Re: laws of thermodynamics

I'm not sure there is anything wrong with your line of thinking.
However, there seem to be two principal problems that absolutely kill
the usual 2nd law argument. First, the 2nd law refers to a closed system
(no net energy in or out) which our local situation (in universe address
terms) is not. Our earth, for example, has energy input from the sun. We
denizens of the earth surface also benefit (locally) from energy that
lies within the molten interior of the earth. That changes the whole
picture because the energy that flows into our environment from these
sources is a resource for building complexity (living things, for
example). The other issue is that the 2nd law is a blanket statement,
describing the system as a whole. The argument does not recognize the
statistical nature of the statement. Even if the whole of creation were
"going downhill", there are local instances of greater organization or
greater destruction with the passage of time when referenced to the
overall all-things-considered trend.

The 2nd law suggests that everything is globally (perhaps better,
universally!) moving toward a uniform state of (dis)organization (think
of a mountain eroding into a level sandy plain, suns running out of
fuel, etc.) and temperature (all the heat has radiated away from any
sources which might have once existed, resulting in uniform energy flux
throughout the universe) . But we clearly are a LONG way from this
static death-of-the-universe situation.

If you look (for example) at the plausibility arguments at
http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-thermodynamics.html , they speak
of the familiar situations of clothing becoming threadbare, molecules
breaking down (ultimately!), etc. It, like other similar arguments of
this sort, for some reason fails to notice that we recycle cloth fibers
into paper, add symbols to that paper, and use them as instructions to
build skyscrapers, build integrated circuits, and so on. They further
ignore the fact that some acorns grow into huge, much more structured
and complex trees. Some acorns do decay, but others are consumed thereby
contributing their energy and substance to increased order and
complexity, the growth and propagation of squirrels.

JimA

Sheila Wilson wrote:

> Someone referenced the Second Law of Thermodynamics and it's
> application to creationism. Being curious, I looked it up online and
> found the Young Earth Creationism viewpoint on
> www.christiananswers.net <http://www.christiananswers.net>. This is
> the first time I have seen the thermodynamics applied to creationism -
> yes, I was naive.
>
> The application doesn't make sense because it says everything in the
> universe goes from more order to less order/chaos because of the
> second law. This implies that heat cannot ever be recovered which
> seems to contradict the law of conservation of mass and energy in that
> mass/energy cannot be created or destroyed. I understand that heat
> may dissipate or be "lost" but the actual amount of energy hasn't
> changed. The energy from heat is only transferred.
>
> Is this accurate/reasonable thinking?
>
> Sheila
>
>
>
> Sheila McGinty Wilson
> sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
Received on Tue Jan 4 13:07:58 2005