Richard Dawkins in his latest book said evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because of the sun. He must have gotten this idea from a peer-reviewed article published in the American Journal of Physics. Catholic Truth in England just published my explanation of why the article is absurd.

According to the second law, a gas will fill up the entire container because this is the most probable distribution of gas molecules. Physicists use a deck of playing cards to model a gas because playing cards can be shuffled (high entropy) or un-shuffled (low entropy). A shuffled deck corresponds to molecules filling up the entire container. The entropy of an isolated gas can never decrease.

Biologists use as a model for the primary structure of a protein the English sonnet because it has hundreds of letters and there are 26 letters. A protein is made up of hundreds of amino acids of which there are 20. Biologists calculate the odds of a computer generating a sonnet in 3 billion years with the random generation of letters or words. These calculations mean natural selection only explains adaptation, not common descent. This is the sense in which evolution violates the second law.

The science article writes down thermodynamic equations for the biosphere proving that evolution does not violate the second law. The equations are absurd because the biosphere doesn't have a temperature or entropy. It is like talking about the temperature of an airplane.

I'm trying to get the American Journal of Physics to retract this absurd article ("Entropy and evolution," Nov. 2008). The link to my more complete explanation is at http://www.catholictruthscotland.com/MAYnewsletter12.pdf

What about the entropy of the gas expelled from Dawkins mouth whenever he speaks.

1) is it measurable

2) how does that measurement correspond to the gases emitted from his arse.

If it explains the one then it explains the other; they're the same thing. There's a higher probability of your parents producing you than there is of your grandparents producing you. Now calculate it back 3.8 billion years.
or 6000 if you prefer.

Not much probability of your grandparents being a different species as you though.
No matter how far back you calculate it.

Why not?

I have taken the liberty of quoting from a David Roamer article that addresses your point. Check it out.

Thank you Murraybob for the support. No biologist will ever say natural selection explains the complexity of life. According to James Shapiro, the new paradigm is that evolution is the result of natural selection acting on innovations caused by genetic engineering, rather than caused by random mutations. Even in his latest book, Dawkins speaks of "adaptive evolution," not just plain "evolution."

However many people, without PhDs in biology, think natural selection acting on random mutations explains the complexity of life. The following is a quote from a science writer and a PhD in linguistics. Paul Bloom has a PhD in psychology, and Steve Pinker has a PhD in linguistics:

"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)

Where (and how) does all that additional complexity come from, I wonder?

I wanted to add that the idea human language evolved is nonsense. The linguistic definition of language is that it means being able to create and understand an infinite number of sentences. Animals only speak at best 100 sentences. Language is the result of the human mind. The human mind has a fourfold structure: 1) At the lowest level is observations, which requires paying attention. 2) The next level is the level of inquiry, which requires being intelligent. 3) At the level of reflective judgment, humans marshal the evidence and decide whether a theory invented at level 2 is true. This requires being rational.4) The fourth level is deciding what to do with our bodies. This requires being responsible.

I still don't know why anyone cares what an old game show host says about anything.

In your case WW there is a pretty high chance.

(refer to this---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ983dbD ... re=related )

I don't think I have laughed harder at anything else I've ever seen on TV.

"The retarded offspring of five monkeys having b**t sex with a fish-squirrel". That phrase has so many possibilities...

1- Entropy is not order or disorder in the common use of the terms, but simply a measurement of energy that is not available for work in a closed thermodynamic system.
2- The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics simply states "The second law of thermodynamics states that in general the total entropy of any system will not decrease other than by increasing the entropy of some other system. Hence, in a system isolated from its environment, the entropy of that system will tend not to decrease."
3- The assembly and function of proteins is NOT a thermodynamic system.
4- The earth's envirnment is NOT a closed system.

Your premises are false, therefore your argument is unsound.

Genetic Engineering. . .doesn't 'engineering anything' require a thinking intelligence for it to work?

My premise is your premise: No. 3. Just as a protein is not a thermodynamic system, the biosphere is not, and a seed planted in the ground ready to grow into a tree is not a thermodynamic system, no more than an airplane is. But the AJP article states that it is and uses the equation S = k log W for the entropy. You can read the article itself with this link:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw0xQqr ... UV4Zw/edit

No, it doesn't. An example of genetic engineering is the growth of E. coli bacteria. E. coli prefers sucrose to fructose. When it is in a mixture of both, it only takes in sucrose. Then it stops growing. Then it takes in the fructose. The E coli detects whether there is fructose or sucrose and then creates new proteins to take in the fructose and metabolize it. This is called genetic engineering. According to James Shapiro, who is not an advocate of intelligent design, genetic engineering is part of the mechanism for evolution. In other words, genetic engineering produces innovations and natural selection works upon those innovations.

I never get tired of the picture or the quote, even though I admire some of Darwin's Logic.

Your link doesn't work.

This one does, and it is actually the article, not a summary by another agency or media outlet.

http://www.fisica.net/epistemologia/STY ... lution.pdf

If you read the article enough to understand it, you see why your argument doesn't apply to evolution.

@Ed Zachary
Thank you very much for your link. How did you find it? I had to pay $30 for my pdf file that I uploaded onto my Google docs. The link I gave works fine for Chrome and Firefox. What browser did you use?

