Intelligent Design in Universities

Well, Sal is posting the Word about the Nature article on every available forum.

Feynman was right, you are wrong. Feynman was talking about microstates, you and your references are talking about macrostates. In addition, Boltzmann's formula applies only to a system at constant volume, energy, and composition (and perhaps other constant items, depending on the system). See, e.g., Shuffled Cards, Messy Desks, and Disorderly Dorm Rooms Examples of Entropy Increase? Nonsense! and Note on Entropy, Disorder and Disorganization

I don't agree. A noticable percentage of the time the first step is to determine whether the object(s) of study are indeed intelligently designed artifacts.This is presumably the stage at which some ID advocates, such as Sal, claim that the disciplines are using the EF. E.g. Sal wrote in comment 28541 at Dembski's Defense:

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Every successful design detection process is an instance of the EF. To use the EF is equivalently and perhaps more clearly described as using an instance of the EF. The EF faithfully represents ordinary practice.

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Of course this is nonsense; scientists trying to detect design in artifacts use a number of techniques, none of which are even vaguely analogous to Dembski's EF. A good example is Middle Stone Age Shell Beads from South Africa (alas, subscription to Science required for now). This is discussed at The Panda's Thumb at A "Design Inference" in Science magazine!:

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But things only get worse for ID advocates. For their design inference, Henshilwood and colleagues chose - not surprisingly - not to apply Dembski's "revolutionary" specified complexity criterion (which would go something like: these look like beads, therefore they are specified, and they are improbable, that is "complex", ergo they are designed), but to rely instead on the good old-fashioned scientific approach.

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First, the authors established that the shells likely are actual beads because they display a microscopic wear pattern (likely due to friction) not observed in natural shells, but only in known bead samples. Then they considered the possibility that they may have been carried to the site by animals, and found it unlikely because N. kraussianus' only known predator is another estuarine gastropod, and because all the shells were from adults (a predation model would have predicted multiple age groups). The type of perforation in the shells is also consistent with use as beads, and not predator activity. Finally, remains of ochre were found inside the beads, suggesting they might have been painted, as other known bead samples.

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In other words, the authors inferred intelligent agency because they were able to make specific hypotheses about how the perforated shells may have been generated, ruled out the hypotheses that indicated non-human activities, and found empirical confirmation for the hypotheses that pointed to design. Sounds easy, uh? It should be.

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Oh, and you were doing so well! Some formulations of the 2LoT appear at first glance to apply only to closed systems, but any correct formulation of the 2LoT applies to all systems of sufficient size and over long enough periods of time (the 2LoT being at heart a statistical law), be those systems closed or open.It is only in closed systems that overall entropy must increase (or stay the same, but in practice that never happens). Even in closed systems entropy can be rearranged to decrease in one part and increase (more) in the rest. In open systems, of course, entropy within the system may increase or decrease (the latter being at the expense of a greater increase in entropy outside the system).

You are not impressing me with your reading comprehension. I stated that the 2LoT applies to all systems, including open systems. You attempt to contradict me by listing great scientists who applied the 2LoT to open systems. Your examples support my claim. No need. Prigogine's work is completely compatible with the 2LoT, and is subject to its requirements; his work just requires a significantly more complicated statement of the second law because he's working in non-equilibrium situations. Nope,he was right. S = K log 1/D is a statement about the quantity of entropy in a system, open or closed, and is a correct statement when the system meets certain requirements, which the human body does over reasonably short periods of time. Yup, what about it? Another example of the 2LoT applying to open systems, which is what I said.

It's not sure. We don't know whether the Universe is finite or infinite, and whether or not it makes sense to consider it as closed. We're not even postiive that it isn't open, but it sure seems likely that it is. Sure. Consider a fairly large room, no windows, with 100% efficient thermal insulation surrounding it on all sides. The system is the room, the boundary is is its boundaries. In that room is an electric generator with a full tank of gas, a dewar of liquid oxygen connected through a vaporization heat exchanger to the intake air filter of the generator, and a refrigerator connected to the electrical output of the generator. A timer starts the generator. The overall entropy increases significatly, the entropy of the oxygen and the generator increases a lot, but the entropy of the contents of the refrigerator goes down.Maybe you need a compressor and tank, too, to prevent the pressure in the room rising enough to kill the generator .. but I think you see the idea.

Apparently nobody. Certainly not Jerry.