Slightly unique anti-evolution article, RE: thermodynamics

[XaLEv]

Found a link to this on Fark (right above some rather nice porn). The usual stuff, but unique in two areas; It's muslims this time instead of christians, and it tries to address the bit about organisms being open systems. Some more articles linked on the right side.

http://www.islam-online.net/English/Sci ... le04.shtml?

Oh, yeah: Here's that link's thread, if anyone is interested. IIRC, you have to wait 24 hours to post after registering, though.

[victorhadin]

Christ not again. Will creationists ever bother to actually find out about and understand thermodynamic probability & disorder?



No. They will not.

[Boba Fett]

Christ not again. Will creationists ever bother to actually find out about and understand thermodynamic probability & disorder?



No. They will not.

Hehehehe...

You wrote quite funny! Started it with Christ...

Otherwise I agree with you they won't.

[Wicked Pilot]

Christ not again. Will creationists ever bother to actually find out about and understand thermodynamic probability & disorder?

Well, thermo and etnropy can be somewhat difficult concepts to grasp. Since I would imagine most high school science class don't cover it extensively enough, or at all, most people would have little understanding of the first law. Even less would have an accurate understanding of the second.

[NecronLord]

ARGGHHHH!!!!!!!

*grabs stupidity extinguisher*

Damm, no such thing!

[Durandal]

Confronted by all these truths, evolutionists have had to take refuge in a mangling of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, saying that it holds true only for "closed systems" and that "open systems" are beyond the scope of this law.

This is only half-true. The human body's growth cycle can be characterized as a fight against entropy. As you keep growing, your body generates heat and keeps trying to achieve thermal equilibrium with its environment. Since your body continuously generates heat, this won't happen until your body stops. As you get older and older, your body will eventually become subject to the effects of entropy, as your body becomes less and less efficient. You finally reach thermal equilibrium when your body can no longer function, and stops producing heat. That is when you die.

However, I have yet to hear any kind of explanation as to why this process would prevent the forming of random mutation, which drives evolution.

An "open system" is a thermodynamic system in which energy matter flow in and out, unlike a "closed system", in which the initial energy and matter remains constant. Evolutionists hold that the world is an open system: that it is constantly exposed to an energy flow from the sun, that the law of entropy does not apply for the world as a whole, and that ordered, complex living beings can be generated from disordered, simple, and inanimate structures.

He's already fucked up. Disorder comes from complexity, not from simplicity. Scientists don't declare entropy null and void for the world because it's an open system, otherwise engineers wouldn't design cars very well. We simply recognize that entropy has other places to go, and that it does not have to stay within the system.

However, there is an obvious distortion here. The fact that a system has an energy inflow is not enough to make that system ordered. Specific mechanisms are needed to make the energy functional. For instance, a car needs a motor, a transmission system, and related control mechanisms to convert the energy in gasoline to work. Without such an energy conversion system, the car will not be able to use the energy in gasoline.

He's completely missing the point. When a system is closed, that means that the entropy has nowhere else to go. In an open system, entropy can be released, and the net entropy of the system can actually decrease or stay the same; it does not have to increase. For example, your body is an open system because it radiates heat, changes temperature, mass, et cetera. So, if the entropy in your body increases, it doesn't have to stay in your body. It can go somewhere else, like into the surrounding environment. So, the net entropy of your body can stay the same as it was before.

The same thing applies in the case of life as well. It is true that life derives its energy from the sun. However, solar energy can only be converted into chemical energy by the incredibly complex energy conversion systems in living things (such as photosynthesis in plants and the digestive systems of humans and animals). No living thing can live without such energy conversion systems. Without an energy conversion system, the sun is nothing but a source of destructive energy that burns, parches, or melts.

Right, but these energy conversion mechanisms still produce entropy on their own. He's assuming that all the entropy produced must go toward thwarting an organism's development. I wonder if he'd care to explain why one organism's increased entropy would have any effect on the random mutations of another organism.

As may be seen, a thermodynamic system without an energy conversion mechanism of some sort is not advantageous for evolution, be it open or closed. No one asserts that such complex and conscious mechanisms could have existed in nature under the conditions of the primeval earth. Indeed, the real problem confronting evolutionists is the question of how complex energy converting mechanisms such as photosynthesis in plants, which cannot be duplicated even with modern technology, could have come into being on its own.

