), even though they may certainly reflect "order" in the form of simple patterns.
Steiger fails to recognize the profound difference between these examples of low-energy molecular crystals and the high-energy growth process of living organisms (seeds sprouting into flowering plants and eggs developing into chicks). His equating these two very different phenomena reveals a serious misunderstanding of thermodynamics (as well as molecular biology) on his part, and he perpetuates this error in the balance of both his essays, as we shall see.

On the other hand, Jeffrey Wicken (an evolutionist) has no problem recognizing the difference, having described it this way:

"Organized systems are to be carefully distinguished from ordered systems. Neither kind of system is random, but whereas ordered systems are generated according to simple algorithms and therefore lack complexity, organized systems must be assembled element by element according to an external wiring diagram with a high information content ... Organization, then, is functional complexity and carries information. It is non-random by design or by selection, rather than by the a priori necessity of crystallographic order."
[Jeffrey S. Wicken, The Generation of Complexity in Evolution: A Thermodynamic and Information-Theoretical Discussion, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 77 (April 1979), p. 349]
Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine also has no problem defining the difference:
"The point is that in a non-isolated [open] system there exists a possibility for formation of ordered, low-entropy structures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of phase transitions. Unfortunately this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures."
[I. Prigogine, G. Nicolis and A. Babloyants, Physics Today 25(11):23 (1972)]
Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen make the same clear distinction:
"As ice forms, energy (80 calories/gm) is liberated to the surroundings... The entropy change is negative because the thermal configuration entropy (or disorder) of water is greater than that of ice, which is a highly ordered crystal... It has often been argued by analogy to water crystallizing to ice that simple monomers may polymerize into complex molecules such as protein and DNA. The analogy is clearly inappropriate, however... The atomic bonding forces draw water molecules into an orderly crystalline array when the thermal agitation (or entropy driving force) is made sufficiently small by lowering the temperature. Organic monomers such as amino acids resist combining at all at any temperature, however, much less in some orderly arrangement." [C.B. Thaxton, W.L. Bradley, and R.L. Olsen, The Mystery of Lifes Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, Philosophical Library, New York, 1984, pp. 119-120. Thermodynamics vs. Evolutionism

Wallace does not impose any limits on biological evolution, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does.

[Goat]

Wallace does not impose any limits on biological evolution, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does.

Well, Wallace's explaintion on how thermodynamics imposes a limit is incorrect, and does not make sense. It is making assumptions based on incorrect understanding of both biological evolution and on thermodynamics.

[Fisherking]

Wallace does not impose any limits on biological evolution, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does.

Well, Wallace's explaintion on how thermodynamics imposes a limit is incorrect, and does not make sense. It is making assumptions based on incorrect understanding of both biological evolution and on thermodynamics.

You saying the explaination is incorrect does not make it incorrect. Maybe you could fill us in on the correct understanding of both biological evolution and thermodynamics

[Goat]

Wallace does not impose any limits on biological evolution, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does.

Well, Wallace's explaintion on how thermodynamics imposes a limit is incorrect, and does not make sense. It is making assumptions based on incorrect understanding of both biological evolution and on thermodynamics.

You saying the explaination is incorrect does not make it incorrect. Maybe you could fill us in on the correct understanding of both biological evolution and thermodynamics

QED covered it quite nicely. you didn't respond to it , and just hand waved it away.

Wallace makes additions to the second law that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't say at all. For example, please show where the 2lot deals with information at all. Show in a real science book, not from wallace.

[ShadowRishi]

*just reminding Fisherking about my post on the last page*

[Fisherking]

Wallace does not impose any limits on biological evolution, the 2nd law of thermodynamics does.

Well, Wallace's explaintion on how thermodynamics imposes a limit is incorrect, and does not make sense. It is making assumptions based on incorrect understanding of both biological evolution and on thermodynamics.

You saying the explaination is incorrect does not make it incorrect. Maybe you could fill us in on the correct understanding of both biological evolution and thermodynamics

QED covered it quite nicely. you didn't respond to it , and just hand waved it away.

Wallace makes additions to the second law that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't say at all. For example, please show where the 2lot deals with information at all. Show in a real science book, not from wallace.

I responded to both micatala and QED's examples with quotes from Wallace dealing with the formation of "molecules or atoms into simple, uniform, repeating structures with minimal complexity and no function", compared to " high-energy growth process of living organisms".

Wallace makes additions to the second law that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't say at all. For example, please show where the 2lot deals with information at all.

What additions are these? Is he giving a different definition of the 2lotd that what you use?

[Fisherking]

If the system does not have:

"1. a "program" (information) to direct the growth in organized complexity

There is no such thing as a "direction" given by a "program" on the planet.

Sure there is, DNA is a good example of information directing the growth of an organism.

Scientific laws do not choose when to apply; they are always at work.

I agree.

2. a mechanism for storing and converting the incoming energy."

We are talking about a system of biological organisms that receive (for our purposes) an unlimited amount of energy from the sun. You are using 150 year old scientific theory; prior to our understanding of cosmic rays and how they provide energy to Earth, we thought that the earth had a whole lot of energy, and then slowly becomes hotter. Please, remove this idea from your mind! The planet is a lot more complicated than that.

I have no idea what you are trying to say here or how it deals with mechanisms for storing and converting incoming energy.