Posted on 11/20/2009 6:40:11 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
It has always amazed me how unconcerned evolutionists seem to be about entropy and the problems it poses both for a natural origin of life and for macroevolution. The argument from entropy is one of the most powerful arguments against the spontaneous formation of life from a random association of non-living chemicals...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationresearch.org ...
Weather is not that orderly. There is much disorder in the systems, which is what makes weather forecasting so much of a crap shoot.
The slight amount of order that appears for some time in the formation of low pressure cells, hurricanes, and thunderstorms, dissipates very quickly.
It isn't merely the unequal heating of the earth's surface that causes the weather systems to develop either. There are other forces that play into it.
Still, even the slight, transient amounts of order that appear in weather systems, are magnitudes of order removed from the order contained in DNA, and the information it carries.
Extrapolating the complexity of life from something as unstable as weather is not reasonable.
While weather is a good example of how just poring energy into a system can produce slight areas of order, life isn't. To achieve that degree of order and information would require massive amounts of disorder to exist elsewhere for the system to balance out and looking at the universe as a whole, I just don't see that kind of disorder in evidence.
Really? So, hurricanes, for instance, don't form naturally, but rather each individual hurricane is "intelligently designed?" Indeed every storm, every gust of wind? Do tell.
You know, you might want to take a look at Islam. In contrast to Christianity, which has long distinguished between "primary" (Divine) and "secondary" (natural) causation, Islam has traditionally asserted that natural law is an illusion, and that all events are the direct result of God's will. IOW creation is a mere sock puppet for God. Seems to better fit your take on things.
Wind is wind. But in order for it to accomplish complex, specified work, it requires intelligence to harness it. Same goes for harnessing the sun’s energy to accomplish specified work, whether that be to power a home or a city...or in the case of photosynthesis (as I think the Creationists and IDers correctly argue) to provide the energy to accomplish the work of a super-sophisticated living cell.
You're talking about the entropy decrease involved in creating the materials for parts of organisms, which I noted in my post as being analogous to the entropy decrease of an item cooled in a refrigerator. The creation of coal would represent an easily calculable example of this. I'll look at the paper, sounds interesting.
Of course, one need not consider solar or terrestrial radiation in making such a calculation. My point is that life processes are overwhelmingly driven by solar radiation, as commonly noted, and that the rate of entropy produced by its absorption and reemission at the earth's surface is tremendously larger than the rate of local entropy reduction caused by life processes, and the latter rely on the former for their functioning.
And not to let things drop, I still see big problems with this thesis of yours ...
In fact, for practical purposes the solid angle subtended by the earth in space by a cone drawn from the center of the sun to the Earth is closed. Considering only the part of that system that doesn't include the Earth, the Entropy of the sun is increasing as a result of the radiation it emits. The Entropy of the earth is decreasing by virtue of the radiation it absorbs. The net delta-S of the whole system is increasing.
To start with, there is the "cone drawn from the center of the sun to the Earth". I'm not really sure what you have in mind here. If you mean a cone with its apex at the center of the sun, with sides tangent to the sphere of the earth, this dosn't account for the radiation across the face of the sun, and we would need a continuum of such cones for each infinitesimal surface element.
Then, in what sense is the system closed? Classically, a closed system doesn't allow matter to cross its boundaries, but how are we accounting for the radiation then? Are you counting the photons as constituents of the system, or simply as heat flow across its boundaries? In any case the "cone" as you set it up seems ill defined. Is it only "closed" when the earth is included? But then surely we have to consider the radiation emitted by the earth ... or is radiation allowed to cross the boundary of a "closed" system? and if that's true, why the cone?
Next, heat flow across the boundary of a system is considered positive for "heat Q absorbed" and negative ( -Q ) for "heat given off". ( Reif, pg.67. ) So the change in entropy due to emitted radiation is negative, right? Yes, right! So the sun is losing entropy by emitting radiation and the earth is gaining entropy by absorbing radiation. I don't see how it can be otherwise.
The very first living organism had to have
1. The ability to live and
2. The ability to reproduce.
It seems to me that this is the ultimate challenge of irreducible complexity.
An article in Scientific America talks to this dilemma:
"We started with trillions of random RNA sequences. Then we selected the ones that had catalytic properties, and we made copies of those. At each round of copying some of the new RNA strands underwent mutations that turned them into more efficient catalysts, and once again we singled those out for the next round of copying. By this directed evolution we were able to produce ribozymes that can catalyze the copying of relatively short strands of other RNAs, although they fall far short of being able to copy polymers with their own sequences into progeny RNAs."
"we made copies" and "directed evolution" sounds a lot like Creation.
You’re talking about abiogenesis in your post, which is outside the scope of evolution.
The title should be:
Creationists once again mis-understand entropy.
I love how creationists are experts on everything based on a religious text, the bible.
Why don’t you use the effort you use to memorize every word in the bible to actually learn some science.
I was actually responding to your comment about irreducible complexity. Darwin himself admitted the theory falls if you can produce a structure than can't be reached by incremental changes.
