The Second Law of Thermodynamics also holds for open systems

OK first that’s not science, and second it doesn’t even make sense. How does gravity cause decay? What’s the chemical process involved? [quote=“WilliamDJ, post:56, topic:26534”]
Nobody has ever observed that gravity produces repair or innovation. Or do you have empirical evidence of such a thing?
[/quote]

I don’t know how you’re defining repair and innovation, but repair would not be possible without gravity, and gravity is directly responsible for the formation of entities which previously didn’t exist, such as fossils, rock formations, stars, and galaxies.

Entropy, not decay.

I already addressed this.

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@WilliamDJ

I"m not sure what you are trying to prove here. We know an awful lot about nuclear fusion … from studying fusion reactions in bombs, in laboratories, in our sun, and in the stars all around us.

Gravity triggers star formation. Star formation triggers the creation of heavier elements (like iron) out of lighter elements.

The creation of heavier, more complex elements, Star formation and fusion are all temporary examples of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics being resisted by gravity, if even for a short while. But for a star, a short while is billions of years.

If you refuse to learn about any of these rather obvious ideas, I doubt if you’ll last long on these boards.

Those highly active building blocks were simple molecules. Please look again at the figure I presented:

Are you completely unable to believe that a laboratory of the size of the Earth is able to produce simple molecules such as these over the course of a million years or more? I thought you already agreed with me that this is possible, because earlier you said: [quote=“WilliamDJ, post:43, topic:26534”]
Indeed, natural processes as lightning, atmospheric or galactic turbulence, explosions, cooling and heating, tectonic processes, etcetera, can order simple molecules into complex molecules.
[/quote]

So, what is the problem, William? Do you disagree with your past self? I’m honestly a bit lost here.

Cells also disintegrate over time and will stop replicating when they run out of fuel. These phenomena are completely comparable in that respect.

You have not answered my question and you have only responded by hurling insults at me. Do you think it is somehow an occult practice to produce a self-replicating complex of molecules?

Also, in what way does acknowledging the possibility of orchestrating abiogenesis mean that “the laws of empirical science have lost their authority”? Didn’t we already agree that local decreases in entropy are possible according to thermodynamics? I haven’t seen you demonstrate any “law of empirical science” that forbids the occurrence of abiogenesis.

Anyway, we’re running in circles here. I hope I have demonstrated clearly enough that, even according to your own admissions, abiogenesis is possible in principle. I wish you blessings on your journey of faith, my Dutch brother in Christ :slight_smile: .

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I’ve enjoyed this thread. However, it is obviously way way beyond the understanding of the average Young Earth Creationist who thinks the 2nd LOT denies the possibility of evolution. And that’s because most people (YECs included) have virtually no idea what entropy is or the fact that The Laws of Thermodynamics describe the behavior of heat transfer engines.

Isaac Asimov was a great writer and many of us learned a lot of science reading his books. One of his most cited explanations used a teenager’s cluttered room to illustrate entropy. Unfortunately, a lot of people take away wrong conclusions from that ANALOGY. They don’t understand how the cluttered room explains heat transfer engines. All they get out of Asimov’s analogy is “Unless somebody intervenes, things go downhill, get more disordered, and fall apart.” (Yes, the cluttered room is not just an analogy–the 2nd LOT does actually apply to teenager’s bedrooms in tangible ways–but many people misconstrue the illustration.) Many people decide, “The Theory of Evolution claims that simple things can get more complex—but things don’t go ‘uphill’ on their own. They fall apart and get disorderly. They go downhill. So evolution is impossible!” In processing the concepts and reaching their conclusions, they never notice that there is no “thermo” (i.e., heat) in their understanding of thermodynamics. To them, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
is only about clutter or complexity, as in that teenager’s messy bedroom. The role of the sun and the role of heat in general in making the biosphere possible never dawns on them. Until this is addressed, they are easily convinced that evolutionary biologists have ignored The Laws of Thermodynamics. (Of course, the fact that they can possibly think that scientists are so clueless or stubborn that they can ignore a well-known law of physics on a daily basis is its own enormous problem. But how does one go about combating the Kruger-Dunning Effect? That’s an obstacle for another day.)

