The Truth About Evolution and Religion

Dawkins doesn't understand the second law of thermodynamics. We know that the second law is valid, hence we know that evolution does not contradict it. The complexity of life does not come from the energy of the sun, as Dawkins mistakenly thinks. It comes from the complexity of the sun. It is not evolution that violates the second law, it is the theory of natural selection that violates the second law. If your child is shuffling a deck of playing cards and tells you they came back into perfect order, you know from the second law that he is playing with you. He or she is kidding or fooling around. It is not possible for a deck of cards to go back to 1 2 3 4 etc if you are only shuffling a trillion decks of cards for a trillion years by computer with a million shuffles every second of one deck. The reason is that the probability of this happening is the inverse of 52 factorial.This is a quote from his latest book The Greatest Show on Earth:"When creationists say, as they frequently do, that the theory of evolution contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they are telling us no more than that they don’t understand the Second Law (we already knew that they don’t understand evolution). There is no contraction, because of the sun!
energy from the sun powers life, to coax and stretch the laws of physics and chemistry to evolve prodigious feats of complexity, diversity , beauty, and an uncanny illusion of statistical improbability and deliberate designNatural selection is an improbability pump: a process that generates the statistically improbable. It systematically seizes the minority of random changes that have what it takes to survive, and accumulates them, step by tiny step over unimaginable timescales, until evolution eventually climbs mountains of improbability and diversity, peaks whose height and range seem to know no limit, the metaphorical mountain that I have called ‘Mount Improbable’Life evolves greater complexity only because natural selection drives it locally away from the statistically probable towards the improbable." (p. 415)

Natural selection includes a lot of different mechanisms and steps. The idea that natural selection does not explain evolution is so shocking that you figure I must not know what it is.

In the cases you cited the forces that caused the amount of order to increase are known. In the compression of a gas, for example, the amount of order increases. However, there is a decrease in the amount of order in the system causing the gas to compress.

I guess I am just in a replying mood, otherwise I would not engage in refuting such obvious falsehoods.For God's sake and yours, please try to learn something here instead of promoting obvious crap that we can even trace to the source. First, according to the last survey by Time magazine back in 1987, 99.85% of all bioscientists and geoscientists support the theory of evolution as the most likely explanation of what is observed on Earth concerning life. This percentage drops off amongst those who are less educated in the evidence, in accordance with their specialization, such as a little less physicists and chemists, a bit more with (unfortunately) engineers and of course much less with palm readers, astrologers, hookers, and false prophets.Second, please provide any accurate quote from Dawkins indicating he questions the overall Theory of Evolution. We can wait, as we have been waiting since it was first implied. This is a tiresome, ignorant criticism of evolution. Usually the proponent is just parroting some crap they read from the tax criminal Hovind. Almost any first grader within 30 miles of a science and engineering university can refute this with the simple observation that the earth is not a thermodynamically closed system.The reason why is called the sun, ultimate source of all energy on earth other than radioactive decay and geothermal heating due to gravity. Behe is hardly a decent source, his testimony at Dover showed to the world he is not a credible source of anything remotely resembling the truth. If you so desire, a detailed criticism of his baloney can be made by various experts here, and if they are not forthcoming, I will do it myself.Perhaps you should check out what Purpledawn and Dr Bill have to say about how to properly interpret the Bible around here, or check out RAZDs correlation thread before pretending to know more than virtually all Biblical scholars and scientists. And that is just a start.BY the way, I am not an atheist, but I am a humanist. I don't do self hate for liars or con men.Edited by anglagard, : take out extraneous wordEdited by anglagard, : forgot about the geothermal

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

Oh, good grief, you're another creationist talking nonsense about thermodynamics. That is so nineties.You've never studied thermodynamics, have you? You don't know the first thing about it, do you?And yet you are willing to stand up in public and talk nonsense about it.Does the phrase THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS mean anything to you?

Of course we know that evolution does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics. You'd have to be a disgusting insane idiot or a creationist to pretend that it does. The reason that you know nothing whatsoever about thermodynamics is that you have never studied it.And the strange thing, the thing I can never figure out about you people, is this. You must know that you have never studied thermodynamics. You must know, as a fact, that you have never studied thermodynamics and you know fuck-all about it.And yet you put yourself up on a pedestal and lecture us about the subject when you have never been bothered to learn the first darn thing about it.

The idea that natural selection per se does not explain evolution is so blindingly obvious that we are all wondering what is wrong with your head that you're even discussing the question.Let me spell it out for you. Got that?Sheesh.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I've been reading through this thread a little, and you continue to use the term "natural selection" or "the theory of natural selection". You use these terms in a way that seems a bit wrong to me. Would you mind telling me what you think "natural selection" means, or what the "theory of natural selection" says?Please, just the definition of those terms, nothing else is required.

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Dawkins doesn't understand the second law of thermodynamics. We know that the second law is valid, hence we know that evolution does not contradict it. The complexity of life does not come from the energy of the sun, as Dawkins mistakenly thinks. It comes from the complexity of the sun

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So what you are saying is that Dawkins is mistaken to believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is about thermodynamics. I think that just maybe you might want to actually think a bit more about that one. For instance you might consider the etymology "thermodynamics" or how a perpetual motion machine contradicts the Second Law (here's a hint - neither have anything to do with "complexity").

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It is not evolution that violates the second law, it is the theory of natural selection that violates the second law.

