Forum: OPEN FORUM: American Journal of Physics

Posts: 58

I agree that there is no point in discussing thermodynamics any further. As I said to the editor of the American Journal of Physics, it should be possible for two PhDs in physics to come to an understanding of what the second law of thermodynamics means, but apparently not. This is good news for scientists who suffer from physics envy.

That leaves open only the question of whether natural selection explains the complexity of life. The only theory that explains the complexity of life is the theory of intelligent design, but atheists don’t like to admit this. What is wrong with the theory of intelligent design is that there is no evidence for it. There is no evidence that living organisms are "irreducibly complex.” ID is just a bright idea.

The following quote is from a PhD in linguistics, not biology. Pinker is Steven Pinker who has a PhD in linguistics and Bloom is Paul Bloom who has a PhD in psychology. What we have in this quote is three laymen disagreeing with the expert, Charles Darwin:

They [Pinker and Bloom] particularly emphasized that language is incredibly complex, as Chomsky had been saying for decades. Indeed, it was the enormous complexity of language that made is hard to imagine not merely how it had evolved but that it had evolved at all.

But, continued Pinker and Bloom, complexity is not a problem for evolution. Consider the eye. The little organ is composed of many specialized parts, each delicately calibrated to perform its role in conjunction with the others. It includes the cornea,…Even Darwin said that it was hard to image how the eye could have evolved.

And yet, he explained, it did evolve, and the only possible way is through natural selection—the inestimable back-and-forth of random genetic mutation with small effects…Over the eons, those small changes accreted and eventually resulted in the eye as we know it. (Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, pp. 59–60)

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David Roemer

Last edited on 6/15/2012 10:38:10 AM GMT

6/15/2012 at 11:55:15 AM GMT

R. Isaac

Posts: 80

David,

Perhaps an analogy will help illustrate why your critique of Styer misses the mark. Suppose Alice and Bob are discussing an ice maker.

Bob: When ice freezes, the entropy decreases. Therefore it violates the second law of theromdynamics.

Alice: No, it doesn't! The ice maker works by plugging it into the electrical outlet and the power from the electric power source provides more entropy than the water/ice system loses, so the second law of thermodynamics is preserved.

Bob: FOUL! You just said that energy from the electric power source causes a decrease in entropy of the ice which is absurd.

Alice: Of course not! The electrical power runs the motor which runs the compressor which transfers the heat from the water to the environment.

In that analogy, Bob made exactly the same mistake you've made. Styer's argument is just like Alice's--looking at the thermodynamics of the entire system, not needing to comment on the kinetics of the compressor and pump that transfer the entropy from the water to the environment. Similarly, Styer didn't need to deal with the kinetics of how the entropy is transferred, only that the total entropy flow is consistent with the second law. Gladysheve rightly articulates the distinction between theromdynamics and kinetics.

6/15/2012 at 12:56:20 PM GMT

Posts: 58

I don’t understand why the decrease in the entropy of a system has to be accompanied by a greater increase in the entropy of the environment. When hydrogen atoms come together under the force of gravity to form a star, the entropy of the hydrogen gas decreases without any increase in the entropy of the environment.

The way I understand the idea of Styer and Gladyshev about entropy and evolution is this. There is a sense in which evolution does violate the second law of thermodynamics rooted in the lack of understanding of what caused the complexity of life to increase. Fighting creationists and advocates of intelligent design, atheists cry out in a panic: "The second law about complexity always decreasing only applies to a closed system. The earth is not a closed system because of the sun. The second law of thermodynamics is not violated.”

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David Roemer

6/15/2012 at 1:49:42 PM GMT

R. Isaac

Posts: 80

The entropy of a star does increase. It heats up, doesn't it? The second law does state the entropy will increase in a closed system and indeed that has never been violated to our knowledge.

Your characterization of anyone (and it's not just atheists but also Christians who understand science) responding in panic is rather far off the mark. The response is usually one of exasperation towards people who ought to know better but keep insisting wrongly that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. It doesn't at any level of the hierarchy, as Gladyshev rightly points out. In every case, those who argue that evolution violates the second law have in some way misunderstood or misstated thermodynamic principles.

You in particular failed to see that the basic concepts of temperature and entropy apply to more than gases but also to solids and liquids and biological systems. And you wrongly accused Styer of claiming the sun's heat was a mechanistic cause of the reduction of entropy in evolution.

6/15/2012 at 2:49:08 PM GMT

Posts: 58

I don’t think hydrogen atoms spread far apart in outer space is a gas. You can calculate the averages kinetic energy of each atom, but to convert the KE to a temperature with the Boltzmann constant doesn’t make sense to me because you can’t measure the temperature of such a rarefied gas with a thermometer.

As the gas atoms come closer together, the volume occupied by the atoms decreases. I suppose there comes a point in the evolution of a star when it becomes meaningful to say it has a temperature. However, long before that point, the complexity of the system has decreased because there is more knowledge about the location of the gas atoms. Likewise, the increase in the complexity of life during evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics. It does not violate the second law because the second law is absolutely true. Creationists show bad judgment on this point. The idea that evolution does not violate the second law because the earth is not a closed system strikes me as being absurd.

We should get off the topic of thermodynamics and focus on the question of whether natural selection acting upon innovations explains the complexity of life. Thermodynamics is getting us nowhere. By discussing evolutionary biology, we can get the input of biologists who should understand the limits of natural selection.

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David Roemer

6/15/2012 at 3:03:24 PM GMT
R. Isaac Posts: 80	Report Permalink
I'm sorry. I thought you understood at least atoms and gases in a thermodynamic sense but I was mistaken. I think at this point I will advise you to continue your discussion with a different group.

6/16/2012 at 6:26:43 PM GMT

Posts: 58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKaF8vX6HXQ.

I just sent the following email to an ASA member asking me about my religion and views on evolution:

I am a Catholic and think that creationism and intelligent design are irrational. Darwinism, the idea that humans evolved from animals, is pseudoscience because only the bodies of humans evolved from animals, not their souls. Intelligent atheists think the human soul is just an idea, but rational people know that the human soul is spiritual. Less intelligent atheists think the human soul is spiritual by definition.

An example of pseudoscience promoted by atheists and Protestants is that natural selection explains common descent. Natural selection only explains how giraffes got long necks, not how giraffes evolved from bacteria in 3.5 billion years.

I'v been trying to explain this to Randy Isaac on the Open Forum by quoting from peer-reviewed articles and scholarly works. Randy's responses are very weak, to say the least. No member of the ASA is supporting me in my efforts to get the AJP to retract its absurd article titled "Entropy and evolution." You are the first ASA member that seems to be a real Christian, not a liberal Christian. Real Christians believe in Heaven and Hell.

I just started reading Biology's First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Evolutionary Systems whose co-author Daniel W. McShae is an associate professor of biology at Duke University. He is not an advocate of intelligent design. What follows is the opening paragraph of the book. I was happy to find it because it gives me another quote to throw into the face of people who believe in evolution instead of believing in the Bible.

The history of life presents three great sources of wonder. One is adapttion, the marvelous fit between organism and environment. The other two are diversity and complexity, the humge variety of living forms today and the enormous complexity oftheir internal structure. Natural selection explains adaptation. But what explains diversity and complexity?

My YouTube video titled, "The Truth About Evolution and Religion" contains a number of similar quotes.

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David Roemer

6/26/2012 at 10:37:47 AM GMT

Posts: 58