sk8bloke22

ok theres on a gaming forum theres a relgion/god debate going on:

<a href="http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=995&pagenumber=1" target="_blank">http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=995&pagenumber=1</a>

(i would dive straight to the last page, as most of this stuff is pretty lame)

its huge, but only know has someone else been using scientific theory. and hes like beating the crap out of me.........

im not really an expert on this stuff, so i started the topic with a link to an evoltutionary site.
basically i quoted off the site which i linked (evoaethism) about how thermodynamics did not violate the laws of evolution.
i might as well post, but im sure u guys hav seen this in some form plenty of times.....:

"The second law of thermodynamics basically says that the entropy in a closed system tends to increase or stay the same. That may sound complex to those who aren't familiar with physics, but it really is very simple. Entropy is just the amount of disorder in a system, and a system is basically anything you can think of. An atom is a system. Earth is a system. Our galaxy is a system. When I say disorder, I really mean disorder. At first glance, most people think that entropy is an actual chemical thing that has substance to it, and make it out to be a whole lot more complicated than it really is. Entropy really is disorder, in the very same sense that is commonly used by the general public. A room that has clothing cluttered about the floor, books piling out of the closet, and dirty dishes scattered everywhere has high entropy, while a room that has everything neatly filed away has low entropy. The second law tells us that the amount of entropy in a closed system tends to increase or stay the same. For example, a dirty house left on its own will not become clean. Dust can collect on surfaces, mold can settle in, and so on. The best you can hope for is for things to stay the same.

You may think that you can decrease the entropy of a system yourself by cleaning that messy room or using a vaccum cleaner. This brings us to what I mean by closed systems. There are two kinds of systems: closed and open. An open system is defined as a system that has an outside source of energy. Earth, for example, is open because it has the sun. Your room, for example, is an open system because it has an outside energy source: you. With an outside energy source, entropy in a contained area can actually decrease. It can only decrease, however, at the expense of other parts of the universe. The second law really only applies to the universe as a whole. You room, for example, is messy again. You decide to clean it. You pick up the clothes, fold them and put them away. While your room may have decreased in entropy, the rest of the universe has not. The energy that you used to pick up your room was expelled from your body as heat. More heat means more entropy. The amount of entropy generated by the heat from you far outweighs any entropy you may have "taken away" from you. This is why the second law of thermodynamics speaks specifically about closed systems. Closed systems have no energy source. The only truly closed system in existence is the entire universe itself, because that is all there is. It has no outside energy source because there isn't anything outside of it to begin with. That tiny little section of the cosmos that is your room may have decreased in entropy, but for reasons already discussed, the rest of the universe suffers from an increase. The second law prevails: the closed system increases in entropy.

What does this have to do with evolution?

Evolution, as we all know, involves the very gradual change of organisms over long periods of geologic time. Very often, those changes are from simple to complex. Certainly, a human is more ordered (has less entropy) than a single celled bacteria. That would mean that evolution from basic cells to modern animals would decrease the entropy of the universe, and violate the second law, correct? No. Actually, its quite the opposite. The more complex a system is, the more entropy it has. Imagine a box. It doesn't matter what kind of box. Just imagine a box. Imagine that there is a single hydrogen atom bouncing around inside of that box. It seems neat and tidy, right? Most people imagine this as a box with a little red or blue ball bouncing around inside of it. Now imagine a box with a hundred of those balls bouncing around inside of it. Imagine red blue and green balls. Imagine different sized balls. Imagine ten thousand different balls bouncing around inside at incredible speeds. The system is more complex now because of all of the features we've added, and it's become much more disordered, hasn't it?

A good way to think of the amount of entropy in a system is how many states are there that the system could be in that have the overall same appearance. Think about the box again. Imagine it with one atom bouncing around again. Compare two states that the system of the box could be in: one where the ball is all the way on the left side of the box, and another where the ball is all the way on the right side of the box. You can easily distinguish the two, right? You can do the same with the atom being at the top of the box, at the bottom, etc., and none of them really look the same, do they? Let's go back to our box with the thousands of balls. Picture the different states that the box might be in. Because all of these balls are all over the place and the box is jam packed, all of these states have the same overall appearance. For this reason, water has extremely high amounts of entropy. Imagine a glass of clear water with nothing else in it. Just water. Imagine stirring the water now. After the water slows down, what does it look like? It doesn't look any different at all, does it? Even though the water molecules inside that glass are in completely different positions due to your stirring, it still has the same overall appearance. Organisms are the same way.

Imagine a very simple cell with nothing but a nucleus. Imagine the different states it might be in (I would probably picture the nucleus in different places). Imagine the nucleus on the left side of the cell. Now imagine it on the right. You can tell the difference, right? These two states don't have the same overall appearance. Now imagine trillions of cells all mangled around. Imagine all the different positions these cells might have. They all have the same overall appearance, don't they? That's because more complex systems have higher entropy. This is well known in science. The mistake that creationists make when they believe that evolution violates the second law is that they think that simple to complex means disordered to ordered. As I've shown, this is not nearly the case. More ordered most certainly does not mean more complex.