How was the first living organism able to start with both the ability to live AND the ability to reproduce? I see abiogenesis as the important first step in a discussion of evolution.
Perhaps a discussion for another thread. But I don't see how this can be separated from a discussion on evolution, unless you believe something created the first life, and then it evolved.
It's not. It's not part of the discussion at all. It's an important question in biology and biochemistry, but it's not of any concern to evolutionary biologists.
It's like asking cosmologists to discuss what happened before the Singularity at the beginning of our universe.
Part of the problem is that too many scientists (like Richard Dawkins, for example) have suggested that science can draw a straight-line from the Singularity to the advent of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We can't. We don't have all that information.
A deck of cards scattered all over the floor of the living room by a magic trick gone horribly wrong is a high Entropy configuration. A fresh pack before it's opened is a relatively much lower Entropy configuration. When you buy the cards, you get them in their lowest state. But actually, any way in which you obtain the cards is likely to be a lower Entropy state than the cards scattered all over the living room, unless people routinely provide you with cards by breaking into your house and throwing them on the floor.
That is how we got the universe when it started. Now, there are some people who want to claim this implies the existence of God because we got this nice universe in a low Entropy state when it started out. But it doesn't. All it implies is that there were higher Entropy states available for the universe to move to from its original state. That's all. Energy is not Entropy, but an analogy that works is: It's like a ball being born on a mountain (not necessarily at the top.) It will go down from wherever it starts, unless it starts at the bottom.
It doesn't rule God out either. In fact it says nothing about the existence of God at all.
Read the paper. If you agree with it we agree.
Entropy is the tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
“And under any circumstances, simply pouring energy into a system, open or closed, is not going to cause a decrease in entropy unless work is being done on the system.”
Just about anywhere on earth pouring energy in decreases entropy. It’s called “springtime”.
Evolution could be described as the competition for available energy to do exactly that - decrease entropy.
“In fact, the ONLY known, empirical, reproducible cause for harnessing the sun’s energy to produce work is intelligent design!”
The entropy of your arguments is steadily increasing over time. I suppose asking you to defend this statement would be futile, but it sure would be amusing to see you try.
Show me the math.
And under any circumstances, simply pouring energy into a system, open or closed, is not going to cause a decrease in entropy unless work is being done on the system.
You have stated a logical paradox than cannot be addressed with math. If energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed and the "system" you are referring to is an infinite universe all existing energy is already present. Addition is impossible.
For the level of complexity and order to have existed for so long, there must be some kind of work being done in the system, which uses energy.
We are not in disagreement on this, there was a Creator and an Intelligent Design. I only take the position that, through math and science, God is revealing the processes He used.
Other than quote discredited sources like Brian Thomas (M.S., BS, BFD) please explain how you arrived at this conclusion.
Hah! Note this change:
From:
In particular, the Earth is constantly absorbing sunlight and radiating energy into space, resulting in an enormous increase in entropy, which can counteract the decrease presumed to be required for evolution.
To:
It is constantly absorbing sunlight, resulting in an enormous increase in entropy, which can counteract the decrease presumed to be required for evolution.
The first version is exactly what I've been saying, and is entirely correct. Here's why:
We need to consider the entropy of the solar radiation itself, because its absorption at the earth's surface is not equivalent to absorption of heat. This is due to geometric dilution, which creates "higher quality" energy by virtue of the restriction of the radiation to a small solid angle. ~.0001 steradians.
At the surface of the sun, the radiation is thermal, so it has an entropy flux per unit area per steradian equal to the energy flux per unit area per steradian/ Ts , and the diluted energy and entropy fluxes per unit area at the earth's surface are 0.0001 times these values, and the effective area of absorption is the area of the disk of the earth.
When the energy is emitted as thermal radiation, the energy flux must match the absorbed solar energy flux, but it is spread over 4 times the area and 2pi/.0001 times the solid angle. This makes the radiation temperature of the earth much smaller, and the entropy flux is larger by a factor Te/Ts. Well, when you consider the reflection of incoming solar radiation, it gets a little trickier, but the gist of it is sound.
... so I don't know why the guy backed off this statement, it was great the way it was, and what's more, it's a profound and crucial fact for the prospects of life on earth.
Entropy isn’t a tendency, it’s a measure of available microstates in a configuration.
The amount of geometric dilution you're talking about would occur if the solid angle at the earth was such that the energy entered the atmosphere through a pinhole of ~.0001 steradians. It doesn't. The geometric dilution factor is only 2 (2 pi on absorption, 4 pi on absorption) this is largely mitigated by the earth's albedo. Also, Te/Ts doesn't enter (significantly) into the emission entropy, because the earth's emitted photons don't equilibrate with the sun -- but rather, with the background radiation of the universe. The author discusses why he doesn't include these photons in the improved paper, in the second paragraph on page 3.
The pinhole is namely the disk of the sun in the sky. The solar radiation falls uniformly across the disk of the earth, but is always confined to a direction emanating from the disk of the sun. "Trust me I know what I'm doing." - Sledge Hammer
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.