Does Entropy Contradict Evolution?

1Dude,

Science is based on evidence which anybody (in principle) can check for themselves. That's why it is "naturalistic". There's no need for "divine revelation" in science. You don't need to accept that something is true just because somebody (e.g. God) told you it is true. You can check it for yourself.

Science doesn't deal with the supernatural for the simple reason that it is not verifiable. Scientists have tried to prove the existence of ghosts, and failed. They have tried to prove that astrology works, and failed. They have tried to prove the existence of psychic powers, and failed. Science isn't concerned with these things, because there's simply no good reason, other than faith or because somebody told you, to believe that these things exist.

If somebody says to you "I saw a ghost", can you find out whether they are telling the truth? Can you check for yourself? Does everybody see the ghost, any time they care to look? Or is this an unverifiable personal experience? Science is conerned with what can be (in principle) checked and confirmed.
 
Science doesn't deal with the supernatural for the simple reason that it is not verifiable. Scientists have tried to prove the existence of ghosts, and failed. They have tried to prove that astrology works, and failed. They have tried to prove the existence of psychic powers, and failed. Science isn't concerned with these things, because there's simply no good reason, other than faith or because somebody told you, to believe that these things exist.
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I know you're trying to make a bigger point about the nature of science; but science is concerned with these things. Science seeks to explain the unexplained, and as long as there are psychic and paranormal phenomena (among other things), science is responsible for gaining higher understanding.

Remember all the stupid beliefs people had 500 years ago? What will those 500 years from now think about us?

Also, who are we to think that the spark of life was a divine, miraculous, or freak occurrence? In billions of years on billions of planets, there could be life everywhere, far removed from the scrutiny of man's great science.
 
Science is “naturalism” as I understand it
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Science has nothing to say about supernatural events, since supernatural events cannot be proven or disproven via the scientific method. How does one use natural means to determine supernatural causes/effects?
 
Genetic change over time (Evolution) should be taught in biology classes as there are mountains of evidence that show that it occurs. The Bible contains profound and important truth but not of the scientific sort.
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I'd like to point out (once again, some of you will notice) that Evolution should be taught because knowledge of genetic change is crucial to current scientific developments which are ultimately contributing a great deal to the economic health of the nation.

1Dude said:
What chemical or physical (local entropy defeating) process is known that creates life? Even simple life?
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The theory of the original genesis of life takes into account the radically different conditions applying on the Earth at the time it occurred. Quite apart from the different composition of the atmosphere and the seas when the earth was < 1bn years old, the rather more obvious difference between then and now is that that Earth was lifeless, and this Earth is teeming with life! If the genesis of life is a very low probability event (once in a billion years), a Second Genesis is even less likely. Any putative new life is not unlikely to be food for something or other, and how would you be able to catch whether the life just eaten came from previous life or had spontaneously generated?

1Dude said:
Personally, I see nothing wrong with teaching both evolution and very basic ideas about intelligent design theory in public school as long as no particular religion is forced down the throats of our kids.
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My objection is that Intelligent Design is not a valid discipline. It does not have a valid intellectual basis either from the scientific side or the philosophical/theological side. It states, baldly, that where science is unable to provide an explanation via evolution, there lies the fingerprint of God. Science, on the other hand, does not presume to prejudge the future state of knowledge at any time. Science may or may not be able to advance its knowledge so as to remove the traces of those "fingerprints". ID, however, presumes to already know the answer - an Intelligent Designer! Individual biological workings that ID proponents find reflect "a designer" are balanced by a myriad of examples where if there were a designer He was either cack-handed or had a rather morbid sense of humour. I personally am not inclined to worship a Being who "designed" a creature to begin its life by eating the interior of its own mother. From the other point of view, I think most philosophy and theology would claim that God is intrinsically Mysterious and attempts by science to either disprove or even prove His existence are misguided.

What we teach in our schools is what we know to be true, whether it's science, or history, or English or Religion.
 
http://www.panspermia.org/seconlaw.htm

Claude Shannon himself seems to be aware of these differences in his famous 1948 paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communcation" (8). With respect to the parcelling he writes, "In the continuous case the measurement is relative to the coordinate system. If we change coordinates the entropy will in general change" (p 37, Shannon's italics).

