Evolution and the 2nd Law

B

BlackJackal

Registered Member
Someone please help me here. I have studied evolution for some time now but I can't get past this one point. It violates the second law of thermodynamics and to just beleive in evolution is like asking someone to just beleive in God. I have to have facts and currently the facts are against evolution.

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 open 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.

Most darwinists just ignore this staggering problem. When confronted with it, they seek refuge in the confusion between the two kinds of entropy. Entropy [logical] has not decreased, they say, because the system is not closed. Energy such as sunlight is constantly supplied to the system. If you consider the larger system that includes the sun, entropy [thermodynamic] has increased, as required.

While it is true that local order can increase in an open system if certain conditions are met, the fact is that evolution does not meet those conditions. Simply saying that the earth is open to the energy from the sun says nothing about how that raw solar heat is converted into increased complexity in any system, open or closed.

The fact is that the best known and most fundamental equation of thermodynamics says that the influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms.

Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not "organizing" mechanisms, but disorganizing. They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never add useful information to the genetic code (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned). Natural selection cannot generate order, but can only sieve out the disorganizing mutations presented to it, thereby conserving the existing order, but never generating new order. In principle, it may be barely conceivable that evolution could occur in open systems, in spite of the tendency of all systems to disintegrate sooner or later. But no one yet has been able to show that it actually has the ability to overcome this universal tendency, and that is the basic reason why there is still no bona fide proof of evolution, past or present.
 
Last edited:
i find it hard to believe that you've studied evolution. partially because you said, "without organizing input from outside". someone hasn't been studying their darwinism! secondly, what does the law of thermodynamics have to do with it? nevertheless, it's not in conflict if you insist on looking at it so obtusely.
it is important to know that darwin was a naturalist. if you ask darwinists about it you will get a detailed account of how selection shapes an organism. it decreases diversity and eliminates unnecessary and harmful traits (or genes, but he didn't know anything about them).
programmed genetic mutation increases the (to cross fields) "entropy" of the system, while selection (natural, sexual, etc.) decreases it. they work together to bring about that magical process known as evolution, kids!
 
If evolution is nothing but a decreasing process then how did more complex organisms arise from simple ones as outlined by evolution.
 
you're either:
a. not too bright
b. have inferior reading skills

evolution is:
a. programmed genetic mutation
(+)
b. selection of traits

+! notice the +!
not nothing but. both.
sorry for being hostile, but seriously you're not even trying.
 
BlackJackal said:
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.

.
Click to expand...
BlackJackal.
If this was true then life its self would be impossible!
Can you please explain how any life can survive here (animal or plant) if we can only decay?

The answer is all down to chemistry, and atoms and molecules natural tendency to link together. This is incredibly complex stuff but if it didn’t happen you could never have been born.
 
I am kind of confused by the 2nd law myself, but this is how I look at it. I figure the best way to unerstand it is to understand where it comes from instead of reading the various and confusing definitions that it has.

I think what is basically happening is that the amount of energy that can be used to do work is decreasing because it is being turned into heat and that heat is gradually becoming weaker and weaker as it spread out. The universe is basically cooling down and reaching equilibrium. When you drive your car, the combustion energy turns the energy in the gasoline into heat and then that heat spread out. This heat that it expells can never go back to its previous state, it can never be used in a combustion engine ever again. There is a fixed amount of energy in the universe, so at some point, complex systems like the combustion energy and evolution will cease to exist because the form of energy that we need for these things to work will be gone.

I am not sure, but I think people say that things are getting less complicated because the universe is cooling down. Think if the temperature from the universe ranged from about 0-10 kelvin, there wouldn't be much variety. But if the universe ranged from 0-10000000000 kelvin, a lot of different kinds of systems could exist and thus it would be more complex.

One thing that I never understood about the argument about evolution breaking the second law is what about all the other things? A one day old fetus gets more and more complicated over time and it's not breaking any laws and so does a sprouting apple seed. A lot of bacteria is gaining immunity to penicillin, which is the kind of progressiveness complexities that we're talking about when speaking of evolution. Anything that eats increases entropy since it radiates heat, but it's still doing progressive work with the energy it used to build more complex things.
 
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.
 
Things can get more complex (e.g. life can continue to be and evolve) in our solar system until the decrease in entropy associated with it gets very close to the increase in entropy of the system generated by (mainly) the sun.
 
