04 April 2010

Laws of Thermodynamics and Evolution of species

The discussion on an Amazon forum was on the second law of thermodynamics recently. A participant puts this up:
The second law of thermodynamics could well be stated as follows: "In any ordered system, open or closed, there exists a tendency for that system to decay to a state of disorder, which tendency can only be suspended or reversed by an external source of ordering energy directed by an informational program and transformed through an ingestion-storage-converter mechanism into the specific work required to build up the complex structure of that system. [it was later found by another participant to be a direct copy from Henry Morris, from the Institute for Creation Research]

Second law of thermodynamics is a law in Physics and the above quote has obviously been adopted for life systems. Physicists are not interested "ingestion-storage-converter" and would not include such references in stating a physical law. In this adoption, Morris injected two additions to the law and missed out an important part.

Amazingly, I found an easy to understand description of laws of thermodynamics in a website claiming evolution theory is against the law of physics. (science against evolution SAE):
The Zeroth Law simply says there is no heat flow between objects that are the same temperature.
The First Law is that heat cannot be created or destroyed.
Second law needs a bit more explanation:
Entropy: For a closed system, the quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.
second law: Entropy in a closed system can never decrease.
From SAE, it is stated as
A natural process that starts in one equilibrium state and ends in another will go in the direction that causes the entropy of the system plus environment to increase.
The Third Law says that an ideal engine would convert 100% of the heat into useful work only if its exhaust temperature were absolute zero.

Comparing Morris's version with that from SAE
  1. Morris missed the "closed system" part of the law
  2. Morris arbitrarily added the needs of "informational program" and "ingestion-storage-converter mechanism"
Hence, I can dismiss any reference of violation of laws of thermodynamics by evolution theory as claimed by Morris because he is just plain wrong in his interpretation of thermodynamics. BTW, here is a rebuttal of Morris's work based on the myths of Noah's ark.

Two links further SAE claims that evolution violated laws of physics:
So, what does this have to do with the origin of life? Well, according to the grand theory of evolution (molecules to man), the evolutionary process began with abiogenesis. Organic molecules spontaneously combined to form amino acids, which combined to form proteins, which spontaneously combined to form DNA, RNA, and cell membranes, etc. Somehow the first cell formed, which reproduced, and natural selection caused it to evolve into all the life forms we see today.
The theory of evolution is dead on arrival. Somehow simple molecules have to assemble themselves into more complex molecules (the “building blocks of life”), which assemble themselves into the first living thing, which reproduces itself, in order to get the evolutionary process started. Molecules will not assemble themselves this way because they have to obey the same laws of thermodynamics as the wooden Building Blocks of Life do.
Here, we have a case of good Physics with bad biology. Watch these short clips to have an idea of how abiogenesis may have started the life:



Spontaneous combination is not uncommon. Basically, all chemical process are combination, some spontaneous and some with help from catalysis.

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