In the same paper Shannon attaches no physical units to his entropy and never mentions Boltzmann's constant, k. At one point he briefly introduces K, saying tersely, "The constant K merely amounts to a choice of a unit of measure" (p 11). Although the the 55-page paper contains more than 300 equations, K appears only once again, in Appendix 2, which concludes, "The choice of coefficient K is a matter of convenience and amounts to the choice of a unit of measure" (p 29). Shannon never specifies the unit of measure.

This sort of entropy is clearly different. Physical units do not pertain to it, and (except in the case of digital information) an arbitrary convention must be imposed before it can be quantified. To distinguish this kind of entropy from thermodynamic entropy, let's call it logical entropy.

In spite of the important distinction between the two meanings of entropy, the rule as stated above for thermodynamic entropy seems to apply nonetheless to the logical kind: entropy in a closed system can never decrease. And really, there would be nothing mysterious about this law either. It's similar to saying things never organize themselves. (The original meaning of organize is "to furnish with organs.") Only this rule has little to do with thermodynamics.

It is true that crystals and other regular configurations can be formed by unguided processes. And we are accustomed to saying that these configurations are "organized." But crystals have not been spontaneously "furnished with organs." The correct term for such regular configurations is "ordered." The recipe for a crystal is already present in the solution it grows from — the crystal lattice is prescribed by the structure of the molecules that compose it. The formation of crystals is the straightforward result of chemical and physical laws that do not evolve and that are, compared to genetic programs, very simple.
 
I must say I agree that my understanding was that entropy and information are actually connected more than a previous poster considered was the case. Something to do with the loss of all information about whatever passes into a black hole is linked to the entropical properties of said hole, if I remember my Hawking correctly.
entropy in a closed system can never decrease.
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Sorry, I thought it was "entropy in a closed system always decreases?
 
The recipe for a crystal is already present in the solution it grows from — the crystal lattice is prescribed by the structure of the molecules that compose it.
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The same can be said for, for example, the structure of DNA.
 
Science has nothing to say about supernatural events, since supernatural events cannot be proven or disproven via the scientific method. How does one use natural means to determine supernatural causes/effects?
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Science is always growing and improving. In my opinion, 'supernatural' doesn't really exist except to imply things that science can't test or explain. Many theories that seem ludicrous now will eventually be proven or disproven. In the mean time, science must develop the tools for doing this.

Sorry, I thought it was "entropy in a closed system always decreases?
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Entropy in a closed system always increases.
 
Life is organization. From prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, tissues, and organs, to plants and animals, families, communities, ecosystems, and living planets, life is organization, at every scale. The evolution of life is the increase of biological organization, if it is anything. Clearly, if life originates and makes evolutionary progress without organizing input from outside, then something has organized itself. Logical entropy in a closed system has decreased. This is the violation that people are getting at, when they say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. This violation, the decrease of logical entropy in a closed system, must happen continually in the darwinian account of evolutionary progress.

This is also from http://www.panspermia.org/seconlaw.htm

So there you have it. Evolution does contradict logical entropy.

How can a basic cell be formed out of the ingredients of a lifeless sludge?
How does the 'spark' happen?
I guess no one can answer this... but speculations?

Also, natural selection didn't operate at that point (soon after life began), so how did these basic organsims evolve?
 
Entropy in a closed system always increases.
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Of course, of course! :eek: I'd interpreted the previous statement (entropy never decreases in a closed system) as meaning that entropy didn't change which was why I made my error.

Dano9700 said:
How can a basic cell be formed out of the ingredients of a lifeless sludge?
How does the 'spark' happen?
I guess no one can answer this... but speculations?
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It doesn't really need a 'spark', it's simply a process whereby the right chemicals came together to form a molecule that could make copies of itself. Once that copying starts to happen in what is in effect an endless chemical reaction, you have proto-life.
Also, natural selection didn't operate at that point (soon after life began), so how did these basic organsims evolve?
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You couldn't be more wrong. Natural selection did operate because it has no choice! At the very basic level, "life" consists of "molecule duplicates itself" versus "molecule fails to duplicate itself". A mutation change in a molecule enables it to last longer in its environment compared to unchanged molecules, and eventually the changed molecule dominates. It's undoubtedly the case that the first self-replicating molecule wasn't DNA at all - DNA is the result of earlier chemical steps all of which amounted to Natural Selection.