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Well that is interesting because even under your misunderstanding of thermodynamics it simply isn't true. Natural selection is about differential reproductive success and the consequences of it. Complexity is completely tangential to natural selection.Dawkins is making two points:Firstly thermodynamics is about energy transfer. The energy from the sun makes life possible - and therefore reproduction and therefore natural selection. "...energy from the sun powers life." In fact all of the actual construction of the complexity that Dawkins is talking about is powered by energy ultimately derived from the sun. You need to understand that Dawkins is talking about the complexity of the phenotype - the full physical form of the animal or plant - and that phenotype is built up by the biological processes of reproduction and growth.The second point is his old point about the power of cumulative selection over pure chance rearrangement. By preserving the successful variations natural selection enables complexity to "increase" - in that the distant descendants of an animal might be significantly more complex than there remote ancestor. But it is an enabling role - natural selection does not generate complexity. Natural selection preserves the successful variations, allowing change to build on what came before. So, in some lineages there is an increase here and an increase there and they all add up. Others remain relatively simple. And a few others settle into lifestyles where they don't need that complexity after all and become simpler.To sum up:Natural selection plays a crucial enabling role in the accumulation of complexity in some of the lineages of life.The energy of the sun powers reproduction and growth, the processes which enable natural selection, as well as producing the complexity that Dawkins is actually talking about.

I asked you to man up. I'll ask you again.Do you seriously mean to assert that scientists do not believe in common descent?Yes or no?It's a simple yes-or-no question, I am not asking you to post another burst of windy nonsense, I'm asking you to say yes or no. Man up. I can respect a creationist, but I can't respect a creationist who knows that his opinions are wrong and is ashamed of them.

This is a quote from Dawkins where he discusses evolution reasonably. Notice that he does not say natural selection explains complexity. He says it only explains "adaptive evolution," just like KIrshner and Gerhart:"By the time Darwin came to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, he had amassed enough evidence to propel evolution itself, though still not natural selection, a long way towards the status of fact. Indeed, it was this elevation from hypothesis towards fact that occupied Darwin for most of his great book. The elevation has continued until, today, there is no longer any doubt in any serious mind, and scientists speak, at least informally, of the fact of evolution. All reputable biologists go on to agree that natural selection is one of its most important driving forces, although as some biologists insist more than othersnot the only one. Even if it is not the only one, I have yet to meet a serious biologist who can point to an alternative to natural selection as a driving force of adaptive evolutionevolution towards positive improvement." (p. 18 of The Greatest Show)This is a quote from Kenneth Miller who is answering Behe's attempt to define the limits of Darwinism. This is the quote that proved to me Kenneth Miller and Behe agree about evolutionary biology. The disagreement between the two is only about intelligent design:"In Behe’s view, these are examples of nothing more than a kind of trench warfare in which the two species have progressively disabled or broken parts of themselves in order to survive. Nothing genuinely new, novel, or complex has resulted from this struggle, and we shouldn’t expect otherwise. The reason, according to Behe, is that the sorts of changes we see in this well-studied interaction represent the limit, the edge of what evolution can accomplish. They can go this far and no further. A line in the sand is drawn, and the other side of that line is intelligent design.
How does Behe know where to draw that line?" (p. 67 of Only a Theory: The Battle for America's Soul)

The second law of thermodynamics is that there is a tendency in nature for order to decrease. The law can be understood in terms of statistical mechanics and probability theory. When a plant grows, the complexity of the plant increases in apparent violation of the second law. According to Dawkins, the complexity of the plant increases because of energy from the sun. According to physics, the complexity of the plant increases because the complexity of the sun decreases. Dawkins doesn't understand the second law.

All rational scientists believe in the Big Bang and common descent. Just as there is no explanation for the Big Bang, there is no explanation for common descent because it involves a large increase in the complexity of life over a short period of time.

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The second law of thermodynamics is that there is a tendency in nature for order to decrease.

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There are three things to say to this:Firstly, thermodynamics can be understood in terms of energy flows. This is where thermodynamics originated - and if you do not understand that, you cannot understand thermodynamics.Second, casual ideas of order do not easily map to thermodynamic order. If you rely on that sort of thinking you are likely to get into trouble.Third, complexity is not the same thing as order.

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When a plant grows, the complexity of the plant increases in apparent violation of the second law. According to Dawkins, the complexity of the plant increases because of energy from the sun. According to physics, the complexity of the plant increases because the complexity of the sun decreases. Dawkins doesn't understand the second law.

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I doubt that you have represented Dawkins entirely correctly. However the plant DOES use the energy from the sun to grow. Without that energy it would not matter what the sun did. So it seems likely that Dawkins' actual point is correct - he is simply looking at thermodynamics in terms of energy flows and given that view he is quite correct.If you had said that the thermodynamic order of the sun decreased then you would still only be AS correct as Dawkins, but you would be offering a less comprehensible and less complete explanation.However, what does it mean to say that the complexity of the sun decreased ? Is Helium less complex than Hydrogen ? By what measure ?

Well, of course he didn't. You would have to be retarded or ignorant or insane to say that natural selection per se explains complexity.What Dawkins knows is that the theory of evolution explains complexity.How many times do we have to explain this to you? Really, you are convinced that Miller and Behe are in agreement about evolutionary biology?Did you not notice that they were on opposite sides in the Dover Panda Trial?Did that not serve as a sort of hint that they disagree with one another in some way?What in the world is going through your head when you talk garbage like this?