Second Law of Thermodynamics

Neither one of those theories says anything of the sort, so there's not really anything to explain.The second law says that the energy avaliable to do work in a closed system decreases over time. The theory of evolution explains the history of life on Earth not in terms of the amount of energy avaliable for work in a closed system, but by organisms reproducing imperfectly and often, not at all.So, you tell me. What does the first have to do with the second? The evolution of organisms over time isn't a closed system with a given amount of initial energy for work; in fact, it isn't a "system" in any sense at all.

I think you're misunderstanding the scope of the assertion. Evolutionists have never proposed that evolution doesn't occur according to the laws of physics; indeed, the laws of physics guarantee that evolution will occur."Directionless" is a potentially ambiguous term, one that the reader can interpret in many ways. You've specifically chosen to interpret the term in the most contentious way possible, so has to have something to argue with Brenna about. The legitimacy of that as a tool for constructive debate is something you might wish to think about.

Winter occurs.The energy of the sun creates areas on the Earth that are far colder than would be reasonably expected given the caloric input of the sun to the Earth. Moreover, in these areas, water freezes and becomes crystalline - the formation of ordered arrangements of matter by natural processes alone, unguided by any intelligence.Thus, your conception of thermodynamics is proven wrong. Moreover, the idea that the evolution of organisms by reproduction with modification is a thermodynamic process is laughable.

Wait, crystals aren't complex?You must be defining "complexity" differently than the rest of us. When you say "complex", what exactly do you mean?I notice that your only response to the argument, though, is to tell me how stupid I am. Sounds like you're the one in need of an education - in manners, as well as science.How about you address the point? How is evolution, where allele frequencies change over time due to differential reproduction and mutational changes, a thermodynamically relevant process?

Heh, that's what you think. Don't you know? The subject is "OMG evilutionists are teh dumbz0r!!!11!1"

This is a very common misapprehension; so common that Talkorigins has a page on it:

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1. The amino acids that are used in life, like most other aspects of living things, are very likely not the product of chance. Instead, they likely resulted from a selection process. A simple peptide replicator can amplify the proportion of a single handedness in an initially random mixture of left- and right-handed fragments (Saghatelian et al. 2001; TSRI 2001). Self-assemblies on two-dimensional surfaces can also amplify a single handedness (Zepik et al. 2002). Serine forms stable clusters of a single handedness which can select other amino acids of like handedness by subtituting them for serine; these clusters also incorporate other biologically important molecules such as glyceraldehyde, glucose, and phosphoric acid (Takats et al. 2003). An excess of handedness in one kind of amino acid catalyzes the handedness of other organic products, such as threose, which may have figured prominently in proto-life (Pizzarello and Weber 2004).

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2. Amino acids found in meteorites from space, which must have formed abiotically, also show significantly more of the left-handed variety, perhaps from circularly polarized UV light in the early solar system (Engel and Macko 1997; Cronin and Pizzarello 1999). The weak nuclear force, responsible for beta decay, produces only electrons with left-handed spin, and chemicals exposed to these electrons are far more likely to form left-handed crystals (Service 1999). Such mechanisms might also have been responsible for the prevalence of left-handed amino acids on earth.

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3. The first self-replicator may have had eight or fewer types of amino acids (Cavalier-Smith 2001). It is not all that unlikely that the same handedness might occur so few times by chance, especially if one of the amino acids was glycine, which has no handedness.

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4. Some bacteria use right-handed amino acids, too (McCarthy et al. 1998).

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from CB040: Left-handed amino acids