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Author Topic:   Evolution vs. Thermodynamics
Percy
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Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 3 of 103 (13869)
07-20-2002 4:53 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by EvO-DuDe
07-20-2002 3:48 PM


EvO-DuDe writes:

Both of these sites admit that evolution can happen in an open system, just as long as an organism has a mechanism for storing and converting the energy.
These may be the same articles I read last year. I remember being surprised at how openly they acknowledged the consequences of 2LOT in an open system. After that point their specific objections were extremely vague, at least to me. They seemed to be saying that while 2LOT in an open system doesn't exclude the possibility of evolution that nonetheless it raises sufficient concerns to be worth citing as a fairly solid objection. I was left going, "Huh?"
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 17 of 103 (14084)
07-24-2002 9:08 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by John
07-24-2002 10:22 AM


In general, simply adding heat to a system increases its entropy, its degree of disorder. Heat a gas and the molecules will bounce around in even greater disorder. Cool a gas and it becomes a more ordered liquid. Cool it even further and it becomes a highly ordered crystalline solid. The most common example is steam, water and ice.
The process becomes very complex when the added heat causes chemical reactions. Energy becomes stored in chemical bonds, particularly in the case of chemicals involved in life-processes, thereby reducing entropy for the chemicals involved. But most of the heat is wasted and simply dissipates into the environment, a net increase in entropy.
--Percy

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 Message 12 by John, posted 07-24-2002 10:22 AM John has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 59 of 103 (14903)
08-06-2002 11:24 AM


If I'm following the discussion properly, the Creationist position in this thread has shifted from "2LOT doesn't permit abiogenesis" to "2LOT permits abiogenesis, but the heat gradient on the ancient earth was insufficient for abiogenesis." Do I have this right?
--Percy

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 Message 61 by Randy, posted 08-06-2002 3:16 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 62 of 103 (14915)
08-06-2002 4:25 PM
Reply to: Message 61 by Randy
08-06-2002 3:16 PM


Randy writes:

That last does seem to be that the heat gradient was insufficient as you say but I don't know if you have this right or not since it is a bit hard for me to make sense of some of Blitz's thermodynamics. How about you?
That's pretty much why I was asking - after reading through the thread I found I wasn't sure which position or positions were still in play.
Abiogenesis and evolution postulate nothing more than normal chemical reactions, so of course they do not violate 2LOT. And given that we don't know whether life originated in outer space, in the atmosphere, in the water or beneath the sea, definitive statements that conditions were insufficient, such as heat gradients or reducing atmospheres, seem insupportable.
Once the "evolution violates natural laws" position is given up, the only recourse is to attempt to demonstrate how conditions on the ancient earth were incompatible with abiogenesis and evolution. This seems a hopeless exercise given how little we know about our ancient environment.
--Percy

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Replies to this message:
 Message 63 by blitz77, posted 08-06-2002 7:08 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 66 of 103 (14928)
08-06-2002 10:05 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by blitz77
08-06-2002 7:08 PM


blitz77 writes:

The supposed counter-increase in entropy is supposed to come from the decrease of the energy gradient, which is quite insufficient for the job.
Remember that you don't know:
  • The conditions on the early earth, including the energy gradients.
  • The pertinent chemical reactions.
It is therefore not possible to know if the energy available was sufficient. But we're here, so obviously it was, if not on earth then somewhere else.
Only when you know the conditions on the early earth and the chain of chemical reactions resulting in life can you plug the numbers in and see if it all comes out. What you're doing right now is like arguing that someone doesn't have enough gas in the tank of their car when you don't even know how far they have to go.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 98 of 103 (19870)
10-14-2002 4:27 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by Richard
10-14-2002 3:11 PM


Richard writes:
Abiogenis is the fly in the ointment of evolution. There would be no rehashing of these objections if you had a resonable and testable hypothesis to account for abiogenis.
Though we always know more today than we did yesterday, in science there will always be things we don't know. At present we do not know the process by which the first life came to be. We may never know, since after all there's little evidence left after 3.8 billion years. Even if we're eventually able to piece together a workable scenario, there will be no way of knowing if life's origin followed that scenario or some other yet undiscovered.
You therefore are not objecting to evolution on any valid grounds. You are not saying, for instance, that the abiogenesis process currently accepted by scientists violates thermodynamics and is therefore impossible, because there is no such process. You can't even say that you've examined all the tentative scenarios proposed by scientists and found that they all violate thermodynamics, because not one of them does. Your objection therefore reduces to, "I don't believe abiogensis could have happened because if it did I believe it would have violated thermodynamics."
This is not to say you are wrong, just that you have no evidence supporting your belief. I think this belongs in the "argument from personal incredulity" category.
--Percy
[This message has been edited by Percipient, 10-14-2002]

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 Message 97 by Richard, posted 10-14-2002 3:11 PM Richard has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 99 by Richard, posted 10-16-2002 4:02 PM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 101 of 103 (20048)
10-16-2002 9:02 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by Richard
10-16-2002 4:02 PM


I'm going to join a pet peeve of my co-admin's, the inclusion of entire messages. Unless they're short you probably don't need to do this, especially in this particular case since my entire message 1) can be found merely by clicking on the link at the bottom of your message, and 2) appears immediately above your message anyway.
We're currently using 97% of our free disk space.
Richard writes:
Not from incredulity but from lack of scientific evidence. You cannot have it both ways. Abiogenis is the foundation for evoulution. Neo Darwinism mechanisms are random chance coupled with natural selection. But natural selection can only operate on living forms.
I can't even guess what lack of scientific evidence you might be thinking of, or even why you think evidence is required. No one is proposing non-thermodynamic processes for abiogenesis. Now, if someone were proposing mechanisms that violated known natural laws, then yes, for that you'd need evidence. Lots and lots of evidence.
The reason that thermo stands in the way of abiogenis is that there are so many variable involved in the spontaneos generation of life that to have all of them come together at once is shown to be statistically impossible.
Since we don't know the abiogenetic process by which the first life came about, how are you able to assess this unknown process's statistical probability?
Consider the simplest possible life form you would have to have all of the necessary catalysts to make the reactions for favorable for the building blocks of life all there at the same time under conditions that would not degrade them to where they would be useless and then the life form from the very begining must have the necesary genetic complexity to reproduce and do error correction to offset the random mutations and damgage caused by its environment.
Ah, now I see why you think it statistically unlikely. The first life is not thought to have sprung suddenly into existence from constituent chemicals as you describe here. Current views are that it must have come about gradually over long stretches of time, from primitive self-replicating molecules to more complex self-replicating molecules, and so forth, until you finally have something that we might accept as life.
By the way, statistical unlikelihood is not synonymous with thermodynamically impossible.
What is happening today is just believe us it happend! Do not ask us to present plausible scenarios and test them out. Why should abiogenisis be exempt from rules that apply to every other theory.
It isn't exempt, but it is certainly an area where speculation plays a larger role than in possibly all other fields of science. As I may have said already, even if we uncover in the lab a chain of processes leading to life, there is no way to establish whether abiogenesis followed that particular pathway.
It's interesting that after all the time that's passed since the Miller experiment, the very first experiment in the abiogenesis field and therefore the least relevant to the current state of the field, it is still the one most often mentioned. When you describe the Miller experiment and say you feel as if scientists are saying, "Just believe us that it happened," it sounds like you might not be aware of the more recent work in this area.
--Percy

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Replies to this message:
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