I like to use a Socratic strategy:

“So you believe that evolution is impossible because the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that something simple can’t become more complex, and because a tiny, relatively simple, single-celled living thing can’t somehow develop into a large, complex, multi-celled living thing.” Invariably, I get the confident answer, “Exactly! That’s impossible. That would be the universe and nature going uphill.” I then ask them, “But you used to be a tiny, single-celled zygote in your mother’s womb. Today you are a big, complex, multi-celled living thing. Did you defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?”

Brain-lock usually start to set in by that point. Then I ask:

“Does the 2nd LOT prevent a tiny seed from growing into an enormous tree over several decades?”

After some thought, I often get the reply, “But that is why life is so amazing, and why scientists have never been able to create life in the lab. God has given living things the ability to grow and develop into something that is bigger and more complex.” They usually feel quite good about their analysis and assume that they have learned something new about the uniqueness of biological life. Some even jump ahead and volunteer their conclusion that living things must thereby be exempt from The Laws of Thermodynamics. Regardless of whether they actually articulate that conclusion, I summarize their thinking:

“So then you are saying that living things are able to defy the 2nd LOT, even though you previously quoted from a ministry website which claimed that scientists have never found an exception to The Laws of Thermodynamics.”

Some will share their newfound “knowledge” that an exception and an exemption from a scientific law are very different things! Others will provide an impromptu reply which reasons, “No, biological organisms eventually die, so they aren’t really an exception to the Second Law. It’s just a delay. That why they age and die.”

I point out that most organisms reproduce before dying and that that would mean that their “defiance” of the 2nd LOT would thereby not really be “only temporary” at all. In response they usually jump ship entirely and try to divert the discussion to other topics, such as their claim that evolution is impossible because God wouldn’t use death and the violent struggle of “the survival of the fittest” to create life.

Inevitably, if any progress is to be made, I must ask them what they think the 2nd LOT means and walk them through the route by which a photon from the sun energizes the chlorophyll and the ATP molecules, moves air and soil nutrients, and builds plant structures—an obvious “uphill” process. I explain how heat energy gets “wasted” throughout these metabolic processes, heating the surrounding air and soil, and that there is a reduction in the total heat energy in the overall system that is available to do useful work. Eventually they will agree that only a relatively small percentage of the sun’s energy striking a green plant gets stored as useful calories which people can eat or as wood which can be burned in a fireplace to heat a house. They begin to see how every biological process “wastes” a lot of heat energy on the way to building the “complexity” which we see in the resulting tree or corn stalk, and that this is entirely in compliance with the 2nd LOT. I get them to see how plants and animals are heat transfer engines, taking advantage of heat differentials to do everything which biological organisms can do.

By this point, they will agree that a seed growing into a tree (or a zygote becoming an adult human) is not a denial of The Laws of Thermodynamics any more than lifting a baseball off the ground and throwing it high in the air is not a violation of the Law of Universal Gravitation. Then I ask them why the many biological processes known as evolutionary processes would be any different. I ask them why are they OK with a tiny seed becoming a big tree but not a single-celled organism population evolving over millions of years to produce multi-celled organism populations when neither is a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

That summarizes some of my experiences trying to teach what the 2nd LOT means and doesn’t mean. I’d like to hear what others have found helpful in trying to deal with arguments against the Theory of Evolution based upon misunderstandings of The Laws of Thermodynamics

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You are right. Gravity can produce order. But gravity cannot preserve it or expand it ever further. Gravity is a natural process, which, sooner or later, leads to the ultimate disorder, as predicted by the 2nd Law.

You believe that the transformation of nut or a sperm into a tree or an elephant, is a natural process, as lightning, radiation, tectonic activity, atmospheric activity, gravity, diffusion, etcetera. You overlook that a seed or a sperm contains a program of about 2 or 3 billion characters, which prescribes how the transformation must proceed. Science has discovered that a seed or a sperm is a completely automated chemical nano-factory. In 1953, PhD student Henry Miller understood that he had to prove that a natural process as lightning can produce a primordial soup of amino acids, as a first step to the assemblage of DNA, whose molecular structure was unraveled recently. Miller proved that the creation of an ever more concentrated primordial soup requires the building of a factory. The lesson of this is that you cannot take the existence of completely automated chemical nano-factories as evidence that natural processes can produce completely automated chemical nano-factories. That is circular reasoning.

