Entropy contradict Evolution

[hadeka]

Physics and Evolution
The Laws of Thermodynamics Contradict Evolution



The laws of thermodynamics are one of the most important, most basic and most proven concepts of all scientific disciplines. These are valid in all our universe.


The First Law of Thermodynamics

The First Law of Thermodynamics states the following: The total amount of energy in our universe, or in any isolated part of it, remains constant. Furthermore, energy can be transformed from one form into another, but it cannot be created and cannot be destroyed.

As a consequence, the current amount of energy in the universe has been in existence for a long time. Natural processes cannot create energy, thus this energy could have been produced only by a force outside our universe.

According to evolutionists, complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. Simple organisms were formed from matter and energy. They state that matter and energy appeared from nothing. This contradicts the First Law.

On the contrary, Creation is supernatural, stands above the laws of nature. God can create matter, energy and laws that govern them.


The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Law of Increasing Entropy, is a general and universal law that can be formulated in several ways:

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy available for useful work decreases in an isolated system, although the total amount of energy remains constant. This is because energy can transform only into lower forms of energy through natural processes. For example, electric current passing through a light bulb ends up transforming into heat, which is the lowest "quality" energy consisting of chaotic molecular movement.
This Second Law introduces the concept of entropy, a measure of disorder. Entropy constantly increases in any isolated system. In other words, the system becomes disorganized and energy becomes less usable.
Based on this law, the amount of information conveyed by a system continually decreases and its quality deteriorates.
Basically, the law states that natural processes disorganize the state of objects and systems. Over time, everything decays and becomes disorganized. The universe irreversibly heads toward maximum disorganization.
Just think about what happens with our house if we "comfortably" leave it by itself for a while, we don't clean up, arrange and mend all the time. Natural processes constantly destroy and disorganize it. Our house needs our useful and expedient work to maintain the order. Even atomic particles search the lowest energy levels, they "like comfort".

The amount of information and the complexity of our universe perpetually decreases instead of increasing. According to evolutionary theory, life on earth progresses from simple to complex and never vice versa. Everything becomes more and more organized and entropy constantly decreases.

Thus, evolution contradicts both laws of thermodynamics.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is by itself alone sufficient to refute evolutionary theories. See the graph below.


Vance Ferrell, Evolution Disproved Series, p.809.

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything degrades and breaks down. We can see this in the universe. The sun slowly but surely cools off, stars die, matter dissolves into radiation, etc. Our universe progresses toward its death, namely toward maximum entropy. This process is irreversible. If there was no Creator, this tragic end would certainly occur.

The Two Laws of Thermodynamics point not only to a death in the future, but also to the Creation in the past:

According to the First Law, the cosmos could not have created itself, thus an external force must have existed to create it.
According to the Second Law, if our universe was infinitely old, it would be dead and destroyed already. But this is not the case, so it must also have had a beginning. Sometime in the past the universe had been created and the cosmic processes were started.
Every star, the perfectly designed nature and all the accurate laws of nature bear testimony to the existence of a Creator who created them all.

Information Theory and Entropy

We think that the amount of information is continually increasing on earth. Day after day, new inventions appear, just think about the development of the computer. How does this contradict the laws of thermodynamics? There is no contradiction, for these inventions were not the random result of natural processes, but human intelligence. Humans create the programs running on computers to make them do useful work. Natural processes don't produce anything with a goal in mind. Having a goal means thinking in advance.

Let's think about the genetic code stored in the simplest living cells. It contains all the information necessary for the survival, behavior and reproduction of the cell. Scientists estimate that the information contained in a single-celled organism amounts to 40,000 volumes. The chance for this information to appear suddenly could be compared to an explosion in a printing shop resulting in Encyclopedia Brittanica!

We can draw an important conclusion from the above: new information and order can only appear as a result of intelligence, planning and useful work.

Thus, the origin of life on earth could not have been the result of random natural processes, but only God's purposeful Creation.

 

[Runt]

Natural processes cannot create energy, thus this energy could have been produced only by a force outside our universe.

