The Truth About Evolution and Religion

None of the above.I would say that libertarian free will is logically incoherent, and therefore cannot exist. The more intelligent animals - those that can be meaningfully said to have a will - likely have free will according to compatibilist formulations of the concept. And that includes humans.Of course the only point truly related to biology is the assessment of animal intelligence.

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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.

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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 ?

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Helium is more complex than hydrogen because it has 2 electrons, 2 neutrons, and 2 protons.

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So in fusing Hydrogen to become Helium the Sun is INCREASING in complexity ? That's rather a blow to your argument.

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The first peer-reviewed paper to point out the shortcomings of natural selection is
"Natural Selection and the Complexity of the Gene" (Nature, Vol. 224, 1969, p. 342).

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There are several things that could be said. One of the most important is that this paper is likely TOO early to be of use to you. And that is because it bases its argument on ideas about gene sequences - before gene sequencing had really got going. If you are going to talk about gene sequences, start looking for papers based on more recent knowledge - the more recent the better, since the database of gene sequences is still growing.But more importantly this says nothing about thermodynamics forbidding the "increase in complexity" from bacteria to man (an increase that - I will remind you - has happened in only one lineage - there are plenty of bacteria still around). So really you are trying to change the subject.

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The 1969 paper from Nature does a calculation of the probability of getting a 300 amino acid protein by random mutations.

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Random mutations of what ? I suspect that you mean the probability of producing a specific 300 amino acid protein by random assembly. Which is not really relevant given that we know that genes are NOT as unique as thought in 1969 (look up gene families) and that today's scientists do NOT believe that DNA was the genetic material of the original life (look up RNA world).And I will note that this is a long way away from your assertion that thermodynamics is about complexity and not about energy flows. Perhaps you would like to go back and explain how the sun decreases in complexity (including your measure of complexity) and how this alleged decrease in complexity enables plants to grow, if not by the transfer of energy from the sun to the plant.

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We can assume that the increased in complexity of life does not violate the second law because we know the second law is true. What shows a lack of understanding of statistical mechanics is the idea the the complexity of life came about by random mutations and natural selection.

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Then perhaps you can explain what the problem is. Because on the evidence here, it seems pretty clear that you don't have a good understanding of anything you are talking about. Including the quotes you use to try to convince us.