If the 2nd Law doesn’t keep the whole UNIVERSE from creating solar systems, galaxies and clusters of galaxies… I don’t think you should spend another minute disputing the topic…
It obviously isn’t relevant to evolution of any kind … animals or galactic…
True.
(filler added to make the site happy)
These conversations are entertaining how predictable they are. Here is my translation into the language of the “common man”…
@WilliamDJ : 2nd Law says everything tends towards disorder, but evolution says the opposite. Evolution violates the 2nd law and therefore must be false!!!
@Casper_Hesp and @Swamidass and others : But that’s not true, just follow our convoluted technobabble about physics and hypothetical and math you can see it clearly.
@glipsnort : well that piece of the argument wasn’t quite right, it should really be resolved with this revised set of technobabble.
Average Joe Creationist:: I cannot follow the technobabble, but it certainly looks like you all are running around frantically to rescue evolution. You can’t even agree with each other! Intuitively, doesn’t it just make sense that evolution is impossible?
To which I predict we would respond with more technobabble.
As entertaining as this exchange can become. I suggest we close this thread. @WilliamDJ is not even participating in this conversation, so their is no real dialogue to be had here.
Hi Steve, you are right. I was only talking about the Second Law in its narrowest (and most famous) formulation, namely that “dS/dt > 0” which only holds for isolated systems. There are extensions that take into account exchange of matter and/or energy. But those do not obey dS/dt > 0, the statement of interest for @WilliamDJ .
My main point was as you said:
Btw, @gbrooks9 , about that:
I wish it were that easy. Unfortunately, the major Young Earth ministries have spent decades disputing the abundant evidence for natural star formation (e.g., see here an article by AiG and here one by ICR). So that argument won’t fly with them.
I suppose there’s a demon for just about any metaphysical scenario. But even in one of the articles you link to… it doesn’t look like ALL Creationists hold to the extreme position:
“Might stars also be replaced as they age and “die”? Notice that neither situation requires that God supernaturally create as He did during the Creation Week. Also notice that neither case proceeds in a purely naturalistic way, but instead they follow God-ordained processes.”
^^ Looking at the logic the author is using…
ONE: he leaves an opening for anyone who invokes God’s participation. So that would certainly be the BioLogos angle.
TWO: And even if a Creationist wants to argue that only God’s help will make it possible to have galaxies and solar systems… we can point out the very same aspect to Evolution.
We are their worst nightmare … because we don’t package Atheism with our Evolution …
My hope is that my and ultimately “our” willingness to engage in serious discussion on these technobabble topics could in principle be evidence for an average Joe that evolution is an actual scientific theory and not an evil atheistic scheme consisting of dogmatic assertions.
In all cases, or is this just a general statistical trend? This seems a crucial question to address. I believe we are talking about local increases in order, offset by environmental decreases in order, whether a snowflake or a cell. A cell is a local increase in order; it differs from a snowflake in being self-perpetuating, although one could see different natural phenomena self-perpetuate in different ways, too; for example, a hurricane is self-perpetuating for a time before it dissipates.
But a living cell is not immortal either, and certainly relies upon external energy to maintain or expand its own order. The more living cells there are on a planet, the more disordered their environment would become. So I guess I am wondering why you have two different earths in your example, one with life and one without. Will life really affect the net intake and export of energy or entropy from your planet?
Dear Mervin, Steve, George, James and Casper,
(1) Thermodynamics studies real physical systems, which are always open for energy flows or flows of matter. Therefore the laws of Thermodynamics hold for open systems. As a consequence, the information at the common-questions section of Biologos “The second law is only valid in closed systems with no external sources of energy. Since the Earth receives continual energy from the Sun, the second law does not apply”, is incorrect and needs adjustment.