The natural process that produce stars or hurricanes cannot preserve the order that is created and expand it ever further, as Stanley Miller proved already in 1953. To achieve such a thing, he had to build a factory. In the experiments of Sybrand Otto, the same fundamental property of our physical reality can be observed. Simple molecules do not order themselves into highly active building blocks that are eager to form rings and strands of rings. First these highly active building blocks must by produced in a factory. The 2nd Law captures this fundamental characteristic of our physical reality, which is the existential ground for the chemical industry, the maintenance and production industry, and for entrepreneurs and innovators.

In my post on January 16, point 7, I proved mathematically that it is impossible that on Earth2 (identical to our Earth, except the presence of living organisms) locally an ever increasing difference can emerge, resulting in a ‘Flintstone battery’.

Gravity cannot preserve order or expand it ever further. Gravity is a natural process, which leads, sooner or later, to the ultimate decay, as predicted by the 2nd Law. The following experiment with a tennis ball clarifies this. Pick a tennis ball from the ground and put it on a table. By this you make a difference, produce a less probable state of the tennis ball, create order, and decrease entropy. Then you push the ball from the table. It will bounce upwards a number of times, despite gravity. But the height of the bounces will decrease ever further, because gravity cannot preserve a difference/order. 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 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. This is the natural course of events, shaped by natural processes as gravity, and captured mathematically in the 2nd Law.

For your convenience, I made a summary below

Please show me the empirical evidence that the highly active building blocks Sybrand Otto uses in his experiments can be produced from basic molecules in ever higher concentrations by a natural process. Miller’s experiments in 1953 show that the transformation of simple substances into more complex molecules and preserving this complexity and expanding the complexity ever more, can only be achieved by building a factory.

Creationists try to sell the theory “God created living nature” as science. But that theory is not testable and therefore not scientific. It is a belief.

I am not a creationist, but an empirical scientist, who defends empirical science, and in particular the 2nd Law, against misunderstanding and misuse. Questions about the origin of the DNA and the mutation repair can only be answered by empirical science with: “We do not know yet”. Such a response is normal in every branch of science and is no science stopper but the driving force behind any scientific research.

As Beaglelady, you are trapped in circular reasoning by taking a seed or a sperm as proof that natural processes can produce life.

So does this mean you don’t believe in Creation and, in extension of that, you don’t believe in a Creator? How would you identify your beliefs? I had assumed you were a brother in Christ but I may have been mistaken.

@WilliamDJ

Nobody here asserts that the ultimate end of the 2nd Law is defeated. But if a star lasts billions of years, as it resists the 2nd Law, then it is futile to bring up the 2nd Law as somehow making it impossible for any “increases in order” to temporarily happen.

For a Star, “temporary” is 5 Billion Years.

Full stop.

Period.

**

Summary

**
of arguments related to BioLogos discourse post ‘The second law of thermodynamics also holds for open systems’ (12 Januari 2017):

The scope of the 2nd Law
(1) The aim of my initial post was to clarify that the second Law of Thermodynamics holds for open systems. In my post on Januari 16, I pointed out that the 2nd Law is grounded in the principles of Kelvin and Clausius, which are beyond discussion and hold for open systems. As a consequence of this scientific fact, the information given at the ‘common-questions section’ of BioLogos on the second Law ( “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 fundamental property of our physical reality, as captured by the 2nd Law and the underlying principles of Kelvin and Clausius for open systems, is that any system ultimately turns into maximal disorder, if the sum of the incoming and outgoing energy flows is zero, averaged over a period of time.

(3) I proved that Earth2 (identical to our Earth, except the presence of living organisms) is a system for which the sum of the incoming and outgoing energy flows is zero, if it is put in the free, continual light of the Sun. As a consequence, its entropy increases ever further.

(4) I proved mathematically that it is impossible that somewhere on Earth2 an ever increasing difference emerges, resulting in a ‘Flintstone battery’.

(5) I clarified that the natural course of events is decay, and that the 2nd Law mathematically captures this fundamental characteristic of our physical reality. The natural course of events is present everywhere, also on the molecular level. Every day, in every cell (including the sex cells), our DNA looses hundreds of thousands nucleotides. Fortunately, most of these mutations are repaired. Without the mutation repair systems in every cell, the DNA would turn into complete chaos within a life time. In 2015 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Thomas Lindahl, Paul Modich and Aziz Sancar for the discovery of these repair systems. A major part of the hundreds of thousands of mutations of the DNA that happen every day in every cell is produced by ‘oxidative deamination’, which makes the letters of the genetic code (A, C, T, G) illegible.

