. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

a. System becomes less and less organized over time

...

Self-organization vs. entropy
The idea of self-organization challenges an earlier paradigm of ever-decreasing order which was based on a philosophical generalization from the second law of thermodynamics in statistical thermodynamics where entropy is envisioned as a measure of the statistical "disorder" at a microstate level. However, at the microscopic or local level, the two need not be in contradiction: it is possible for a system to reduce its entropy by transferring it to its environment.

In open systems, it is the flow of matter and energy through the system that allows the system to self-organize, and to exchange entropy with the environment. This is the basis of the theory of dissipative structures. Ilya Prigogine noted that self-organization can only occur far away from thermodynamic equilibrium.

It would appear that, since isolated systems cannot decrease their entropy, only open systems can exhibit self-organization. However, such a system can gain macroscopic order while increasing its overall entropy. Specifically, a few of the system's macroscopic degrees of freedom can become more ordered at the expense of microscopic disorder.

In many cases of biological self-assembly, for instance metabolism, the increasing organization of large molecules is more than compensated for by the increasing entropy of small molecules, especially water. At the level of a whole organism and over longer time scales, though, biological systems are open systems feeding from the environment and dumping waste into it.

Someone recently asked me about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, stating that they thought it was irrelevant to creation/evolution because the earth is not an isolated system since the sun is constantly pumping in more energy.

‘This does seem to be a valid point—do creationists still use this argument? Am I missing something here?’

The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction. Just standing out in the sun won’t make you more complex—the human body lacks the mechanisms to harness raw solar energy. If you stood in the sun too long, you would get skin cancer, because the sun’s undirected energy will cause mutations. (Mutations are copying errors in the genes that nearly always lose information). Similarly, undirected energy flow through an alleged primordial soup will break down the complex molecules of life faster than they are formed.

It’s like trying to run a car by pouring petrol on it and setting it alight. No, a car will run only if the energy in petrol is harnessed via the pistons, crankshaft, etc. A bull in a china shop is also raw energy. But if the bull were harnessed to a generator, and the electricity directed a pottery-producing machine, then its energy could be used to make things.

To make proteins, a cell uses the information coded in the DNA and a very complex decoding machine. In the lab, chemists must use sophisticated machinery to make the building blocks combine in the right way. Raw energy would result in wrong combinations and even destruction of the building blocks.

I suggest that thermodynamic arguments are excellent when done properly, and the ‘open systems’ canard is anticipated. Otherwise I suggest concentrating on information content. The information in even the simplest organism would take about a thousand pages to write out. Human beings have 500 times as much information as this. It is a flight of fantasy to think that undirected processes could generate this huge amount of information, just as it would be to think that a cat walking on a keyboard could write a book.

Many short-age creationists claim this somehow prevents the whole concept of evolution. For example, in the John317's Questions thread...




The 2nd Law actually says

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

The entropy of an isolated system not at equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value

No-one claims the earth is an isolated system

No-one claims that the solar system is an isolated system, although it is in some sense much more isolated from outside influence than the earth

Hence the Second Law does NOT apply

Whenever I see a short-age creationist applying this law, I know that they do not meet my standards for credibility in this area

This, in fact, was THE ISSUE that made me realize at age 19 at a NZ creation-science seminar circa 1976 that the creation science organisation behind the seminar was not a credible source of information. It was the beginning of my disillusionment with the entire creation science movement.

/Bevin

What we call life is a brief game played with energy-- a temporary holding action in the course of its natural journey down to the lowest form.

It is true that the overall entropy of the universe continues to increase... but that does not in any way prohibit small local decreases in entropy, as long as the sum over the entire universe keeps increasing. Our sun *will* run down and run out of energy... in about 10 billion years.