(2) The 2nd Law is based on two fundamental characteristics of our physical reality: (A) the energy supplied to a system can never be extracted from it completely in the form of work done by the system on its surroundings, and (B) a system can never be brought to a higher energy level without doing work on the system. The empirical principles denoted as A and B are known as Kelvin’s principle and Clausius’ principle, respectively. In Thermodynamics, both principles are combined into one principle, which is known as the second law of Thermodynamics. It has the shape of a mathematical calculable formula thanks to the use of the concept of ‘entropy’ as a measure for the disorder of a system:
Circular-Integral dQ/T < S2 – S1
The left term of the formula describes the supply of energy over the boundaries of a system when moving from state 1 to state 2, during a time interval (t1, t2). The right term describes the decrease of the entropy of the system. Using Bolzman’s law, S = k Ln W (W is the probability of the state of a system) the entropy S1 of the system at t1, respectively the entropy S2 of the system at t2, can be calculated.
(3) The 2nd law indicates that a system can only move towards a less probable state (i.e., a state of higher order/less disorder) if energy is supplied to the system from the outside. This corresponds to the principle of Clausius. The second law also indicates that not all supplied energy can be transformed into a reduction of the disorder/entropy, but that always some entropy-reduction is lost. This corresponds to the principle of Kelvin. The second law thus expresses the same properties of physical reality as the principles of Kelvin and Clausius do.
(4) The principles of Kelvin and Clausius are beyond discussion. They hold for open systems and also hold locally for a subsystem somewhere within a system. As the 2nd Law is grounded in the principles of Kelvin and Clausius, the 2nd Law cannot be put aside by claiming that the 2nd Law is not applicable for open systems, or by claiming that for a subsystem the 2nd Law would not apply.
(5) The principles of Kelvin and Clausius, as well as the 2nd Law, indicate that if the sum of the incoming and outgoing energy flows is zero, the entropy of a system will increase, and sooner or later it will move towards its most probable state of maximal entropy.
(6) The principles of Kelvin and Clausius and the 2nd Law capture a fundamental characteristic of out physical reality: continual work and effort are needed to sustain order or to turn chaos into order. If continual work and effort is absent, as in natural processes (which are opposed to industrial processes) order will ultimately turn into maximal disorder. Anyone who tries to deny this fundamental characteristic of our physical reality comes in conflict with empirical science and the empirical facts in which empirical science is grounded.
(7) It may be suggested that locally disorder can decrease ever further if elsewhere in the system disorder increases. I have disproved this theory mathematically in point 3 of my post on January 14. This falsification can be illustrated using to the test facility I described in point 2 of the same post. The theory that somewhere on the rock molecules start ordering themselves while somewhere else on the rock molecules start to fall apart in a even higher degree, means that a ‘rock-battery’ is emerging, in which differences in energy level increase ever further. The evolution of such a ‘rock battery’ can only happen in the fantasy world of the Flintstones; not in the real world.
(8) Indeed new stars and galaxies are born in the universe. But ultimately they will fall apart, and turn into their most probable state, and move towards the lowest energy level. Indeed natural processes as lightning, wind, rain, heating, cooling, radiation, tectonic forces, etcetera, can turn simple molecules into complex molecules. But sooner or later they will fall apart; the larger the molecules that are formed, the sooner. This can be illustrated by a tennis ball that falls from a table. It will bounce upwards a number of times, despite gravity. But the height of the bounces will decrease ever further. Sooner or later the ball will reach its lowest energy level and most probable state, and stays motionless on the ground. After ten or hundred of years, the molecules in the ball will disintegrate into simple molecules, and the ball turns into dust. And after thousands or millions of years, the dust will spread over the cooling down universe.
(9) The test facility mentioned in point 2 of my post on 14 January is rather simple. In 1953, PhD student Stanley Miller has built a more sophisticated one. He set out to prove that natural processes can transform basic organic substances into amino acids in an ever higher concentration. To this end, he took a glass flask with two inwardly projecting electrodes between which he could make sparks stagger and filled the flask with water, methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide. Indeed he found that the artificial lightning in his simulation of a primitive earth atmosphere could produce amino acids. But he also found that the concentration of building blocks in the flask did not increase ever further, because new sparks destroyed the building blocks that were initially formed; the larger the faster. Instead of reporting that natural processes are not able to produce an ever concentrated primordial soup, he attached a transport mechanism to the lightning flask, to transfer the building blocks that were produced to a second flask where they would be safe for destruction. In fact, Miller built a primitive amino acid factory, with which he succeeded to produce an ever more concentrated ‘primordial soup’. Miller claimed his adjusted test set proved that natural processes could have produced billions of tons of building blocks for life in the primordial oceans. Instead, Miller’s experiments prove that an ever more concentrated soup of amino acids can not arise by natural processes, but demands the building of a factory.
