Any religious people watch the Wonders of Life last night?

Jason2 said:
That's because you believe the universe came from nothing, by nothing. I believe in God, and he alone created all things!
Click to expand...

I don't know where the Universe came from, nor do I know how life started, I only know (to the extent anyone can know anything) what happened after the big bang and then after the first bacteria emerged. The difference between a scientist and a creationist is only the latter thinks "we can't explain something [yet]" coming from the former means they've won the argument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

No answer is better than claiming to be gnostic about a highly unlikely one.
 
Last edited:
Jason2 said:
According to evolutionists, living organisms rearrange themselves to become more complex. The second law of thermodynamics says this is impossible. The second law of thermodynamics is proven to be correct.
Click to expand...

d_brennen said:
Who states this? Evolution favours the best solution, not the most complex. Sometimes the best solution is elaborate (think chameleon), sometimes it's almost stupidly simple (jellyfish)

So we gather that you do not understand both evolution and the second law of thermodynamics
Click to expand...

Still waiting for an answer
 
Jason2 said:
So you believe the suns energy is the major difference in making evolution possible?
Click to expand...

Don't forget the Earth also has internal energy. Proton gradients are a source of chemical energy that themselves derive their energy from elsewhere. This has more to do with the origin of life rather than evolution.
 
Jason2 said:
That's because you believe the universe came from nothing, by nothing. I believe in God, and he alone created all things!
Click to expand...

It's got nothing to do with my belief how the universe came about, for the sake of this point lets ignore the rest of our views on the universe apart from the second law of themodynamics.
You have stated it as
"The second law says that disorder, or entropy, always increases or stays the same over time."

The actual law in terms of entropy is:
"Entropy increases over time in a closed system"

Can you see the difference?

Jason2 said:
Now RDM says the suns energy makes the difference. But does it really? If the suns energy is what makes evolution possible, then why are all living things still subject to death? Why don't things come back to life? When something dies the sun simply speeds the process of disorganization up.!
Click to expand...
Yes it does, it makes life on earth no longer a closed system, evergy is being taken in from an outside source. Things are still subject to death (outside of being killed) because the mechanisms involved wear out (in most cases), an analogy being that of a car you can keep putting energy (fuel) in but it can still wear out.
What is more interesting still is there are organisms out there that don't appear to die of old age (such as lobsters and some species of jelly fish) and as far we know can live on until injury or disease kills them.
 
Jason2 said:
So you believe the suns energy is the major difference in making evolution possible?
Click to expand...
Jason2 said:
Is not the great array of life a sign of complexity? Evolution gets more complex as it goes on. That's how it works, does it not?
Click to expand...

Both covered here....

Misapplication by anti-evolutionists

The false analogy of entropy as disorder is used in a number of fields outside of science with varying success. Creationists have picked up on disorder terminology and attempted to apply the second law of thermodynamics as a refutation of evolution. The analogy would state that more complex life-forms could never evolve from simpler ones.

It seems obvious that this false analogy of a false analogy is incorrect. First, evolution does not imply that life is becoming increasingly complex; it only says that natural selection allows genes to be passed on and different characteristics hence preserved.

It also is a corruption to believe life is always "more ordered" than inanimate objects. In fact, life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics in strict energetic sense. The energy of the sun is converted into chemical potential energy, which is converted to mechanical work or heat (the Earth is not an isolated system.) In each case, the energy transfer is inefficient, and some energy is dissipated as heat to the environment, leading to a dispersion of energy. (In the same way, "ordered" ********** can form when the weather becomes cold but the entropy of the universe still increases.)

A quote in reference to chemistry education illustrates this point:
One aspect of biological systems that intrigues students is the possibility of discovering violations of the well-known laws of thermodynamics and physical chemistry. It is easy to refute most of the examples suggested. A germinating seed or an embryo developing in a fertilized chicken egg are often naively cited as examples of isolated systems in which an increase in order, or decrease in entropy occurs spontaneously. It is evident, however, that respiration, assuming O2 is present, produces an increase in entropy in the form of heat, which more than compensates for the decrease in entropy that arises when the elements present in the seed or in the yolk of the egg are organized into tissues of the plant or animal. Indeed, neither germination nor embryonic development will occur in the absence of oxygen in the system in question.[3]

In reference to evolution, PZ Myers put it: "The second law of thermodynamics argument is one of the hoariest, silliest claims in the creationist collection. It's self-refuting. Point to the creationist: ask whether he was a baby once. Has he grown? Has he become larger and more complex? Isn't he standing there in violation of the second law himself? Demand that he immediately regress to a slimy puddle of mingled menses and semen."