Evolution of this nature actually has been done in the laboratory with a virus progressively subjected to stronger and stronger acids, each strength of acid killing off most of the remaining virus but not all, until in the end you have a virus which can stand up to 100 times the concentration of acid than what you started with.
 
Clearly, if life originates and makes evolutionary progress without organizing input from outside, then something has organized itself.
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Entropy is not always the same thing as organization. Things can organize themselves without outside input. For example, when water cools to the freezing point water molecules will organize themselves in a very specific way, all by themselves.

Chemicals can only combine and interact in certain ways, this is why life appears organized. Given a certain set of conditions a set of chemicals will interact in a limited number of ways, and whenever you have a situation like this, where the possibilities are not completely random, you will get some amount of order.
 
To me, at least, this is a bit like saying.

Trees are known to exist.
Houses are known to exist.
Houses are made from trees.

Therefore trees must be capable of organizing themselves into houses.

Ken
 
I'm sorry I don't see where the equivalence is. It sounds like you have a strange idea of "organised".
 
Sorry! Perhaps I am brain dead!

Some here seem to be saying the following:

A. Life exists and is organized.
B. Life is made up of chemicals.
C. Therefore, chemicals must be able to organize themselves into life.

But there is currently no known chemical mechanism that can do this. If so what is it? As of right now, science has no answer for the "how" and yet many insist on the inevitability of the conclusion. The scientific conclusion is unprovable and the creationist conclusion is scientifically unprovable.

To me it is like saying,

A. Houses exist and are organized.
B. Houses are made of trees.
C. Therefore, trees must be able to organize themselves into houses.

I regard that as very unlikely. It is only a simple, imperfect, analogy of my current general take on the topic.

Thanks,
Ken
 
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Entropy is not always the same thing as organization. Things can organize themselves without outside input. For example, when water cools to the freezing point water molecules will organize themselves in a very specific way, all by themselves.
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Actually, the organization that I referred to has a completely unique (and rather strange) meaning, but I forgot to post it. My mistake. What you allude to, in the examples of water freezing and formation of salt crystals, is order. ere's how the article we quoted defines it:

The original meaning of organize is "to furnish with organs."

Strange definition, huh?
It makes a little more sense when you think of chemical structure compared to DNA, which does have the information to furnish organisms with organs.

You couldn't be more wrong. Natural selection did operate because it has no choice! At the very basic level, "life" consists of "molecule duplicates itself" versus "molecule fails to duplicate itself". A mutation change in a molecule enables it to last longer in its environment compared to unchanged molecules, and eventually the changed molecule dominates. It's undoubtedly the case that the first self-replicating molecule wasn't DNA at all - DNA is the result of earlier chemical steps all of which amounted to Natural Selection.
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You're right, of course. It's just that this sense of natural selection seems so inherently different from what we see today. Because then, there were no other organisms competing for resources, and it's hard to imagine much diversity in prokaryotes anyways.
Do you think you can explain a little more how a self-replicating molecule could randomly form? Chemistry/Biogolgy were never my strong subjects.
 
Thanks for that link. The best book defending the concept of evolution and Darwinism is Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, but when it comes to exploring the origin of life itself he feels that "other more widespread explanations" have had enough of an airing, and instead mentioned the Clay Crystals theory - not because he believed this theory, but to illustrate a different kind of theory which might have merit. I did not find the mud theory terribly compelling and unfortunately I had not read a detailed "conventional" explanation.
 
To the uneducated: Shut up.

To the educated: The uneducated won't let go of their idea that some crackpot idiot created the universe or their efforts to stuff what they think into science classrooms. Therefore, shut up.

If both parties did so, we'd have a lot less clutter in this place. Discuss something constructive for a change other than "omg i fnd a hloe in evlutin! eseeeee? GODF CR34Tz0r3D THE UNIVRS3! US XNS 1, ATHIEST ID1O7S 0!" "But that hole doesn't work, for this-and-this reason." "suht t3h fukc up, ur jsut j34lus im r1ght 4nd g0d exists" "But see, that's not what we were discussing" "HAHAHA S0R3 L0S3R".

You see? By their very nature, they won't back down. Why? They're stupid. Since what is true won't change just because a few idiots on a forum insist on flaunting their lack of education, just forget about the thing and go discuss passages in the third chapter of Luke like good little boys and girls.
 
remind me:
what's entropy?
im tired, and cant remember...
ive heard that word before though...
 
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