Wait. Back up. You stated a moment ago, correctly, the first law of thermodynamics:

…energy can be transformed from one form into another, but it cannot be created and cannot be destroyed.

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Therefore, it could NOT have been produced… not by a force within our universe, and not by a force outside our universe. It is the infinite force itself—the closest you will ever come to finding “god”.

According to evolutionists, complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. Simple organisms were formed from matter and energy. They state that matter and energy appeared from nothing. This contradicts the First Law.

What? That simply isn’t true. Let’s walk through this. Complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. Simple organisms were formed from matter and energy. Okay, yes, this is true. But this is not to say that matter and energy appeared from nothing. The theory of evolution never suggested such a thing. Energy is infinite. It always exists. It can change forms. One of the forms it can change into (with high concentrations of energy) is matter. Matter can combine to form molecules. Molecules can combine to form biological organisms. Nowhere does this suggest that energy is coming out of nowhere. Thus, there is no contradiction of the First Law.

On the contrary, Creation is supernatural, stands above the laws of nature. God can create matter, energy and laws that govern them.

God cannot create something that is already infinite. Energy CANNOT be created (or destroyed). If there is a God, at best It can use the energy that is already there to form matter and thus everything else… but that is AT BEST.

The amount of information and the complexity of our universe perpetually decreases instead of increasing. According to evolutionary theory, life on earth progresses from simple to complex and never vice versa. Everything becomes more and more organized and entropy constantly decreases.

Entropy has nothing to do with complexity or disorder. It is simply what happens when energy changes form. It rolls “downhill” every time it changes form, until eventually all energy is reduced to useless heat energy. We actually SEE this in biological organisms. You body breaks down molecules to produce ATP. Your body spends ATP to power biological processes. ATP, when spent, is converted to heat energy—hence your body warmth. EVENTUALLY this may happen to all energy in the universe, making it impossible to form biological life or even matter, but right now there is more than enough energy here in the universe for organisms to have the matter they need to continuously become MORE complex.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

hadeka, you raise some great points, but you have overlooked a few things.

The First Law of Thermodynamics states the following: The total amount of energy in our universe, or in any isolated part of it, remains constant. Furthermore, energy can be transformed from one form into another, but it cannot be created and cannot be destroyed.

As a consequence, the current amount of energy in the universe has been in existence for a long time. Natural processes cannot create energy, thus this energy could have been produced only by a force outside our universe.

There are several problems with this last statement. First of all, even if energy must have been created only by a force outside our universe, that does not mean that force is God. A force does not have consciousness or humanlike behavior, is not interested in the affairs of mankind, does not have sentience, and is not necessarily all powerful. Also, for all you know it could be four or five different 'forces' which created energy.

Lightning is caused by a force...but I wouldn't equate that force with the sentient being which formed a covenant with Abraham.

Secondly, assuming some force must have created the energy in our universe, this force cannot be said to be 'outside' our universe. Anything which interacts with this universe is in this universe, just (perhaps) in some unknown part of it, or having some undiscovered properties. So basically, by saying 'some force' must have produced this energy, you are saying the first law of thermodynamics might be wrong--it might be possible for energy to be created in our universe in an as-yet-undiscovered way. I think, though I could be wrong, that physicists have considered this possibility.

Thirdly, even if "natural processes cannot create energy," this does not mean that energy ever had to be "produced"--by anything. It is just as possible that energy has always existed, just as the universe has always existed, and was NEVER produced. Now you might ask, "how is this possible since there was no universe/energy before the Big Bang?" Well, the answer is difficult to wrap your mind around...you have to remember that our linear perception of time is an illusion. Imagine a theoretical universe "before" the Big Bang--the time that elapses between this theoretical universe and the Big Bang is equal to zero, because time itself does not exist unless there is matter moving in relation to other matter to give it meaning (time is relative). Therefore, energy was not "created" in the Big Bang...it has always existed.

According to evolutionists, complex organisms evolved from simpler ones. Simple organisms were formed from matter and energy. They state that matter and energy appeared from nothing. This contradicts the First Law.