No

You are confusing order with complexity. The difference between crystals in rocks and proteins in living organisms is profound. Break a crystal and you just get smaller crystals; break a protein and you don’t simply get a smaller protein; rather you lose the function completely. Large crystals have low information content that is simply repeated, while the protein molecule isn’t constructed simply by repetition. Those who manufacture proteins know that they have to add one amino acid at a time, and each addition has about 90 chemical steps involved.

Also, there is no such thing as a truly closed system. The French scientist and mathematician, Emil Borel, has proved this fact mathematically.

Alright let me say this, I admit that order can and does increase in certain special types of open systems, but this is no proof that order increases in every open system. The statement that "the earth is an open system" is a vacuous statement containing no specific information, since all systems are open systems.

You can bathe the Earth with energy from the Sun day in and day out, and it will not cause evolution to occur because, while energy from the Sun is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition. There are other factors involved besides just the need for energy. It is those conditions that evolutionists “ignore” and on which they are “confused.” A discussion of this “open system” argument, and the factors that prevent evolution from occurring even in such a system, is therefore in order.

My statement:

“If evolution is nothing but a decreasing process then how did more complex organisms arise from simple ones as outlined by evolution.”
Click to expand...

Was in response to this reply made by Swedishfish that was apparently in complete agreement with evolution being a downhill only process

His original statement:

“it is important to know that darwin was a naturalist. if you ask darwinists about it you will get a detailed account of how selection shapes an organism. it decreases diversity and eliminates unnecessary and harmful traits (or genes, but he didn't know anything about them).
programmed genetic mutation increases the (to cross fields) "entropy" of the system, while selection (natural, sexual, etc.) decreases it. they work together to bring about that magical process known as evolution, kids!”
Click to expand...

Notice the word decrease twice and eliminate once. Also don't be fooled because increasing entropy is really decreasing order. So his entire statment said evolution was a downhill process.

Also one last thing that I would like to say in this post I like the way that you debate Swedishfish resorting to insults in just your second post in a scientific debate, very mature.
 
Last edited:
BlackJackal said:
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 open 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.

Most darwinists just ignore this staggering problem. When confronted with it, they seek refuge in the confusion between the two kinds of entropy. Entropy [logical] has not decreased, they say, because the system is not closed. Energy such as sunlight is constantly supplied to the system. If you consider the larger system that includes the sun, entropy [thermodynamic] has increased, as required.

While it is true that local order can increase in an open system if certain conditions are met, the fact is that evolution does not meet those conditions. Simply saying that the earth is open to the energy from the sun says nothing about how that raw solar heat is converted into increased complexity in any system, open or closed.

The fact is that the best known and most fundamental equation of thermodynamics says that the influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms.
Click to expand...
This thread is great example of the sort of problems that people run into when they try to use 'dumbed down' science explanations to analyze complicated issues. This whole argument is based around the premise that the second law of thermodynamics prohibits the spontaneous increase of complexity. In reality, the second law says no such thing. Saying that the second law prohibits increasing complexity is just an inaccurate paraphrase of the second law. The second law actually says:

dS > dQ/T where S=kb ln sigma and sigma is a term related to the number of quantum microstates in the system.

As you can see, this isn't a fuzzy, qualitative statement like 'disorder always increases' – it's a precise mathematical equation. It's reasonably accurate to describe the number of quantum microstates as the 'disorder in the system,' but in reality it's a complex, quantitative measurement of things like quantum energy levels, particle spin, and other things.

There's nothing in the second law of thermodynamics that prohibits the development of complex life. This old lie was started by creationists who either didn't really know anything about thermodynamics beyond the usual dumbed down explanations, or understood the second law but decided to simply lie about it.
 
If evolution cannot be because of the second law of dynamics prohibits an increase in complexity than ontogeny (development from egg to adult) can also not be.

Which is a false statement, because I just wrote this post and I used to be a simple egg fused with a simple sperm.
 
Here's something else that I probably wasn't clear about in my previous post: thermodynamics doesn't have anything to say about the 'complexity' of things. Entropy of a system (S) is calculated as S=k ln(W). The only real variable is W, which increases as the possible positions and velocities of the particles in the system increases. So, for example, a gas would usually have a higher entropy than a solid because the particles in a gaseous substance (where the particles can zip around wherever they want) would have far more possible positions and velocities than the particles in a solid (where the atoms and molecules are held in place by the molecular bonds).