Is this guy fucking insane? It's called solar power.

The influx of solar energy into the world has no effect that would on its own bring order. No matter how high the temperature may become, amino acids resist forming bonds in ordered sequences. Energy by itself is not enough to make amino acids form the much more complex molecules of proteins or for proteins to form the much complex and organised structures of cell organelles. The real and essential source of this organization at all levels is conscious design: in a word, creation.

Amino acids form complex molecules because the laws of chemistry guide the processes.

All the information stressed in this article makes it clear that evolution is a dogma that is against empirical science and the origin of living beings can only be explained by the intervention of a supernatural power. That supernatural power is the creation of God, who created the entire universe from nothing. Science has proven that evolution is still impossible as far as thermodynamics is concerned and the existence of life has no explanation but creation.

Sure, if we ignore chemical laws, generate arbitrary and incorrect definitions for what entropy is and assume that entropy must affect a species as a whole, rather than just the individual system, I guess he's right ...

[Darth Wong]

Why does the thread title have the word "unique" in it? This argument is anything but unique; it is cookie-cutter creationist idiocy.

Oh sure, it comes from a Muslim instead of a Christian ... are we supposed to believe that those religions are actually any different when it comes to this subject?

[XaLEv]

Why does the thread title have the word "unique" in it? This argument is anything but unique; it is cookie-cutter creationist idiocy.

Oh sure, it comes from a Muslim instead of a Christian ... are we supposed to believe that those religions are actually any different when it comes to this subject?

That's part of it. The other part is that it tries to address the difference between open and closed systems. I've never seen any of them try that before.

[beyond hope]

Confronted by all these truths, evolutionists have had to take refuge in a mangling of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, saying that it holds true only for "closed systems" and that "open systems" are beyond the scope of this law.

This is only half-true. The human body's growth cycle can be characterized as a fight against entropy. As you keep growing, your body generates heat and keeps trying to achieve thermal equilibrium with its environment. Since your body continuously generates heat, this won't happen until your body stops. As you get older and older, your body will eventually become subject to the effects of entropy, as your body becomes less and less efficient. You finally reach thermal equilibrium when your body can no longer function, and stops producing heat. That is when you die.

However, I have yet to hear any kind of explanation as to why this process would prevent the forming of random mutation, which drives evolution.

Higher-than-normal temperatures in the scrotum cause defects in sperm, at least from what I remember. If that's true, there's one example right there of how the heat effect (rather than preventing random mutation) would actually be a contributing factor to it.

[Durandal]

Confronted by all these truths, evolutionists have had to take refuge in a mangling of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, saying that it holds true only for "closed systems" and that "open systems" are beyond the scope of this law.

This is only half-true. The human body's growth cycle can be characterized as a fight against entropy. As you keep growing, your body generates heat and keeps trying to achieve thermal equilibrium with its environment. Since your body continuously generates heat, this won't happen until your body stops. As you get older and older, your body will eventually become subject to the effects of entropy, as your body becomes less and less efficient. You finally reach thermal equilibrium when your body can no longer function, and stops producing heat. That is when you die.

However, I have yet to hear any kind of explanation as to why this process would prevent the forming of random mutation, which drives evolution.

Higher-than-normal temperatures in the scrotum cause defects in sperm, at least from what I remember. If that's true, there's one example right there of how the heat effect (rather than preventing random mutation) would actually be a contributing factor to it.

Radiation does this as well. I wonder if our friend can explain why ultraviolet radiation energizes skin cells and causes them to mutate (causing cancer), but that same radiation couldn't possibly have done the same thing to amino acids hundreds of millions of years ago.

[Dooey Jo]

Why does the thread title have the word "unique" in it? This argument is anything but unique; it is cookie-cutter creationist idiocy.

Oh sure, it comes from a Muslim instead of a Christian ... are we supposed to believe that those religions are actually any different when it comes to this subject?

We've got plenty of muslim creationists in Sweden. You can come and take some of them with you if ever come to visit us.