| [ freeeXpression ] in KIDS 글 쓴 이(By): typhoon (♥한윤수♥D) 날 짜 (Date): 1996년04월21일(일) 03시28분40초 KST 제 목(Title): Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermo Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics 라고 들고 나오는 창조론에 대한 반박 ( 이것은 Merrit FAQ로써 창조론자들이 그간 제기한 것에 대한 모든 답이 나와 있다 ) 불행히도 영어이다. Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Not true. The 2nd law of thermodynamics applies only to closed systems. The Earth is not a closed system. That if thermo could somehow forbid evolution, then it would also forbid babies from growing to be adults, and parents from having children. In fact, we are agents of entropy: we organize our bodies at the expense of the organization of our environment, which we digest and burn. Creationists often (ab)use the Second Law of Thermodynamics, apparently not realizing that it explicitly states, "...in a closed system...". By definition, a closed system cannot contain anything external to itself. A Creator who is entirely bounded by His own creation seems non-sensical, and I can't imagine that many creationists would accept such a limited God anyway. Thus, God and Thermodynamics are mutually exclusive; to invoke the Second Law is to claim that God left!!!!! A subsequent portion of the outline again invokes entropy, stating that "all species are degenerating, since disorder must increase". Ignoring the Theological arguments for the moment, we reiterate, "...in a CLOSED system...". Earth is hardly a closed system. To find a LARGE source of negative entropy, one need only look upward on a clear day. The sun delivers approximately 1 horse-power per square meter (sorry for the mixed units, I don't recall the conversion factor to joules/sec) of free energy to the biosphere. Likewise, meteors shower us with several tonnes per day of extra mass, some of it in pre-biotic form - i.e. complex carbon molecules such as formaldehyde and others. Larger objects such as comets and Icarus class asteroid strikes transfer huge amounts of mass, energy, and momentum to the earth. Orbital perturbations and decay, friction from the moon's gravity, and radioactive decay, all add to the total. Sorry, entropy as a disproof of cosmological and biological evolution simply won't wash. Spread the word. [It appears that, more recently, he creationists have been hammered enough with the inapplicability of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that they have modified it slightly -- the reference is now to a closed universe, not a closed Earth; the rest of the argument remains essentially unchanged.] Creationists say that systems cannot self-organize because that would violate the second law of thermodynamics, never mind that such systems are not at equilibrium and are open systems. -- -. .-. .-. .-. .-. .- | Yoonsoo Hahn (한 윤 수) ||X|||\ /|||X|||\ /|||X|| | Mol. Genet. Lab, Dept. of Biol. Sci., KAIST |/ \|||X|||/ \|||X|||/ \| | (EMAIL) yshan@sorak.kaist.ac.kr (T) 042-869-5261 ' `-' `-' `-' `-' ` | http://bioneer.kaist.ac.kr/~yshan (P) 015-427-6466 |