That is a strawman argument. See my third point above.

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy available for useful work decreases in an isolated system, although the total amount of energy remains constant. This is because energy can transform only into lower forms of energy through natural processes. For example, electric current passing through a light bulb ends up transforming into heat, which is the lowest "quality" energy consisting of chaotic molecular movement.
This Second Law introduces the concept of entropy, a measure of disorder. Entropy constantly increases in any isolated system. In other words, the system becomes disorganized and energy becomes less usable.
Based on this law, the amount of information conveyed by a system continually decreases and its quality deteriorates.
Basically, the law states that natural processes disorganize the state of objects and systems. Over time, everything decays and becomes disorganized. The universe irreversibly heads toward maximum disorganization.
Just think about what happens with our house if we "comfortably" leave it by itself for a while, we don't clean up, arrange and mend all the time. Natural processes constantly destroy and disorganize it. Our house needs our useful and expedient work to maintain the order. Even atomic particles search the lowest energy levels, they "like comfort".

The amount of information and the complexity of our universe perpetually decreases instead of increasing. According to evolutionary theory, life on earth progresses from simple to complex and never vice versa. Everything becomes more and more organized and entropy constantly decreases.

This is misleading, allow me to explain.

The entropy of the universe is constantly increasing...that is true. However, that does not mean that the entropy of all systems is constantly increasing. For example, let's say we have a cooler. Inside the cooler the temperature is much lower than zero degrees celsius (the freezing point of water). If we put some water into the cooler, the water will freeze into a solid and become more ordered, which is a decrease in entropy. How is this possible? Because heat flowed out of the water and into the cooler (and some of it flowed out of the cooler) increasing the temperature (the random motions of molecules) of the cooler slightly. This means that the entropy of the cooler increased. So, even though the entropy of the system decreased, heat flowed out of the system increasing the entropy of the environment and the universe.

In another post, I used this example: if you run a computer program in which a bunch of small balls and a few big balls bounce around as randomly as possible onscreen, you will notice something interesting happen. The small balls will "herd" the big balls into a corner. On the one hand, this organizes the big balls and decreases the 'entropy' in that one corner...on the other hand, this also creates more space for the small balls to fly around in. So by organizing part of the system, the system as a whole acheives maximum chaos.

The system would actually be LESS chaotic if the large balls were NOT organized. Organisms have the same effect...they increase the entropy of their surroundings and so the net change in entropy is an increase in entropy for the universe. I hope this clears things up a little.

Vance Ferrell, Evolution Disproved Series, p.809.

This Vance Ferrell person must either be ignorant of these concepts, or he purposely keeps his readers in the dark about them because he wants to sell books.

According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, everything degrades and breaks down. We can see this in the universe. The sun slowly but surely cools off, stars die, matter dissolves into radiation, etc. Our universe progresses toward its death, namely toward maximum entropy. This process is irreversible. If there was no Creator, this tragic end would certainly occur.

According to the open universe theory, this tragic end will occur.

The Two Laws of Thermodynamics point not only to a death in the future, but also to the Creation in the past:

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here...the first law of thermodynamics specifically states that energy CANNOT be created...meaning a "Creation" in the past is impossible. If anything, the first two laws disprove Creation.

According to the First Law, the cosmos could not have created itself, thus an external force must have existed to create it.
According to the Second Law, if our universe was infinitely old, it would be dead and destroyed already.

Our universe is not infinitely old, and it may be "dead" in the distant future. Our universe has existed ever since time itself was equal to zero.

Information Theory and Entropy

We think that the amount of information is continually increasing on earth. Day after day, new inventions appear, just think about the development of the computer. How does this contradict the laws of thermodynamics? There is no contradiction, for these inventions were not the random result of natural processes, but human intelligence. Humans create the programs running on computers to make them do useful work. Natural processes don't produce anything with a goal in mind. Having a goal means thinking in advance.

