Re: laws of thermodynamics

I rather liked the argument (and picture) that a stick cannot come back to life because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Unfortunately, it doesn't explain what happened to Aaron's staff when he was shown to be God's chosen High Priest.
 
Seriously, your response and George's leads me to further questions. Can we consider the universe a closed system? If God is the Source of all life (as the Bible says), then is it really closed? If it is closed, how does this explain star formation. Admittedly, I am an old earth creationist who thinks we may very well be in a third or fourth star generation solar system. What if it is closed but expanding? Is this really closed? I can understand in this situation where the heat dissipates leading to disorganization but the energy is still energy - no matter the form.
 
Another example is a meteor striking the earth. Suppose the small meteor has been traveling through space for 3,000 years (YEC) and is approximately 0 Kelvin. The meteor then enters the earth's atmosphere. Upon impact with the earth, the potential energy of the meteor is converted to heat which then increases the ambient temperature of the local area. This causes a small fluctuation in weather. Is this actually disorganization or an increase in the energy of our open system?
 
I also agree with your statement about the acorns. A simple acorn becomes a mighty oak tree. This is definitely not disorganization. Squirrels eat acorns and other "dead" food causing them to live and give birth to much more complex babies. I don't see this as disorganization or the transition to disorder.
 
Any comments from others, especially young earth creationists?
 
Sheila

Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net> wrote:
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. 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

Sheila McGinty Wilson
sheila-wilson@sbcglobal.net
Received on Tue Jan 4 14:28:27 2005