Creationism is false

Hmmm... Making fun of other people's intellects always make us sound so... intellectual.

By all means Diest.

I didn't say that you were wrong to say the things you did. I do not presume to know anything about that, and from what you say it sounds as if it's a part of something bigger you guys got going on. So feel free to have at eachother.
Just don't expect that it will make for very intellectual discussion. That's ok too, since we don't have to be intellectual all the friggin time.

You gotta give real life credit. He's turned a thread called "Creationism is false" into a thread that looks exactly like an entirely different subject, "Evolution is false"

Eorl wrote:

You gotta give real life credit. He's turned a thread called "Creationism is false" into a thread that looks exactly like an entirely different subject, "Evolution is false"

One does what one can.

But whenever evolutionists start discussing the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, you can bet it won't be long before at least one of them insists that it doesn't apply to anything in the universe (i.e. it only applies to 'closed' or 'isolated' systems)

Timber's hilarious insistence that the 2nd Law was 'the driver of evolution' was a gift. I couldn't have planned that one.

Introduction ...
... I have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (UC-Berkeley, 1988), specializing in "Molecular Thermodynamics," which combines classical and statistical thermodynamics to describe the thermophysical properties of fluids. I then did two years of postdoctoral work, more or less in Chemical Physics, followed by four years in private industry. I am now with the Physical and Chemical Properties Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado. [Nothing I say here should be construed as representing NIST or the US Government.] I do not consider myself a specialist specifically in the second law, but my overall expertise in thermodynamics is sufficient to shed light on the relevant issues.

I am an evangelical Christian. I believe the Bible to be entirely trustworthy in conveying God's messages. Where people get into trouble is when, for example, they take the message of Genesis 1 (that God created everything, including us) and try to read it as something it is not (i.e., a science text). I get annoyed at the silly arguments of "creation science," but what is more annoying is when non-Christians see those arguments and get the false impression that such issues (rather than Christ) are what Christianity is all about. I do believe that God created everything, but how and when and to what extent that involved his sovereignty over "natural" processes are secondary questions that should not divide the church.

Finally, I should add that God has given me a passion for truth. Truth in all things, since all truth is God's truth. I therefore welcome correction or constructive criticism on this document ...

... The Second Law and Creation
Now we address the context in which the 2nd law arises in creation arguments. The usual argument goes something like this: "The 2nd law says everything tends toward increasing entropy (randomness and disorder). But the evolution of life involves the development of great complexity and order. Therefore, evolution is impossible by the 2nd law of thermodynamics." While it sounds simple, there are major flaws in this argument that render it worthless.
The Earth is Not an Isolated System
It is only in isolated systems that entropy must increase. Systems that can exchange energy with their surroundings have no such restriction. For example, water can freeze into ice (becoming more ordered and decreasing its entropy) by giving up heat to its surroundings (this increases the entropy of the surroundings, of course). In the case of the Earth, the Sun is a major source of energy, and the Earth also radiates energy into space. One consequence of thermodynamics is that, when energy comes from a "hot" source (like the Sun) and is output to a "cold" reservoir (like space), it can be used to do work, which means that "complexity" or "order" can be produced. The main point is that, for a non-isolated system, an increase in "complexity" (to the extent one can connect that concept with the thermodynamic entropy, which is far from straightforward for living creatures) does not necessarily indicate a violation of the 2nd law. A good example is the development of a human fetus into an adult; this is the production of a more thermodynamically complex system but involves no violation of the laws of thermodynamics.
It is worth mentioning here that the usual reply to creationists that "the second law doesn't apply to non-isolated systems" is not quite correct. The second law always applies; in fact, it was originally developed for non-isolated systems (the working fluid of a heat engine). The key point is that it is only in isolated systems that the second law takes the simplified "entropy must increase" form. For non-isolated systems, the second law still applies as a statement about heat flows and temperatures, just not in the form used in creationist arguments.

An Internal Inconsistency
Some creationists assert that advanced (especially human) life represents a decrease in entropy which violates the 2nd law, and they therefore invoke intervention by God, who is outside the laws of thermodynamics. They also, however, generally assert that this particular "intervention" stopped with the creation of man, and that (with the exception of the occasional miracle) God has allowed things to develop in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics and other physical laws since then.
These two assertions are, however, mutually inconsistent. The reason is that the thermodynamic entropy is strictly an additive quantity. If the 2nd law has not been violated as the number of humans grew from two to 6 billion, it is ridiculous to assert that it was violated in the comparatively minuscule change from zero to two. If we say that the first two humans represented a violation of the 2nd law, the logical conclusion would be that God must be continually intervening in violation of the 2nd law in order to increase the number of humans on Earth. While God is certainly capable of this, there is no evidence to suggest that such violations are happening as complex life forms like humans reproduce and increase in number. [NOTE: All this is not to say that God's creation of human life was not miraculous. My only point is that the specific assertion that the existence of human life in and of itself violates the 2nd law is unfounded.]