Let's think about the genetic code stored in the simplest living cells. It contains all the information necessary for the survival, behavior and reproduction of the cell. Scientists estimate that the information contained in a single-celled organism amounts to 40,000 volumes. The chance for this information to appear suddenly could be compared to an explosion in a printing shop resulting in Encyclopedia Brittanica!

See, this is yet another strawman. No one says all that information "suddenly appears"....well, perhaps Creationists do. The information doesn't appear all at once, it develops from the small and increases exponentially. Creationists are the ones who say this information appears all at once by an act of the supernatural.

We can draw an important conclusion from the above: new information and order can only appear as a result of intelligence, planning and useful work.

Remember what I said about entropy? The information contained in DNA is a type of organization. Organization is an emergent phenomenon of chaos and does not go against the laws of thermodynamics.

Thus, the origin of life on earth could not have been the result of random natural processes, but only God's purposeful Creation.

Why are you trying to prove God with logic and evidence? Whatever happened to just having faith?

 

[dan]

1- Creationism does not mean God created everything from nothing. He obeys the laws He set in motion. The Hebrew word used in Genesis - bara - denotes a fashioning or shaping of something, not an initial creation. Those that say God created matter and energy do not understand the nature of God. Your arguments work against mainstream Christianity, but not against truth.

2- The organization that inevitably results from entropy is not the organization of which you speak. "Out of chaos comes order" the famous psychotic philosopher said, but that order is a homogenity that results from constant disorganization. Chance is the only thing that may create such an infinitely complex thing as DNA (if you don't believe in God) and the numbers show that the odds of chance creating one of even the simplest of proteins is one over ten to the one hundred and fifty-second power. Those odds are ludicrous.

3- It says up there that information starts out small and increases exponentially. Well, the odds of DNA existing in its simplest form are ridiculously infinite, and for that DNA to then "increase" the odds also increase exponentially from there. Your argument is exponentially preposterous.

4- All your examples about entropy increasing bring one interesting point to the surface: there is a person overseeing and controlling every single one of them. None of them occur naturally. You're only proving that a God may cause entropy to do the things you claim it does. The cooler is an outside force that excercises an influence over the water. The balls are placed somewhere and moved with purpose. The computer program must be designed and executed.

5- The beginning of your argument beasically says this: "That's not what happened. We don't know what happened, but that can't be what happened because that's stupid." James says that our passional natures are what drives our convictions, rather than our logical sides. You don't believe creationism because you don't want to. You don't understand it at all, so we can't argue that you have considered it at length and find it to be lacking. You understand science only insofar as it is breastfed you by scientists who contradict each other more than the Bible does itself (and that's saying a lot). You gather information that feels good to you and proves your point, and that becomes your truth. You hardly think to test and try that information. This is perfectly natural. Everyone does it, you shouldn't feel bad.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

hadeka, persistent ignorance is always sad to see when the information is so readily available. But what I truly find despicable is plagiarism, and I have nothing but contempt for those who stoop to such things.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

1- Creationism does not mean God created everything from nothing. He obeys the laws He set in motion. The Hebrew word used in Genesis - bara - denotes a fashioning or shaping of something, not an initial creation.

And the ancient Hebrew man who originally wrote Genesis MUST have gotten all of his ideas straight from the mind of God, because that is what you want to be true. Don't feel bad--like you said, we all do it.

Those that say God created matter and energy do not understand the nature of God.

No, they just don't understand the laws of thermodynamics.

Your arguments work against mainstream Christianity, but not against truth.

Well, I certainly hope they don't work against truth.

2- The organization that inevitably results from entropy is not the organization of which you speak. "Out of chaos comes order" the famous psychotic philosopher said, but that order is a homogenity that results from constant disorganization. Chance is the only thing that may create such an infinitely complex thing as DNA (if you don't believe in God) and the numbers show that the odds of chance creating one of even the simplest of proteins is one over ten to the one hundred and fifty-second power. Those odds are ludicrous.