Natural course of events; natural processes are decay processes

(6) The natural course of events is shaped by natural processes as lightning, atmospheric activity, tectonic activity, gravity, radiation, diffusion. Natural processes can produce order, for instance: snow flakes, sand ribbles, hurricanes, spiral nebulas, crystals. Natural processes, however, cannot preserve this order and will sooner or later turn it again into disorder. The preservation of order requires continual directed effort as predicted by the 2nd Law and the underlying principles of Kelvin and Clausius. This is demonstrated by Miller’s experiment: the transformation of simple substances into amino acids by natural processes stops, unless a factory is built by adding a transport mechanism and safe storage of the amino acids. A natural process leads, sooner or later, to the ultimate decay, as predicted by the 2nd Law.

(7) Natural processes are decay process, and are the existential ground for, for example, the chemical industry, the ICT industry, the automobile industry, the maintenance and construction industry, for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Empirical evidence

(8) I reported that a rock that is sprayed with a mix of soda water, ammonia and methane, and is put in the continual radiation of a strong lamp, does not turn into a Flintstone battery.

(9) I pointed out that Miller’s experiments in 1953 prove that an ever concentrated primordial soup of amino acids can only be produced by building a factory.

(10) I pointed out that Sybrand Otto’s experiments do not show simple molecules that transform themselves into highly active building blocks, which are eager to form rings and strands of rings. The highly active building blocks used in Sybrand Otto’s experiments are produced in a factory, in advance of his experiments.

Violation of the 2nd Law

(11) Physical processes cannot violate the 2nd Law, because the 2nd Law describes how physical processes proceed. Only theories can violate the 2nd Law. For instance the theory that natural processes can preserve order and expand it ever further.

(12) The vast, daily damage of the DNA in every cell, including the sex cells, is largely the result of the natural oxidation of the DNA. To repair the oxidation, reduction is required. Since the laws of chemistry do not allow oxidation to bring about reduction, mutations can not establish mutation repair. The theory that mutations can produce mutation repair and that oxidation can produce reduction, is in conflict with empirical science and must be rejected.

(13) Natural processes are decay processes in contrast to industrial processes, which are make processes. Empirical science has studied decay and make processes for ages yet and revealed that make processes require directed energy to antagonize natural decay.

(14) The natural course of events (as captured by the 2nd Law) is decay. A theory that claims that decay can repair decay (!) and can produce innovations (!) is diametrically in conflict with empirical science. Therefore, evolutionary theory must be formulated more accurately. This need can be specified in more detail:

(a) Living nature continuously adapts to changing circumstances by the mechanism of recombination of alleles and by gene regulation, not by mutations http://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOEVOLJ/TOEVOLJ-5-1.pdf So, evolution exists (don’t worry). Mutations of the DNA do not improve the DNA and expand it ever further with new functionalities. On the contrary! Mutations are the cause of cancer and hereditary diseases. No scientist will put his/her genitals under a X-ray machine to improve the DNA of his progeny and to expand it with new functionalities. According to the playing rules of empirical science, the theory that mutations and a dysfunctioning mutation repair system are the motor for improvement of the DNA and expansion of it with new functionalities, must be rejected.

(b) The theory that organic molecules have an intrinsic desire to order themselves into ever more complex structures is based on the false experiments of Miller. Billions of tons of primordial soup can only be produced by building a factory, as Miller proved.

(c) Molecules do not start to order themselves into highly active building blocks and into ever more complicated structures, which preserve themselves and expand themselves ever further, as the experiments of Sybrand Otto prove.

(d) Mutations cannot produce mutation repair processes.

(15) The presence of mutation repair in every cell, is an unsolvable problem for evolutionary theory.

The Alchemists are back

(16) 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.

(17) Never, in any laboratory in the world, it will be found that simple molecules start ordering themselves into ever more complex structures (which means that their energy content increases!), and start to preserve their complexity and expand it ever further. Such an event would mean that energy becomes available for free. Regrettably, miracles only happen in fairy tales or in the dreams of the Alchemists. Not in the real world.

