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Author Topic:   Thermodynamics
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 3 of 27 (390954)
03-22-2007 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Own3D
03-22-2007 5:54 PM


Hello, Own3D, and welcome to EvC.
quote:
Neither can be proved scientifically, Evolution would occur far too slow to be observed and the bulk of evolution would have occured in the distant past, and Special Creation is said to have occured in the past and is also said to have been brought about by process that are not functioning today.
Actually, either one or both could potentially be "proven", as much as anything can be proven in science. As I have said before, not all potential past histories are consistent with the world that we see today. The theory of evolution certainly makes predictions as to what we should see in the world today. In so far that these predictions have always been born out, we may say that evolution has been "proven". As much as Special Creation makes predictions that have not been born out, then we can say that Special Creation has been disproven.
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quote:
The evolution model postulates an increase in useable energy, information, and complexity of living organisms.
The theory of evolution does not postulate an increase in useable energy. It may or may not postulate an increase in information -- it is hard to determine because creationists either do not give a quantifiable definition of "information", or they change the definition whenever it is convenient. Likewise, "complexity" is an ill-defined concept.
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By applying the information observed by science, it can be seen that the Special Creation model predicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics...
Actually, the only thing Special Creation postulates is that originally the world was perfect, then it was imperfect. The entropy nonsense was added post priori after the concept was discovered. That the second law of thermodynamics is consistent with Special Creation is not the same as being a successful prediction of Special Creation.
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...whilst the Evolution model propses a contradiction to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
I don't understand this statement seeing how earlier you had a correct statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
quote:
here is no process that, operating in a cycle, produces no other effect than the subtraction of a positive amount of heat from a reservoir and the production of an equal amount of work.
Evolution does not rely on a process that has no other effect than the subtraction of a positive amount of heat from a resevoir and the production of an equal amount of work.
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quote:
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that energy becomes unavailable for use, disorder increases and information becomes garbled.
This is not a correct statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Your earlier statement is correct, and evolution does not violate it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Own3D, posted 03-22-2007 5:54 PM Own3D has not replied

  
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 24 of 27 (391282)
03-24-2007 9:46 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Own3D
03-24-2007 12:31 AM


Hello, Own.
quote:
Both models postulate that conditions were different in the past.
But a scientific model like the theory of evolution uses what is known about the present to make inferences about the past. The same physical laws that operate today have operated in the past, and processes that operate today can be seen to have operated in the past. It really is no different than any other scientific investigation of phenomena that cannot be directly seen with human eyes, like the composition and state of the earth's interior, for example.
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quote:
The Special Creation Model certainly makes predictions as to what we should see in the world today. In so far that these predictions have always been born out, we may say that Special Creation has been "proven". As much as the Evolutionary model makes predictions that have not been born out, then we can say that Evolution has been disproven.
Except that this statement is not true. For example, if the universe is only 6000 years old, and since the speed of light is finite, we should only see stars that are nearer than 6000 years. This is a fatal flaw for young earth creationism. Now creationists try to get out of this by postulating changes in the physical laws in the past; however the changes that they propose would lead to other effects that we should see in the present, effects that are not seen.
There are other problems with the young earth scenario and with the global flood scenario; this is simply one example. There is a reason that it was scientists in Christian Europe long before Darwin who realized that the earth was far older than a few thousand years, and that a global flood never happened.
Meanwhile, the theory of evolution has passed the majority of tests put to it. When there was a problem here, the solutions proposed, unlike the creationist ad hoc explanations, were such that they could be tested by further observations.
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Both models have shortfalls
The main shortfall of the theory of evolution is that it seems to violate some very dearly held beliefs of a certain religious sect.
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Special Creation postulates that although God created everything pure, perfect, and complete. Man chose to disobey God's commands and thus God changed the laws by which the universe runs on. (Through the curse) He changed them from laws of conservation into laws of disintegration.
This is getting beside the point. Your statement was that Special Creation predicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That means that someone in 1800 could have read Genesis and said, "Oh, according to this, there is no process possible whose only result is to take a quantity of heat from a heat resevoir and convert it into work." No one did, and no one could. In fact, the "Special Creation Model" was formulated in the 20th century. In that case, the "theory" could have been formulated so that the second law is a prediction (or, in this case, a retrodiction). But they didn't; the second law was simply added to Special Creation; it cannot be predicted from the theory because the theory explicitly says that the second law is the result of the fall.
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Added by edit:
One thing that I noticed is that you are no longer arguing, at least not directly, that the theory of evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. If so, then we can move on to another point that you tried to make to Parasomnium:
quote:
The basic postulate of Evolution is a "law" of increasing organization, which introduces new systems into higher systems. That’s what evolution proposes to do, develop lower things into higher things, disorganized things into organized things, simple things into complex things.
Just to add a little bit to what Parasomnium said, the basic postulates of the theory of evolution are:
(1) Organisms produce more offspring than the environment can support (and so a lot of organisms must die without successfully reproducing),
(2) organisms in a population vary in their physical characteristics, much of which are heritable,
(3) some heritable characteristics make the organism more likely to reproduce and others make the organism less likely to reproduce, and
(4) new variations of physical characteristics (that is, variations that were not present in the organism's parent) arise in a more or less random manner.
These are all the postulates of the theory of evolution.
Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.

Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Own3D, posted 03-24-2007 12:31 AM Own3D has not replied

  
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