First of all, the organization that results from entropy is not the result of chance it is the result of the second law of thermodynamics. It is a simple equation, where S stands for entropy: the change in S(universe) = the change in S(system) + the change in S(surroundings). Both sides of this equation will always be positive, though the change in S(system) can be negative. The biological reactions that take place in organisms result in a very large positive change in the entropy of their surroundings, and ultimately a positive change in the entropy of the universe. I suggest you do more research on the subject here: http://www.learnchem.net/tutorials/spont.shtml

Secondly, where did you come up with these supposed "odds"? Can you back up this claim?

3- It says up there that information starts out small and increases exponentially. Well, the odds of DNA existing in its simplest form are ridiculously infinite, and for that DNA to then "increase" the odds also increase exponentially from there. Your argument is exponentially preposterous.

Care to back that up with anything, or did you just read that somewhere and you want it to be true? Try asking anders what the odds are, he's a chemist.

4- All your examples about entropy increasing bring one interesting point to the surface: there is a person overseeing and controlling every single one of them. None of them occur naturally.

You have totally missed my point, they all occur naturally. Water vapor condenses into droplets, which is a decrease in entropy, yet heat flows out of the vapor into the environment and ultimately leads to an increase in entropy of the universe. No one has to "control" water vapor to make it condense into droplets, it just happens.

You're only proving that a God may cause entropy to do the things you claim it does. The cooler is an outside force that excercises an influence over the water. The balls are placed somewhere and moved with purpose. The computer program must be designed and executed.

No, not even close. The cooler was the environment, the water was the system, and everything outside and inside the cooler was the universe. Take a look at the equation of entropy I wrote above.

5- The beginning of your argument beasically says this: "That's not what happened. We don't know what happened, but that can't be what happened because that's stupid."

I didn't say that at all--don't put words in my mouth.

James says that our passional natures are what drives our convictions, rather than our logical sides. You don't believe creationism because you don't want to. You don't understand it at all, so we can't argue that you have considered it at length and find it to be lacking. You understand science only insofar as it is breastfed you by scientists who contradict each other more than the Bible does itself (and that's saying a lot). You gather information that feels good to you and proves your point, and that becomes your truth. You hardly think to test and try that information.

You seem to know a lot about me. Could you give me a horoscope?

You don't seem to understand entropy at all, but I won't hold that against you.

 

[hadeka]

sorry i couldnt read all this and im gonna read it tonight because im very busy now
but i just read the first paragraph.

Runt said:
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Therefore, it could NOT have been produced… not by a force within our universe, and not by a force outside our universe. It is the infinite force itself—the closest you will ever come to finding “god”.

..here we are talking about all the forces in the nature of the universe, that there is not any force IN OUR UNIVERSE can produce the energy, so of course, the source of that energy is a force outisde the universe.
And about the entropy:
If u left ur home for about 10 years for example, when u return, you will not find in arrangement as u left it !
because the entropy is always increasing.
The increasing of the entropy is a main thing in the laws of our universe.

but look at everything in our universe, u will find that the entropy is decreasing !!

so the decreasing of the entropy in our universe is against the laws of nature !!

what is the force that can make a law against the law of nature ??!!!

I think, GOD

Hope u can understand what i mean and i will read all this tonight

thank you

Hadeka.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

hadeka, you raise some great points as I said earlier, but I think you will find that I have addressed these in my first post. Let's look at your example for a moment: if you leave your house for 10 years, yes it will deteriorate. The 'entropy of your house', in all, will increase. However, bacteria will also form, and mold, and possibly even some mushrooms or fungus. These highly ordered things all have very low entropy...however, they facilitate the destruction of your house, and therefore increase the entropy overall. Without them, your house's entropy would increase at a slower rate.

Please see my first post for a more in depth explanation of entropy and biological systems.

 

[hadeka]

hadeka, persistent ignorance is always sad to see when the information is so readily available. But what I truly find despicable is plagiarism, and I have nothing but contempt for those who stoop to such things.

I dont think, that's i said that im the writer of this article.

i found it on the net and read it and i was interest to type it here, so i just copied here.
so you dont have to say about that "Plagiarism".
may be im wrong because i didnt type the source of this article, but that's not a reason to tell me that.
Sorry.
thank you

Hadeka.

