Comment on Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment? by Sean Pitman M.D..
BobRyan: Isaac Asimov –
Another way of stating the second law then is, ‘The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!’ Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty.How difficult to ]maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate.[/b] In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself – and that is what the second law is all about.â€
Yes, this is a common confusion, even among very educated people like Asimov. The problem here is that thermodynamic entropy (TDE) is not simply a concept of “order” or “disorder”. You can have a very ordered system, like a crystal for example, that doesn’t have very much if any thermodynamic energy potential (i.e., it is at maximum or near maximum TDE). Your room may be very “ordered” and “neat”, but that doesn’t mean that it has any more or less TDE.
TDE is a measure of a closed system’s ability to do useful work. That’s it. How much useful work can be extracted out of a particular system’s thermodynamic potential if the right structure happened to be inserted into it to take advantage of its thermodynamic potential? That is the only question relevant to TDE – not certain of our concepts of “order” or “disorder” despite the popular description of a thermodynamic system as “going from a state of order to disorder”.
This description has its use, but it is not quite accurate in certain contexts… like the context you are using…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman M.D. Also Commented
Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment?
David Kendall, BMus, MA says:
Hi Shane,
I am not sure you can make a strong connection between the statement in the excerpt and common ancestry. DNA research does point to varying degrees of relatedness among species. This does not have to conflict with a recent six day creation, though some may make the argument that it must.
What it argues for, and what Grismer clearly believes, is the idea that all life is related through process of common descent by innumerable tiny modifications from a common ancestor life form – a process that required hundreds of millions of years of time.
This notion strikes directly at the concept of the relatedness of all life because of its source in a common Designer of all the basic “kinds” of life on this planet, produced during a literal 6-day creation week in recent history.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment?
Ron Nielsn: @Sean Pitman M.D.: Sean, I am not a geologist, and I haven’t read much about this, but your argument doesn’t make logical sense. Where does the sediment that is “washed off†go, except down slope, and as long as the uplift is equal or greater than the erosion rate, there is always going to be sediment at the top
Your argument assumes that all rock is sedimentary rock – it isn’t. Only a thin layer of sedimentary rock covers the underlying granitic or metamorphic rock. So, the obvious question is, how has the very thin layer of sedimentary rock avoided being completely washed off of the underlying non-sedimentary rock if it has in fact been exposed, as an erosional surface, for tens of millions of years?
You do see how the argument for continued mountain uplift does not solve this problem? – right?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment?
BobRyan: Thus evolutionists who quickly admit that molecule-to-human-mind evolutionism (storytelling) requires “a massive DECREASE in entropy†as the net result over billions of years (at the local isolated system level of course )– are leaving themselves with no place to go.
Not true. A local decrease in thermodynamic entropy is possible using the Sun’s energy to produce the local effect (at the expense of an increase in the Earth-Sun thermodynamic entropy of course).
Recall that in the case of the dropping ball, and the iron rusting and the water evaporating — the definion for “universe†that was needed to observe those examples demonstrating entropy was simply “an isolated and localized system and it’s immediate surroundings†EVEN if that system is standing out in broad daylight (or in complete darkness). No need to “reach for the sun†before you can see the increase in entropy as iron oxidizes. Speaking of “oxidation demonstrating entropy†– our biology courses admit to that oxidation process as well.
You forget that the reverse of all these processes you use as examples of increases in local entropy can be reversed as well, by using energy derived from the Sun. The ball can be driven uphill, as can the water in the rivers that run downhill. Therefore, local reductions in entropy can be achieved by using the increase in entropy of the Earth-Sun system…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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