Furthermore, Carl Sagan points out that if the second law of thermodynamics were applied to a god, then god would necessarily have to die.[4]

(Also, ask them what the zeroth, first, and third laws of thermodynamics are. See if they know.)

Let us suppose that there actually were some process in nature which violated the second law of thermodynamics. Is that any reason to suppose that intelligent designers are responsible? The only intelligent designers that we have familiarity with, humans and other more-or-less intelligent animals, are as much subject to the second law of thermodynamics as are non-intelligent agents. Indeed, the laws of thermodynamics were discovered as limitations on what the clever engineers of the 19th century were able to design. Intelligent designers are not able to construct perpetual motion machines. Intelligent designers don't bypass the second law of thermodynamics.

(See also, The Simpsons: "Lisa! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!")
Some young Earth creationists have invoked "hydrodynamic sorting" in Noah's flood to account for the organization of the fossil record. Thereby they implicitly acknowledge that an undirected mechanical process is capable of producing order from disorder, and contradict their naive version of the second law of thermodynamics.
Click to expand...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

Love how you try to use the Second Law Of Thermodynamic to try and disprove God not realising that it can actually used to disprove the current existence of a God.
 
Last edited:
Jason2 said:
Is not the great array of life a sign of complexity? Evolution gets more complex as it goes on. That's how it works, does it not?
Click to expand...

It may do, depends if complexity allows that organism better chances to reproduce but that may not always be the case. But then again how do you measure the complexity of some thing. There are plants out there with far more chromosomes than we have yet have less types of tissue in them.
 
So Jason2 are you bigger and more complex now than you were when you were a baby? Doesn't that mean you've broken the second law of thermodynamics under your logic?
 
Urgannagru said:
It's got nothing to do with my belief how the universe came about, for the sake of this point lets ignore the rest of our views on the universe apart from the second law of themodynamics.
You have stated it as
"The second law says that disorder, or entropy, always increases or stays the same over time."

The actual law in terms of entropy is:
"Entropy increases over time in a closed system"

Can you see the difference?


Yes it does, it makes life on earth no longer a closed system, evergy is being taken in from an outside source. Things are still subject to death (outside of being killed) because the mechanisms involved wear out (in most cases), an analogy being that of a car you can keep putting energy (fuel) in but it can still wear out.
What is more interesting still is there are organisms out there that don't appear to die of old age (such as lobsters and some species of jelly fish) and as far we know can live on until injury or disease kills them.
Click to expand...

I guess you're referring to the Turritopsis nutricula. This is met with much skepticism. Whilst it has been shown in labs to be able to revert back to the polyp stage, there's no real proof whether the actual organism is immortal.
 
Urgannagru said:
It may do, depends if complexity allows that organism better chances to reproduce but that may not always be the case. But then again how do you measure the complexity of some thing. There are plants out there with far more chromosomes than we have yet have less types of tissue in them.
Click to expand...

One of the cool things about plants, is that as you say - some of them have gigantic amounts of chromosomes, the Fern for example has much more DNA than we do.

James Watson explains that the reason for this, is that plants such as Ferns are chemical warriors, they have to sit and take everything that's thrown at them for millions of years, they can't run away from things that try to eat them, parasites etc - they have to sit and take it, as a result the amount of defenses and mechanisms they have incurred over time results in a huge amount of DNA.
 
Atheists, why is the universe dying? Why is it not repairing itself? Afterall, you claim it wound itself up, so surely it can repair itself too?
 
Jason2 said:
So if the suns energy is the major difference, then why do things not come back to life?
Click to expand...

First I'd like to know if you have now understood that you incorrectly stated and understood the second law of thermodynamics?

Also I explained why the sun won't bring things back from the dead (hehe can't believe I've just had to say that, but again at least this is making me understand the physics). The energy from the sun allows the biological mechanisms to carry out chemical reactions that would otherwise seem to be decreasing entropy (I think how this works may beyond me to explain simply, but basically one type of energy energy is being turned into more types chemical, kinetic and such and so it is more "chaotic"; pretty crude way of putting it but along the right lines, I think)
How ever these biogical mechanisms wear down over time (the telomeres that protect the chromosomes to be more acurrate), once these are destroyed the cells die. Because the mechanisms are damaged they can't use the energy so the organism remains dead. This is similar to the analogy I used of the car wearing out earlier, you can put more energy it but if the mechanisms are broken it won't make a differnce.

This is a huge over simplification, but how and why we biologically age and die is still a problem science is working on.
 
Jason2 said:
Atheists, why is the universe dying? Why is it not repairing itself? Afterall, you claim it wound itself up, so surely it can repair itself too?
Click to expand...

Theists why is the universe dying? Why is god not repairing it? Afterall, you claim we have an all powerful all loving deity why does he not repair his universe too?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom