Thermodynamics

Good answer. And i agree with you. I do not think it is impossible, but as a gambling man i think its highly improbable. Im sure that what you guys have described has happened and can happen, but the chances of everything working together to create new organisms...and for it to continue happening...well i dont beleive it is impossible but i dont like those odds.

I don't get it. How is that not a temporary violation? You seem to confusing the second law with some notion of eventual degradation, that is temporarily violated during growth. That's a temporary violation of your tendency to degradation.The real laws of thermodynamics do not allow for temporary violations. (Quibble; in very small systems and very very short times spans this might not be quite true; but for macroscopic structures and time spans of a minute or more, the laws of thermodynamics are inviolate.)Thermodynamics also admits no exception for designers or intelligence. Designed artefacts are every bit as subject to the physical laws as anything else. Indeed, the laws of thermodynamics were discovered by considering hard physical limits that no designer of engines could overcome.What the second law thermodynamics prohibits is decrease in entropy in systems not tapping into external energy sources.Increase in complexity of systems sustained by a strong energy flux is no problem whatsoever for thermodynamics.

I like the way you describe it. When i get home from work tonight i will have to discuss it with you

He and I and, I bet, everyone in this thread knows that. Either you are misremembering/misinterpreting, or your teacher was not quite correct. I bet on the former (having observed how you have misinterpreted so many things -- that's just an observation, not intended as an insult).It is incorrect (although, sadly, it is still sometimes done) for an "evolutionist" to claim that the second law applies only to closed systems, and the Earth is not a closed system, and therefore the second law doesn't apply. That's flat-out wrong, and that's probably what your teacher referred to.But Percy didn't write that. He wrote a correct definition involving a closed system. This definition, combined with other definitions and results, can be generalized to apply to open systems such as the Earth. Exactly how this is done requires some moderately advanced math and quite a bit of time spent learning stuff. We're not going to be able to get deeply into that in this thread.The things to take home from Percy's messae are:

• Order and disorder of macroscopic systems is not entropy.
• Entropy is not something that organisms accumulate during their lives.
• Anything that contains a bunch of atoms obeys the second law, at all times.
• Nothing accepted as mainstream science, not evolution or abiogenesis or anything, is known to have violated the second law ... and people have looked for such violations.
• Creationists are lousy sources of information about thermodynamics, and non-technical sources may be lousy sources of information about thermodynamics.

Nobody knows those odds. Nobody. We just don't have the information required to calculate or even estimate the odds.Research has shown that people are downright terrible at estimating the odds of everyday occurrences. There's no way that anyone can come up with any kind of valid estimate of the probability of somethng so far out of our everyday experience as abiogenesis.So, don't say you don't like the odds. Say you don't like the idea, if you want; but you have no claim to know any odds to like or not like. Nobody has such a claim.We do know that many critical steps are possible. We do not know of any critical step that is impossible. We know that life is here. We have no evidence of anything supernatural being required, outside of the holy writings of a few religions.

That the universe is becoming increasingly disordered is a laymen's level paraphrase of 2LOT. It is not talking about disorder on the level of everyday objects. Mixing up the letters of scrabble pieces that used to spell a word is a good analogy for increasing disorder, but it doesn't actually have anything to do with thermodynamics.You know, you don't have to take my and JonF's word for the definition of 2LOT. You *could* actually look it up yourself. Go to No webpage found at provided URL: this article on thermodynamics at Wikipedia. Or go to GuruNet and read their article on thermodynamics. Or go to Britannica Online and read their very brief article. Or go to any of many other places on the web that accurately describe thermodynamics.What you'll find is that not one of them describes 2LOT as the tendency of the universe toward disorder. That incorrect conclusion comes purely from using a misleading definition of entropy, just as I described earlier. I never said it was, and in fact if you read back in this thread you'll see where I say precisely that while describing the earth/sun system as open. I chose my words very carefully when I presented the definition of 2LOT to you - I said there's more than one way to state 2LOT, and that I was offering one of the simplest ones to understand.2LOT doesn't change depending upon whether you're talking about open or closed systems. But it's easier to walk before you run, and it's easier to understand the principles of thermodynamics by concentrating on a closed system first. There's nothing misleading about closed systems. As you can see if you follow the links I provided, reliable sources find it very convenient to express the principles of thermodynamics in terms of closed systems. They can also be expressed in terms of open systems, but that adds the additional task of keeping track of all matter and energy that crosses system boundaries.You're awfully resistent to information for someone who claims to be keeping an open mind. No one here is trying to pull a fast one on you. The correct information has been provided for you several times now, so if you don't believe we're giving you the straight story on thermodynamics then please, please help move the discussion forward by finding your own sources.--Percy

You misunderstand. We have written many explanations and given many references -- there is no law that states that everything in the universe moves from order to disorder. That's not what the second law says or is about. If that is indeed what it says, then it is oversimplifying so far that we might as well just say that it's wrong. If that is indeed what they taught (and I hope that they did not), then they were oversimplifying so far that we might as well just say that they were wrong.

The thing about these odds, though, is that you only have to win once, and you get to try hundreds of times every second.At that rate, almost any odds becomes a certainty.

I wish you'd address Percy's posts and not mine. I'm just quibbling with your word choice and trying to how you how your argument doesn't follow from the first principles you've chosen.Percy's actually trying to show you what first principles are at work in the universe. You might have a good time talking to me, but if you talk more with Percy you'll actually learn something. I would think that would be your priority.

Evolution of species is not in conflict with the second law. The second law applies to a closed system, such as, e.g. the universe as a whole. It is in a predermined decay and has been so ever since the silent Big Bang. Life on Earth is not a closed system - we constantly receive very low entropy energy input from the sun which allows local entropy reduction whereas the system as a whole grows its entropy.

---

Mihkel

Read Message 26 by JonF.

I have looked at message 26. It does not contradict my original message in any way. I state clearly that a local reduction in entropy occurs at the cost of a total increase of entropy in the system.

---

Mihkel

Evolution isn't a reduction in entropy, though.

Yes, but what does this have to do with evolution?

"The second law applies to a closed system" while true, is misleading in that it implies that the second law does not apply to open systems.