This term W is sometimes referred to as a measure of 'disorder' or 'complexity' because a substance with a high W would have many possible positions and velocities for its particles, which would make it more 'disordered' or 'complex'. The main thing to notice here is that W only relates to the phase and energy of the particles in the system. It doesn't really have anything to do with complexity in the sense that we normally think of complexity, ie. a finished building being more complex than a random pile of concrete and steel.

Anyway, hopefully I've illustrated that the definition of 'entropy' that many creationists use in their arguments about the second law is based on an inaccurate analogy that doesn't really convey what's going on. The second law doesn't have anything to say about 'complexity'; calling W a measure of complexity is just a simplification that's used in very low-level explanations of entropy, and you can't get carried away with using it to evaluate things like evolution.

I hope that's cleared up your evolutionary confusion, BlackJackal.
 
BlackJackal:

Following your argument, it would be equally impossible for a human being to make a sandwich or to clean up a room.
 
Nasor said:
I hope that's cleared up your evolutionary confusion, BlackJackal.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your help Nasor! I have a good understanding of thermodynamics and the main sticking point to me is that evolutionists argue that local order can increase just because the earth is an open system which is not a complete argument. By just being an open system the probablity that life, even simple RNA based life could arise without a guiding program and a few energy conversion mechanisms, is at best astronomical.

Even today, Scientists study mutations to help prove evolution but every mutation ever observed is mostly harmful, sometimes neutral, rarely beneficial but always deletrious. Not one mutation has ever been found to add more information to a genome. Below is a link to the 2,279 published reports from the Journal of the American Medical Association about HIV and mutation and human and every one outlines a deletrious mutation:


http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/search?fulltext=hiv+mutation

Just to say that evolution can overcome the 2nd Law is not enough it has to be observed but the only thing that has ever been observed is deletions.

Also about making the sandwich argument. We are the guiding program making the more complex and ordered materials such as sandwichs, computers, etc. However if you throw your computer out the window, its not going to put itself back together again.
 
spuriousmonkey said:
If evolution cannot be because of the second law of dynamics prohibits an increase in complexity than ontogeny (development from egg to adult) can also not be.

Which is a false statement, because I just wrote this post and I used to be a simple egg fused with a simple sperm.
Click to expand...

The fertilized egg (embryo) is already a very complex organism (a human being) with that being’s physical characteristics and demeanor already defined by the DNA code. The DNA will instruct the embryo to develop over the next nine months into a baby ready for birth and entry into the world we know. Hair color, teeth strength, height and gender are already programmed into the little critter. Information, plus outside energy (food for Mom) will develop that human body.
 
BlackJackal -- this is an easy one -- you are confusing energy and heat.

Heat is simply an increase in the vibrational and rotational movement of atoms and molecules, and if all the sun did was increase heat, you would be correct in your assessment of the entropy profile. But the sun does more than that -- it transfers capturable and holdable and gateable and guidable packets of energy to highly sophisticated molecular circuitry at the level of very simple carbon compounds, and higher.

The game of catch and throw that goes on between the sun and organic compounds is a primordial one. And at the particular energies of these packets, carbon-based molecules exhibit an incredible range of physical qualities and responses. If melting and refreezing ice are beautiful, imagine threads and membranes and tubes and shells and levers and cannons and balloons and fireworks and pneumatic pumps and ion pumps and...

These are the almost spontaneous formations that organic molecules are capable of, and capable of building, at the energy bandwidths of photon-capture/release by carbon and other contributing elements. And with this set of implements, organic structure begins the magic of preserving its templates, genetically passing on the accumulated wisdom of the species.

Wherever organic processes can capture/release or redirect energy in a manner similar to a mechanical or cybernetic process, that energy packet is negentropic.

Don't get me wrong, all of this "negentropy" is the result of catching the "lightfall" of energy sliding down the slope from sun to earth, and it will snuff out immediately when the lightfall stops. But the show is not a miraculous violation of any 2nd law I know about.
 
Last edited:
Actually, Jackal, aren't you confusing energy with information?

When you write information to a hard drive, you're increasing entropy because you're turning energy into heat. On the other hand, you're also creating an ordered pattern of information that you can recover and reproduce - that is, greater complexity.
 
As far as mutations go, the more complex a system, the less likely any variation will be beneficial. But if we think back to simpler origins, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that some variations will dominate (securing greater resource-share), and then variations of those variations will dominate. It is only problematic whether that parsing process terminates at some point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top