Actually it was based on reading the whole thing. Had to take a break for dinner, but ome highlights:
The first formulations of the second law were all about heat:
In fact in its most basic form the second law says that in a closed system there can be no process that has as its sole result the transfer of heat from a cooler to a hotter body.
With time, the second law came to be interpreted more and more generally, and today most discussions of the second law in physics textbooks offer examples of entropy increases (order decreases) which have nothing to do with heat conduction or diffusion, such as the shattering of a wine glass or the demolition of a building.
This is more an indication of how poorly-written a lot of textbooks are than a support of this guy's case. The basic creationist problem is them directly equating entropy with laymen's notions of "randomness" or "disorder" or "complexity" which is not the case.
Natural forces, such as corrosion, erosion, fire and explosions, do not create order, they destroy it.
The above is probably his silliest claim. There are innumerable natural forces that create "order" my previous example of the formation of hurricanes being a good one....(keep in mind what I previously said about making sure not to assume that your notions of "order" or "disorder" or "complexity" correspond to what the Second Law ACTUALLY says).
alone among all natural forces -- can create order out of disorder
Notice that this obviously ridiculous claim of his is repeated and is central to his argument. There are examples of order out of disorder in the natural world occuring ALL THE TIME other than in evolution or in living things.
Shoe is on the other hand now.
No matter how loud their proponents yell, creationism and ID are mythology, religion, and philosophy. Evolution is science.
The only reason I get involved is because I worry about our kids getting screwed up thinking that when you hit something you can't explain, you basically throw your hands up and say "magic did this." That is very real damage.
No wonder we are losing so badly in worldwide academia.
The question is the spontaneous creation of organization doing work. That's why the spontaneous formation of a 747 is a problem. Finding orderly circles in nature is not a problem.
That's right. Entropy is quantitative. You can grind a teapot into dust without substantially altering its entropy. What alteration there is depends on the formation of new surfaces with altered bonding among the atoms there, and has nothing to do with its new configuration per se.
BTW, Lee Smolin in Three_Roads_to_Quantum_Gravity repeats the usual canard that the entropy of a teapot is "greatly increased" by breaking it into bits. I think creationists should be taken to task for their refusal to consider the error of their argument, but it's hard to say that the error is any more laughable than Smolin's.