(10) Based on the false claims of Miller and his supervisors, its it broadly believed today that organic molecules possess an intrinsic, hidden desire to organize themselves into increasingly larger structures. This view on matter is a repetition of the Alchemist’s view, who believed that matter does not merely consist of four basic elements (water, fire, air and earth) but also contains a hidden force (the ‘quint essence’). Many people believe that if we search long enough, this hidden force will be discovered and after triggering it in the right way, it can be released, resulting into a natural process in which organic molecules will transform themselves into increasingly larger and more complex structures. As a consequence, energy would become available for free and the chemical industry would become useless.
I disagree. I think there is value in getting the science right ourselves. I’m not an expert in thermodynamics, and I have learned by talking through the argument. (Plus @WilliamDJ actually is participating.)
I agree (as I’ve said previously).
There is your problem. If net dQ = 0, that does not imply that the integral of dQ/T is zero unless T is constant. For this system, T is not constant throughout the integral. There are two important energy fluxes where the Earth is concerned: incoming energy in the form of solar photons, and outgoing energy in the form of long-wave photons radiated by the Earth. The two fluxes occur at very temperatures, one the temperature of the sun, the other the temperature of the Earth. Your conclusion thus does not follow. See, for example, Fig. 4 here for a calculation of the Earth’s entropy balance.
Thanks for the physics education, Steve!
I see no evidence for this whatsoever. This sounds exactly like “vitalism”, which is a long discredited theory. Modern secular science doesn’t sound anything like this.
Dear William,
I would recommend commenting on specific points of specific persons (try using the “reply” and/or the “quote” buttons). That will help all of us to have a productive conversation.
I explained in my previous post that this claim is simply wrong in the case of dS/dt > 0, which only holds for isolated systems according to thermodynamics. Such “perfect” isolated systems only exist in theory. You cannot just generalize this law without any decent justification. Just repeating this claim will not help if you do not interact with the substance of my post.
[quote=“WilliamDJ, post:28, topic:26534”]
(7) It may be suggested that locally disorder can decrease ever further if elsewhere in the system disorder increases. I have disproved this theory mathematically in point 3 of my post on January 14. [/quote]
That is not true. You have done no actual math there. The only thing you have done is this: you applied the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the wrong way and came to the wrong conclusions. For an example of a more decent approach to studying the entropy budget of the Earth, see the article that @glipsnort provided.
I understand that this wrong conclusion may fit well with your worldview, but the logic you are using to support it is faulty.
Again, please see my previous post where I explained why your “experiment” would never work. At the very least you need variable circumstances to make a toy model of the Earth’s climate.
It appears you do allow for the natural birth of stars and galaxies, which are highly complex phenomena. Are you aware that stars form out of almost completely formless and featureless gas clouds? If we would follow your line of reasoning, the featureless gas cloud would seem like a much more “probable” state than the controlled nuclear fusion factory in the center of a star. According to your reasoning, stars should not be able to form. Yet we see that process happening with our own eyes. Consider also the formation of hurricanes. These exhibit very intricate structures. Yet they are lifeless and formed by relatively uniform gas clouds of the Earth’s climate.
Of course, these phenomena are bound to fall apart, eventually. That is natural. Cells and all other kinds of organic material also fall apart, ultimately. This is actually a biblical principle: “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” 
In fact, decay is what drives many of the complicated cyclical behaviors of ecosystems. In that sense, the tendency for entropy to increase is not an enemy of life, but an important driver of evolution. The DNA pool of a population of organisms needs a certain amount of “disorder” for the population to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. DNA mutations are effectively little perturbations that cause our genetic makeup to drift towards new inventions. Life forms in general are successful because they are able to control and utilize nature’s tendency towards disorder. I would even dare to turn your claim around completely:
Without the Second Law of Thermodynamics, life wouldn’t have evolved!