 

[Green Gaia]

Just so there's no confusion in the future, please give the source and link to the article you are posting. Thank you.

 

[kbc_1963]

Mr_Spinkles asked:
where did you come up with these supposed "odds"? Can you back up this claim?

Tho It was not my post being answered here, I just happen to have much in the way of numbers so here you go, I have much more stuff dealing with the odds in another post in the debate forum.

It seems strange when I see people questioning the odds of something without a serious look at the variables. Many people do nothing but figure the odds everyday for various things in life.
"That organic evolution could account for the complex forms of life in the past and the present has long since been abandoned by men who grasp the importance of the DNA genetic code."

It was Dr. Emile Borel who first formulated the basic Law of Probability which states that the occurrence of an event where the chances are beyond 1 chance in 1050(the 200th power is used for scientific calculations), is an event which we can state with certainty will never happen, regardless of the time allotted or how many opportunities could exist for the event to take place.(Emile Borel, Probabilities and Life, Dover 1962, chapters 1-3) The mathematical probability of a single living cell arising spontaneously has been calculated over and over again by evolutionary scientists and they have been unable to come up with a figure which falls under Borel's upper limit!

Walter Bradley and Charles Thaxton (authors of The Mystery of Life's Origins: Reassessing Current Theories) had this to say about probability and the origin of a protein after outlining a number of arguments against an evolutionary origin of the same:

The problem of assembling the amino acid building blocks into functional protein can also be illustrated using probability and statistics. To simplify the problem, one may assume the probability of getting an L-amino acid (versus a D-amino acid) to be 50 percent and the probability of joining two such amino acids with a peptide bond to also be 50 percent. The probability of getting the right amino acid in a particular position may be assumed to be 5 percent, assuming equal concentration of all twenty amino acids in the pre biotic soup. The first two assumptions are realistic, while the third would be too low for some amino acids and to high for others. Neglecting the problem of reactions with non-amino acid chemical species, the probability of getting everything right in placing one amino acid would be 0.5 x 0.5 x .05 = .0125. The probability of properly assembling N such amino acids would be .0125 x .0125 x ...continued for N terms of .0125. If a functional protein had one hundred active sights, the probability of getting a proper assembly would be .0125 multiplied times itself one hundred times, or 4.9 x 10191. Such improbabilities have led essentially all scientists who work in the field to reject random, accidental assembly or fortuitous good luck as an explanation for how life began. If we assume that all carbon on earth exists in the form of amino acids and that amino acids are allowed to chemically react at the maximum possible rate of 1012 /s for one billion years (the greatest possible time between the cooling of the earth and the appearance of life), we must still conclude that it is incredibly improbable (~1065) that even one functional protein would be made, as H.P. Yockey has pointed out. (H.P. Yockey, "A Calculation of the Probability of Spontaneous Biogenesis by Information Theory,"Journal of Theoretical Biology 67(1981)

Francis Crick, the man who shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA had this to say about probability factors and protein synthesis:

" To produce this miracle of molecular construction all the cell need do is to string together the amino acids (which make up the polypeptide chain) in the correct order. This is a complicated biochemical process, a molecular assembly line, using instructions in the form of a nucleic acid tape (the so-called messenger RNA). Here we need only ask, how many possible proteins are there? If a particular amino acid sequence was selected by chance, how rare of an event would that be?
This is an easy exercise in combinatorials. Suppose the chain is about two hundred amino acids long; this is , if anything, rather less than the average length of proteins of all types. Since we have just twenty possibilities at each place, the number of possibilities is twenty multiplied by itself some two hundred times. This is conveniently written 20 200, that is a one followed by 260 zeros! This number is quite beyond our everyday comprehension. For comparison, consider the number of fundamental particles (atoms, speaking loosely) in the entire visible universe, not just in our own galaxy with its 1011 stars, but in all the billions of galaxies, out to the limits of observable space. This number, which is estimated to be 1080, is quite paltry by comparison to 10260. Moreover, we have only considered a polypeptide chain of a rather modest length. Had we considered longer ones as well, the figure would have been even more immense.(Life Itself, its origin and nature, Francis Crick, 1981, pp 51-52)

 

[Runt]

When I was in high school my chemistry teacher would read little scientific stories to us every Friday. Once, she read a story about the probability of being born. It calculated the chance of any one person being born, and the odds, when they were presented, make each and every one of us HIGHLY UNLIKELY to have been able to be conceived, let alone to survive until birth.