After hearing this explanation, some creationists probe further by saying that the assembly of non living material into life violates the second law. Again, this is not true, but for a different reason than discussed above. The random scattering of nucleotides, DNA, RNA and so on all mangled around forming into a neat little cell does go from disordered to ordered. What creationists do not take into account here is that the earth is not a closed system. These things can happen because the earth has the sun as an energy source. The sun and lightning heating the ocean would provoke chemical reactions among all of those organic compounds that would tend not to happen without them, just like the second law says. Imagine, for example, a park. Through the middle of the park is a stone wall. Scattered in a disordered fashion across the ground on the west side of the wall are many, many leaves. Imagine that wind blows these leaves east. All of the leaves collect on the walls. These collections of leaves are more ordered than the state that the leaves were in before the wind blew. Again, this can happen because earth is an open system. The wind is a result of differences in air pressure, which is a result of the unequal heating of the earth by the sun. Had the earth been a closed system, there would be no sun, therefore no wind, and the leaves would have just sat there. It's the same way with organisms.

Now, even if simple to complex did mean disordered to ordered, the usage of food energy, as said before, far outweighs any decrease in entropy made by bodily functions. For you to clean your room, you use that food energy. For organelles inside cells to get rid of waste unwanted substances, energy is used. That energy is either derived from plants, which get their energy from the sun by photosynthesis, or by photosynthesis carried out by the cell itself (or, in rare cases chemosynthesis), and is expelled as heat, increasing the universe's entropy. True: the cell may be cleaner and more ordered, but outside the cell there is more heat and therefore more entropy. The cell is an open system, just like the earth. "

but this was his reply:

Quote from:

"Most people imagine this as a box with a little red or blue ball bouncing around inside of it. Now imagine a box with a hundred of those balls bouncing around inside of it. Imagine red blue and green balls. Imagine different sized balls. Imagine ten thousand different balls bouncing around inside at incredible speeds. The system is more complex now because of all of the features we've added, and it's become much more disordered, hasn't it? "


Ahhh, but u r forgetting a very important thing, the human body is not simply a bigger box with more molecules, molecules in the human body r organized into new boxes and into certain places, a heart is not present once in ur leg, then in ur head, its always tilted a bit to ur left side of ur thorax, dna and rna are not flying in the human body, it is arranged in the building units of the body the cell, so to refine this model u must say that as we put more molecules, we also create more boxes organizing these molecules thus order MUST mean a lower level of entropy. U r actualy putting them INTO ceratin posititions and leaving them free there to be.

"The random scattering of nucleotides, DNA, RNA and so on all mangled around forming into a neat little cell does go from disordered to ordered. What creationists do not take into account here is that the earth is not a closed system. These things can happen because the earth has the sun as an energy source. The sun and lightning heating the ocean would provoke chemical reactions among all of those organic compounds that would tend not to happen without them, just like the second law says."


Are u saying that DNA , RNA , nucleotides have actually been created from the sun energy, lightning, fire etc. Firstly i have two objections, the most complex scientests right now can do in synthesizing organic compounds right now is much much simpler than the simplest polypeptide, that is with all the technology, created atmosphere perfect conditions, and with the addition of something u have removed from the principle of evolution, a THINKING MIND.
Always remember one thing, when a person die, he ceases to live, we burry him, this causes him to degenerate into the soil, EVEN WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF BACTERIA. Now, if this is the spontanous reaction that is favored by the universe, for us to degenerate, for the dna and rna and protiens to reurn to simple molecules, this means this IS what causes a higher degree of disorder, this means the opposite was a lower degree of disorder and it occurs so quikly that life . They are only returned to life by ANOTHER LIFE FORM, not by itself. I would love to see more objective replies as the one u have sent. So i hope u reply in the same way u have just did.

-----quote end ---------

now i hav resorted to cheating, so can anyone help...cheers. call it educational cheating.

Orpheous99

Originally posted by sk8bloke22:

The Earth is not a closed system. Plus, Evolution doesn't neccessarily work towards complexity, or intelligence either. It's what allows an organism to survive long enough in said environment to pass its genes onto the next generation.

sk8bloke22

is that all i need to counter the other guys arguement?

Kevin Dorner

Here's a bit more detail:

The Earth is not a "closed system" because it receives energy from the Sun. "Closed system" indicates that it isn't receiving any energy from outside. The sun is so vast (around three hundred thousand times the mass of the Earth) that any increase in order on the sun-powered Earth through living things growing or evolving is far outweighed by the corresponding increase in disorder in the Sun, so no laws of thermodynamics are being violated in the sun-earth system.