Warm greetings,
Casper
Intuitively, the entropy balance makes sense. Incoming solar photons are high energy, and can do lots of things: heat water, create hurricanes, evaporate water to drive hydroelectric turbines, contribute via photosynthesis to the calories that power my bicycle. In other words, they can do work. The infrared photons emitted by Earth can’t do more than bring something to room temperature, no matter how much you concentrate them; they can do much less work.
In thermodynamic terms, the outgoing photons have more entropy than the incoming ones: dQ is the same, since the same amount of energy is going out and coming in, but dQ/T is much smaller for the solar photons. In doing work, the incoming energy generates entropy, which is carried away by the outgoing radiation.
@WilliamDJ
There isn’t really a quote button. You have to highlight the text you want to quote and then an option to quote what you have selected will appear. When you click on that, it imports the selected text into your post and tags the person you are quoting.
If you’ve got enough excess energy to play XBox, you’ve got more than enough excess energy to evolve.
Hi Joshua,
The first “Bill DeJong,” a pastor, is only a Ph.D. candidate, so I don’t believe he would sign “Dr.” to his name.
Cheers,
Yes, of course. But between the beginning and the end is COMPLEXITY … NOVELTY, CHANGE, and in some cases LIFE.
The only thing I know that ultimately defeats the 2nd Law is God, right?
The existence of the 2nd law does not change the fact that from quarks, electrons and photons, the Universe produced stars, solar systems and galaxies.
This is more than enough to make the 2nd Law irrelevant to the issue of God Guided Evolution.
The Bible plainly states that no star goes missing. (Isa 40:26). The SN1987a explosion happened before on the same star, as witnessed by the multiple gas rings around the star. Recent observations with the ALMA suggest a pulsar star still exists where the star blew off its outer cover.
The second Law is a tautology, a restatement of the fundamental, medieval, European idea upon which Western science was contrived. Aquinas’ thought that God “ipsum esse per se substitiens”. He is self existent and absolutely unchanging. In Catholic doctrine, this means he is outside of time, seeing the future, never needing to change. From this doctrine came the idea that matter is not changing itself, that the essens of substance is changeless.
Almost everything scientists measure and mathematicate depends on this fundamentalist, historical creed: that matter is not shifting its properties relationally, that is in parallel, as it ages. Indeed, the operational definitions (the system of precision measuring) of mass, energy and time depends on the historical principle that matter is not changing itself. All scientific stories of beginnings are mythical because they are founded on this fundamental, untested principle. The Bible predicted this state of affairs. In the last days, Peter wrote, mockers will come claiming all things remain the same. They will obfuscate the history of the plural heavens and earth’s watery past because they hold this notion as a first law (arche ktisis in Greek).
We can see in the visible history of the universe that matter is always shifting its properties throughout cosmic history. The earliest galaxies shine at much less than 10% of the frequencies of modern atoms. Even modern atoms, when compared to their reflections through the transponders of four spinning spacecraft, also accelerate at ! the same distance rate as the atoms in billions of galaxies.
The proof that the second law was founded upon a false assumption is the visible history of the galaxies, that only fits the literal, Hebrew grammar. God continues to command the lights in the plural heavens to become spreading things. He continues in unbroken continuity to call the stars to come out. Indeed, billions of galaxies spread out from the unformed matter God created first. Trillions of globs packed densely with tiny stars emerged and spread out, the orbits and the clocks accelerating together, as countless galaxies grew into local growth spirals.
The Bible is not a book that needs scientific support. It is the book that defeats science, reducing it to myths. We can see a literal biblical creation as every atom in the universe keep shifting its properties in an orderly way. The Apostle Paul used two orderly submission verbs and two together verbs to describe how the entire creation is enslaved to fundamental change (phthora). The second law depends on the notion that atoms are not changing in an orderly together manner.
Victor
I don’t think we need to discuss this riddle anymore, after all the bandwidth we used discussing it previously. Just sayin’.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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