What About the Universe?
An occasional creationist response to the first flaw mentioned above is to say that, while the Earth is not an isolated system, the universe as a whole is. However, this does not help the argument they are trying to make. Astrophysicists, using data such as the cosmic background radiation, have verified that the universe has obeyed the second law of thermodynamics very well since the time of the big bang. The 2nd law predicts that something small and hot should become larger and colder, and that is just what has happened. The existence of some ordered life in a little corner of the universe like ours is a drop in the bucket - when the whole system is considered (which one must always do in thermodynamics), there is no violation of the second law in the development of the universe.
So what about "before" the inception of the universe? Can it be said that bringing into existence the hot, pointlike early universe from nothing was a violation of the 2nd law? While that argument has a certain appeal, and I believe the creation of the universe to have been miraculous, I think a 2nd-law argument is inappropriate here as well. The 2nd law is an attribute of the physical universe, describing how systems go with time. Modern physics tells us that the physical universe is not just space but also contains time as a fundamental dimension. The process by which all that came to be is not something that can be addressed by the laws (including the laws of thermodynamics) characterizing the resulting universe ...

Thanks for the explanation.

I checked out what wikipedia had to say about ID, and I am tempted to say that the whole notion sounds IDiotic. It sounds like an attempt to pass off religion as something more substantial than it really is, in an effort to make it more suceptible to the critical minds of the modern world.

In other words, it sounds like a cheap trick, and I've been subjected to enough of those from well meaning zealots.

Several recent polls have shown that about 40% of scientists who believe in evolution do not believe that natural processes alone can account for the variety of life on Earth as we know it.

They are evolutionists, but still they do not think of evolution as a purely natural process that is capable of producing the type of life we have here today.

(A)ccording to the random survey of 1000 persons listed in the 1995 American Men and Women of Science

55% of scientists hold a naturalistic and atheistic position on the origins of man

Scientists almost unanimously accept Darwinian evolution over millions of years as the source of human origins. But 40%...include God in the process.

Only 5 percent of the scientists agreed [with] the biblical view that God created humans "pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10 000 years."

The survey ... asked ... the same Gallup Poll question posed to the public in 1982 and 1991. In the 1991 round, 40 percent of Americans said God "guided" evolution to create humans.

While this 40% is a middle ground of agreement between scientists and the public, there is a sharp polarization between the groups taking purely naturalistic or biblical views. While most scientists are atheistic about human origins, nearly half of Americans adhere to the biblical view that God created humans "pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10 000 years." Forty-six percent of Americans agreed with this view of human origins in the 1991 Gallup poll. Only 5 percent of the scientists agreed.

The standard view in science is that modern-day Homo sapiens emerged 40,000 years ago and began to organize societies 10,000 years ago. The oldest humanlike ape is called Australopithecus, or "southern ape." It was found in Africa and is believed to date back 4 million years. Homo erectus developed 1.8 million years ago. Neanderthals roamed Europe and Asia beginning 100,000 years ago.

The survey was a separate but parallel study to one reported in Nature (1997 Apr 3; 386:435-6) in which 40 percent of the same scientists reported a belief in a God who answers prayers and in immortality. Both surveys were conducted by a reporter for the Washington Times and Edward J Larson, a historian of science at the University of Georgia. The report in Nature was based on a replication of a 1916 survey that scandalized Americans by finding that 45 percent of scientists were atheists and 15 percent were agnostics.

Lines of evidence: The science of evolution

At the heart of evolutionary theory is the basic idea that life has existed for billions of years and has changed over time.

Overwhelming evidence supports this fact. Scientists continue to argue about details of evolution, but the question of whether life has a long history or not was answered in the affirmative at least two centuries ago.

The history of living things is documented through multiple lines of evidence that converge to tell the story of life through time ...

(A)ccording to the random survey of 1000 persons listed in the 1995 American Men and Women of Science
55% of scientists hold a naturalistic and atheistic position on the origins of man . Scientists almost unanimously accept Darwinian evolution over millions of years as the source of human origins. But 40%...include God in the process