Entropy locally decreases (disorder turns into order) in open systems when snowflakes and crystals form, when living things grow from smaller ones. If all decreases in entropy were forbidden, none of these could occur and life itself would be impossible.

sk8bloke22

ok thats fine. but wat about our own body parts being so neatly organised. if we are an open system, shouldnt the state of our insides get worse....or am i missing something here.

wdog

another poster here, hezekia... something can give you a list of references regarding the second law in bio. he also has a topic containing an excellent paper he has written, just look at this topic page at the "2nd commandment of thermodynamics". I can give you a physicists perspective.

I need to clear up something I have seen as a common misunderstanding. There are 3, not 2, common types of systems that classical thermodynamics considers: open, closed, and isolated. In an open system matter and energy (heat conduction or radiation) can cross the boundary into the system (just take a system to be anything with a real or imagined boundary to it, in our case the biosphere of the earth), in a closed system energy may flow into or out of the system but not matter, and in an isolated system nothing gets in or out. Now this is very important... it is only in the last case, isolated, that the common form of the second law applies. That is the entropy, S, must always increase or remain constant for the isolated system. When we move to open or closed systems there are other quantities, or what we call thermodynamic potentials, to consider along with entropy. The second law for a closed or open system is simply an equation with entropy in only one of its terms, and entropy may increase or decrease.

Now clearly the biosphere is an open system, the suns energy may enter, matter from space enters, and energy and matter can and does exit. The isolated system form of the second law just does NOT apply, the entropy of the biosphere can and does decrease locally because it is offset by entropy increases elsewhere, the sun for instance. It is really that simple. I know that was a simple repeat for most of you, but just wanted to elaborate a little.

Your statistical analogies are ok, but may serve to confuse this issue. The entropy in the statistical form just goes as the natural logarithm of the total number of microstates available to the system, but again there are other thermodynamic potentials, or quantities, to consider other than entropy for closed and open systems and the macroscopic form of the second law still apply, no matter how complicated the system, the human body is still just a system. So there is nothing to be gained by claiming the body is complex.

"Firstly i have two objections, the most complex scientests right now can do in synthesizing organic compounds right now is much much simpler than the simplest polypeptide, that is with all the technology, created atmosphere perfect conditions, and with the addition of something u have removed from the principle of evolution, a THINKING MIND."

the only things scientists can do is try and set up the conditions for the reaction, the reaction takes place by itself, with no guiding hand. You might complain that one has set up the wrong initial conditions, but research simply tries to duplicate the conditions thought necessary for life such as early earth atmosphere with lightning. others in this forum can tell you more on what this researach does.

"Always remember one thing, when a person die, he ceases to live, we burry him, this causes him to degenerate into the soil, EVEN WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF BACTERIA. Now, if this is the spontanous reaction that is favored by the universe, for us to degenerate, for the dna and rna and protiens to reurn to simple molecules, this means this IS what causes a higher degree of disorder, this means the opposite was a lower degree of disorder and it occurs so quikly that life . They are only returned to life by ANOTHER LIFE FORM, not by itself. I would love to see more objective replies as the one u have sent. So i hope u reply in the same way u have"

that makes little sense at all, we rot when we die, ok we all believe that. Somehow this person thinks that because people don't spontaneously regenerate, but that we are born thru mating and birth in the usual biological way, it proves something. And yes that is the spontaneous thing that happens when we die, but the spontaneous thing that happens when a sperm meets an egg is to grow a human, what the hell is is point? and his sentance structure looks like is drunk, very hard to follow.

hope that helps

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Optics Guy ]</p>

sk8bloke22

wats an example of an isolated system then.....if nothing goes in or out, u talking aobut the measurement of entropy as well. so that would mean everything stays the same.....i.e the parts and organs in a human body (the one thing that is still really puzzling me, altohugh u guys may hav already answered it - im new to this shit, i understand the most of wats going on, hehe).

cheers for helping, the bloke still hasnt replied yet.

wdog

you could try and make an isolated system by simply making a 'box' that is impermeable to matter and radiation, and also insulate the box so the thermal conduction may not occur. wow.. real time posting..

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: Optics Guy ]</p>

wdog

also, to answer the second post, the human body is an open system. so quite simply there is nothing in thermodynamics that prevents it from decreasing it's entropy, or order if you will. also the other guy seems to be simply trying to say that since the human body is so complex, that has special thermodynamic impliations, it does not, it just means the body is complex. the space shuttle is governed by the same physical reality as a lawn mower. complexity only implies a higher degree of information content, that is all.

wdog

please send back if my posts made no sense, I am trying to learn how to communicate effectively. also actual measurement of entropy is another matter, we have no 'entropy meter' and must deduce it from mathematical calculation of other quantities such as temperature, pressure, volume, ect. In many cases though it is only the change in entropy that matters and not its absolute value. also please note that i edited my first post to more directly answer the question.