I tried to find the story on the internet, but couldn't. I did, however, find some site that said the odds of being born are 1 to 130,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I am not sure how accurate that is, but I do remember that it was some kind of outrageous number like that that the story itself calculated.


So why is it so difficult to believe in evolution when the odds against something we all KNOW has occured--our own births-- are so incredibly piled AGAINST us? If we have all been born despite the odds piled against us, then evolution is certainly possible despite the odds against it.


I don't believe in a God, but I think those of you who do should consider that perhaps the reason evolution exists despite the odds against it are that your God played a part in MAKING it possible.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

If we assume that all carbon on earth exists in the form of amino acids and that amino acids are allowed to chemically react at the maximum possible rate of 1012 /s for one billion years (the greatest possible time between the cooling of the earth and the appearance of life), we must still conclude that it is incredibly improbable (~1065) that even one functional protein would be made, as H.P. Yockey has pointed out.

What exactly was the probability of a protein being made on earth in one billion years--are the odds "10 to the 1065th power to one"? I'm looking for a number.

In the quote you used from H.P. Yockey, he appears to concede that biogenesis is improbable, and that our knowledge of the mechanisms by which this occurred is limited....but does he really think evolution doesn't happen? You didn't take that quote out of context by any chance, did you....

If Emile Borel's findings were truly scientific, I would think she would have published a peer-reviewed paper...not a book. Is she Christian? Just curious.

Runt made a pretty good point. Before the fact, the odds of many events happening are astronomically small...but after the fact, the odds of it happening are 1/1. Here is an interesting quote I found at http://www.skepdic.com/intelligentdesign.html :

... rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable. --John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

Also, I found:

...the odds against DNA assembling by chance are [10 to the 40,000th power] to one [according to Fred Hoyle, Evolution from Space,1981]. This is true, but highly misleading. DNA did not assemble purely by chance. It assembled by a combination of chance and the laws of physics. Without the laws of physics as we know them, life on earth as we know it would not have evolved in the short span of six billion years. The nuclear force was needed to bind protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms; electromagnetism was needed to keep atoms and molecules together; and gravity was needed to keep the resulting ingredients for life stuck to the surface of the earth.
--Victor J. Stenger, emphasis added

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Also, kbc, I encourage you to read this (relatively short) article at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

And here's an interesting article about recent developments in recreating abiogenesis in the lab, in which self-replicating molecules were created: http://w3.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1990/may09/23124.html

 

[(Q)]

Hadeka

It is the understanding of the subject matter (entropy) in which your argument is flawed, and clearly your understanding is flawed, hence your argument is moot.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Hmmm....kbc never did answer my question.

 

[painted wolf]

some fun odds...

Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1
From: http://www.funny2.com/odds.htm

odds on having naturaly occuring identical Quintuplits 8,000,000,000 to 1
http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=66358

wa:do

 

[Zero Faith]

Here's a quick summary of how Godless creation slips by Thermodynamics; I'm not attempting to explain the creation of the Universe, just how it avoids violating thermodynamics.

The Big Bang

There are a number of hypotheses describing the creation of the Universe; the truth is that scientists do not know how the Universe came to be. Two possibilities to explain the creation of the Universe without violating the First Law of Thermodynamics:

1) The Universe is cyclical: The Universe expands for a set period of time, then slows down and contracts until it collapses in upon itself, creates a singularity, then explodes outwards to repeat the process. Energy (for matter is merely another form of energy) is never created or destroyed, it merely changes form between periods of expansion and contraction. Astronomers, however, have recently suggested that the Universe will continue expanding until it burns itself out, thus ruling out a cyclical phenomenon.