@WilliamDJ

Wow… that’s an awful lot of narrative for ending up with:

“But I didn’t prove anything relevant to Evolution, and especially not relevant to God-Guided Evolution.”

If you had started with that sentence, you would have saved yourself quite a bit of time and stress.

You’re just repeating loads of stuff that has already been refuted multiple times within this thread.

In response, I refer back to my post in which I showed that your own concessions actually are more than enough to allow for the possibility of abiogenesis. You have not provided any decent rebuttal of this line of reasoning:

I was hoping to make a bit more progress in this conversation but it appears your way to cope with this situation is to repeat all your previous claims which were already shown to be wrong. I’m really grasping at straws here as I try to understand the point of your whole line of reasoning. It isn’t even clear to me whether you believe in Creation.

This conversation doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere so all that’s left for me is to wish you a good day!

How does the fact that a “program” is involved somehow impact The Laws of Thermodynamics? Are you saying that that “program” (the DNA inside of an organism) is NOT a natural process??

I entirely agree. But how does that relate to this topic? You lost me.

You lost me again. It is a simple fact that natural processes produce new life on a regular basis. That’s all we are saying. We don’t need for a deity to bypass the 2nd LOT or intervene in the system every time a new biological life appears. Natural processes produce life on a regular basis. DNA is all about natural processes. So there’s no “circular reasoning here.”

William, here was my main point:

By this point, they will agree that a seed growing into a tree (or a
zygote becoming an adult human) is not a denial of The Laws of
Thermodynamics any more than lifting a baseball off the ground and
throwing it high in the air is not a violation of the Law of Universal
Gravitation. Then I ask them why the many biological processes known
as evolutionary processes would be any different. I ask them
why are they OK with a tiny seed becoming a big tree but not a
single-celled organism population evolving over millions of years to
produce multi-celled organism populations when neither is a violation of
the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

William, do you disagree with any of that? It sounds like you place life in a special category (in terms of the LOTs) because a “program” (DNA) is involved. Seeing how DNA involves natural processes, I’m unclear why you think that is some sort of special case or exception to the 2nd LOT. Or perhaps I’m just not understanding your point here.

.[quote=“Casper_Hesp, post:70, topic:26534”]
. I’m really grasping at straws here as I try to understand the point of your whole line of reasoning.
[/quote]

William, I’m in the same predicament as Casper. But I do thank you for your responses!

Hi Bill,

Could you kindly express this scenario with mathematical equations? I think you might have inadvertently flipped a sign as your move through the scenario, but I want to make sure I’m not the one misunderstanding. The best way to do that is to ask you to formulate the scenario with math rather than just words.

Also, if your problem is that the BioLogos statement on the 2d LoT and evolution was incomplete, I agree completely. To be properly stated in a scientific way, the statement would need to acknowledge that the whole solar system will be kaput in a few billion years (due to entropy), and once that happens the evolution of life in the solar system will cease and dissipate into decay. Moreover, the universe we inhabit itself will enter heat death (due to entropy) some tens of billions of years in the future. And once this universe reaches heat death, there will be no more evolution of life anywhere, and the whole thing dissipates into decay. If that’s the point you really want to make, I can agree with that. I think every forum participant would agree with that.

As I understand it, though, the intention of the Biologos statement is to show that for a limited period of time (a few billion years) in a limited, arbitrarily defined space (the earth), the evolution of life does not violate the 2LoT. At first glance the evolution of life may seem to do so, but it does not because it is powered by energy from the sun. As every scientifically literate person knows, the production of solar energy is accompanied by an increase in entropy. That increase in entropy has vastly outweighed whatever apparent decrease in entropy has occurred in this arbitrarily defined space (earth) for a limited time as life has evolved.

Your tennis ball analogy is quite helpful here, Bill. Is it possible to keep a tennis ball from reaching its entropy-maximizing state? The answer depends on the scope of your analysis.

  • The answer is yes if your scope is an arbitrarily limited time (say, 3 minutes) and an arbitrarily limited space (the ball itself in relation to the ground). You see, I could use my tennis racket to continually strike the ball, preventing it from falling to the ground for 3 minutes. In this analysis, the tennis ball is an open system, defying entropy, for 3 minutes.