There is actually a second article, actually a note, by Emory Bunn re-doing the calculation of the first article. My guess is that you can't understand how two peer-reviewed papers about thermodynamics could be absurd.

One clue is that the author of the first article thanked the reviewers for helping him write the article. They may be fanatical atheists trying to make creationists and advocates of intelligent design look bad.

What part of my refutation of the article isn't clear? For example, does an airplane have a temperature? I have a YouTube video titled "Evolution and Religion" which may help you understand evolutionary biology and the second law of thermodynamics.
The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKaF8vX6HXQ

Your welcome. I googled the title and the author with Internet Explorer, and it came up.



I can understand how one paper criticizes the improper application of the 2nd LoT by creationists, and how another article properly applies the 2nd LoT to evolution, is not absurd.



They also probably chew with their mouths open, beat their dogs, and recycle their bathwater. It doesn't make this particular argument unsound or invalid.



Here's just one example of where you were wrong.

You wrote-


Here is what the article actually said:


I didn't see where the article said the sun decreases entropy on earth. It said that by radiating energy, the suns entropy decreases.

@ Ed Zachary
This is where he says the entropy of the biosphere decreases:

What is absurd is that he calculates how much the entropy decreases using the Boltzmann constant. Consider a seed in the ground growing into a tree. Does the seed have a temperature? Does a Boeing 707 have a temperature? What might help you understand is my correspondence with other PhDs in physics: http://newevangelist.me/2012/02/23/american-association-of-physics-teachers/

I knew my grandparents and they were all Homo sapiens.
But I wouldn't be surprised at all if my Uncle Eddie had butt sex with a retarded mutant frog squirrel.

That would explain a lot.

Still waiting on this one.

Evolution

How would the intermediate steps give the mutants a competitive advantage?

What about other complex systems in the body where multiple organs interact and would not individually give a competitive advantage to a creature?

Do you argue for the love of arguing? You've been over this territory before haven't you? Can't you skip ahead to the main points you feel are compelling evidence of evolution?

Deliberately steering people away from the truth in order to "win" wastes peoples' time.

It always amuses me that Creationists/IDers, when shown clear evidence on biological Evolution, say: that's not Evolution, it's just adaption.

Well, Darwin's book was not called the “Theory Of Evolution”.
In fact Darwin seldom used the word “Evolution”.

He mentioned Evolution or some form of that word only 11 times in his book: “on the Origin of Species”.
I doubt “Evolution” even appears in the index.
And when he did use the word, it was usually in reference to what someone else had said.

Now “Adaption” is another story, Darwin used “Adaption” or some form of that word 41 times in his book.
And he used the word when demonstrating how species changed over time, sometimes to become a new species (origin of a new species).


What is Darwin's theory?
Simplified: Any 2 animals you wish to choose have a common ancestor.
That inspiration has only become more evident over the past 150 years.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tx6nZP41LY[/youtube]

Why that’s some crazy sh*t you got there Moonpie. It’s clear to everybody else what point Darwin was trying to make. Which is that new species result from evolution. He didn’t dedicate his book to some idea of how animals adapt but remain the same species. Look at the title of his work. It’s not “On How Species Adapt But Remain The Same”.

See below: On the Origin of Species is the foundation of evolutionary biology, not adaptation.

On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. For the sixth edition of 1872, the short title was changed to The Origin of Species. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

Mainstream biologists, not advocates of ID, always qualify the theory of natural selection with the word "adaptive."

"Facilitated variation is not like orthogenesis, a theory championed by the eccentric American paleontologist Henry Osborn (1857–1935), which imbues the organism with an internal preset course of evolution, a program of variations unfolding over time. Natural selection remains a major part of the explanation of how organisms have evolved characters so well adapted to the environment." (Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma, page 247)

No biology textbook or peer-reviewed article says, "Natural selection acting on innovation explains the complexity of life. Mammals are not so complex that 3 billion years is not enough time for natural selection to work."

The only theory that explains evolution is intelligent design. The trouble with this theory is that there is no evidence for it. Advocates of ID promote the scam that there are two theories: ID and natural selection. They do this to promote religious faith. Atheists go along with this scam because they think it makes religion look bad.

Design.

(muh, stuff it).

The new paradigm is evolutionary biology is that it is caused by natural selection acting on genetic engineering. Not enough is known now about genetic engineering to explain the complexity of life, however, with more research more will be learned about genetic engineering.

We know God exists because we have free will and because the universe is intelligible. The idea that the Big Bang and evolution is evidence that God exists is not reasonable. The Big Bang and evolution is evidence only that God inspired the human authors of the Bible.

Uh?

You may wanna dumb that down a little for us mere layman's to understand .. Although I'm sure it's possible

We know that an infinite being (God) exists because finite beings (humans) exist. Humans are embodied spirits because we have free will and the conscious knowledge of humans, not just the sense knowledge of animals. Humans are finite beings because other humans exist. Since a finite being needs a cause, an infinite being must exist.

What has to be decided is whether or not God has communicated Himself to mankind. A sign is a reason to believe in revelation. The Bible says God created the universe from nothing. The discovery of the Big Bang in the 1960s is a reason to believe that God inspired the human authors of the Bible. It is not a reason to believe God exists. We know from reason that God exists.