Science, Creation & EvolutionEvolutionAineo, From the TalkOrigins FAQ: <B>"Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics."</B> This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder. However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order.
And your faith still does not explain where God came from. Is God less complex than the universe? I've read some hypothesizing on where matter might have come from. It makes my head hurt. Still, I'm glad people are still thinking about it and pursuing it, just as science as always pursued explanations for the seemingly inexplicable, rather than just throwing up their hands and calling it a miracle. This sort of research doesn't conflict with theism, either. You can believe "God did it" and still want to know how. Personally, I think the Big Bang is a far more elegant method than if God simply caused the Earth to materialize, as-is, and then built the universe around it in similar fashion. What the... how does a calendar "end"? And one question to any and all proponents of creationism, and Biblical literalism in general... How did we get from Adam & Eve -- two humans, with one genome between them, unless God mutated the DNA in that rib -- to the current population and genetic diversity of the human species? |
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