  • The answer is no if you do not limit the scope of the analysis. In order to strike the ball, I have to spend energy, which increase entropy. The entropy associated with my work far outweighs any apparent decrease in entropy when one views only the tennis ball in isolation. Once we close the system under analysis by incorporating all the relevant work and heat flows, we readily see that entropy in the closed system is constantly increasing.

The only way that the 2LoT can be said to apply 100% of the time to an open system is if we change the scope of our analysis so that it is no longer an open system.

  • The tennis ball for 3 minutes is an open system. Close it by including the guy with the tennis racket in the analysis, and the 2LoT applies.

  • A crystal being cooled from 400 degrees K to 10 degrees K, regarded as an open system, demonstrates decreasing entropy. Close the system by including the refrigeration unit in the analysis, and the 2LoT applies.

  • The evolution of biological life on earth, as an open system, exhibits decreasing entropy. Make it a closed system by including the sun in your analysis, and the 2LoT applies. And this point is essentially the Biologos statement, reworded to address Bill Dejong’s semantic concerns.

Have a good day,

@Chris_Falter

We have some smart folks here at BioLogos!

Frankly, anyone who brings up the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as an objection is way behind the theoretical curve …

I pointed out that seeds sprouting is not a decay process. And all you do is prance around and move the goal posts. Do you agree that seeds sprouting is not a decay process?

Just one question here – does the BioLogos forum support LaTeX? I’d have thought it would be a must-have on any forum where we’re discussing serious science…

Actually, I would believe that photosynthesis is not a decay process. A seed’s sprouting–which has very little interaction with other systems–is unlikely to avoid entropy, in my (perhaps poorly informed) opinion.

I do agree that our interlocutor Bill has frequently redefined the question, and then acted as if we were talking about the same question (not different questions)…therefore we are wrong and he is right, Q.E.D. It’s not a good way to have a productive discussion.

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And what does this have to do with green bananas?

Wow! I’ve not seen anybody mention LaTeX since Dr. Knuth first came out with it in the 1970’s. No doubt it is an important tool for mathematicians by now, but because I’m a linguist, the TeX formatting language that LaTeX is based on was a big deal for us for a while because we thought that TeX would solve all of our bizarre exotic character set problems. Once microcomputers settled down into the “IBM standard” and lots of character sets were built for Microsoft Word, most of us completely forgot about TeX and LaTeX----so you’ve really jogged my memory! (Hard to believe that that was nearly a half century ago.)

I’m not a physicist and am in no way qualified to critique this example. But I don’t understand how entropy is being defied, so I’d appreciate your help. The way I learned The Laws of Thermodynamics and the meaning of entropy, the tennis ball is NOT “defying entropy” for even a second, let alone 3 minutes. After all, every time the tennis racket is moved, energy stored in the tennis player is being expended and heat energy is scattered throughout the local environment. The air molecules are being pushed around and the air is heated. The muscles of the player get warmer and perspiration helps accelerate the heat loss into the air. The total heat energy available to do work is rapidly dropping. Entropy is increasing. Always. Right? Or am I missing something.

I suppose that if a person was eating a cheeseburger while keeping the tennis ball in the air, it might seem like net entropy is being reduced because more energy is being “prepared” to do work. Yet even that wouldn’t really be the case, because digesting the cheeseburger would involve increased entropy in the mouth and stomach as the meat is shredded and a slurry of organic materials are produced. There’s just no escaping The Laws of Thermodynamics, and everywhere we look in the human body, there’s “heat transfer engines” kicking in to do their jobs. It strikes me as much the same scenario I get into when explaining this to die-hard Young Earth Creationists who insist that there were no The Laws of Thermodynamics in the garden of Eden before the fall. They never manage to explain how Adam digested his food or walked up a hill without friction and increased entropy to keep his footing.

So I’m confused by the claim that the tennis ball is “defying entropy.” Of course, I’m also perplexed by the claim that a tennis ball flying upward “defies gravity.” After all, during every moment of the tennis ball’s flight, it’s speed is dropping because gravity is a force constantly working against its upward motion. It never quits.

I always thought that NOTHING violates The Laws of Thermodynamics, even for a brief moment. So I need help from those who have the background in physics that I lack.

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@Socratic.Fanatic

I don’t see how you can use a “layman’s sense” of the phrase, Nothing Violates the 2nd Law" … when you have fusion furnaces in stars making brand new elements … with more complex electron clouds … for a short while… being billions of years.

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