2) Creation out of Nothing (Creation Ex Nihilo): Energy cannot be created on its own, but energy and anti-energy (in the form of antiparticles) DO spontaneously form out of nothingless (they're called vacuum particles). Since they are a particle (+1) and an antiparticle (-1), they cancel out to equal zero -- thus conserving energy. However, vacuum particles quickly find each other and recombine, cancelling each other out and disappearing again. There are a number of scenarios (Hawking can explain them better) that employ this phenomenon in explaining the creation of a Universe out of nothing. Basically, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle demands infinite energy fluctuations when you have no time (ie. before the Big Bang), so this is where all our energy comes from - a positive whole lot, and a negative whole lot. The rapid expansion of the early Universe keeps the opposite halves of this vacuum fluctuation from recombining and annihilating each other.

These are hypotheses, but they do illustrate how a Universe could come to be without violating thermodynamics.

Since we are at zero time, and entropy is only concerned with time, the second law does not apply until we start moving forward.

After The Big Bang

So, we have our energy, which explains the Big Bang. Entropy is generally poorly understood; one way of looking at it is that any system desires the lowest energy state it can obtain after taking everything into account (its surroundings, other systems it can interact with, etc). Since ALL matter attracts ALL other matter gravitationally, the gravitational force would pull everything together into a tight ball -- that would be the state of highest entropy. But the energy created during the Big Bang is forcing everything outwards. We have a conflict.

Some particles group together randomly, but as a whole they're too energetic and spread out to collapse into one giant mass. These smaller, random groupings (think eddies in a fog bank) increase their gravitational pull as more particles fall in, which in turn makes them bigger. It's a vicious cycle; more particles equals more gravity equals more particles. These clumps swept through the early Universe, pulling more matter in: the first stars.

We get the rest of our matter through nuclear reactions at the centers of stars. Nuclear fusion occurs under high pressures and temperatures, and gravity pulling matter together will give you both. So far, nothing has violated thermodynamics, and our stars flare to life. Hydrogen atoms slam together to make helium, helium atoms combine into beryllium, beryllium atoms into oxygen, and so on, creating all the necessary building blocks of reality and spewing them out when the stars explode at death. Every atom in your body once existed at the center of a massive, hot star.

Gravity gets to work again, pulling these new, larger particles together into more clumps (planets). And we're up to everything except life.

Abiogenesis and Evolution

This is the easiest one -- the laws of thermodynamics simply do not apply at all. Why? Because thermodynamics only applies to closed systems; in other words, systems that are neither gaining nor losing energy. Thus far, we've been discussing the Universe as a whole, which is a closed system. When we zoom in to look at Earth, however, we're now looking at an open system -- our sun provides a constant stream of energy to Earth.

The laws of thermodynamics can be (and regularly are) violated when energy is added to the system being studied. Endothermic reactions are all about adding heat energy to a reaction to 'go upstream' as far as entropy is concerned. Rechargable batteries work the same way; electricity from the wall socket is the energy being used to 'turn back the clock' on the chemical reactions responsible for battery power.

In other words, arguing that thermodynamics contradicts evolution is kind of like arguing that thermodynamics contradicts rechargable batteries.

And so we've reached the end. From Big Bang to human beings without violating a single law of thermodynamics.

 

[Zero Faith]

On the 'random' combinations of proteins and DNA strands:

The only thing required for evolution is survival of the fittest; in other words, some characteristic of the system that logically necessitates a direction for random mutation. Mutation cannot happen without reproduction, so random reproduction of any kind will evolve in such a way as to increase its likelihood to reproduce.

There are many molecules that reproduce themselves, and most of them are nowhere near as complicated as your average protein or DNA strand. It was these molecules that formed randomly and began reproducing, began evolving. Proteins and DNA came much, much later.

TalkOrigins has a fantastic article on abiogenesis right here.

 

[(Q)]

The only thing required for evolution is survival of the fittest

Incorrect. Evolution also requires the generation of diversity, a random process as well as a 'culling' of the fittest.