I've never understood how anyone with even the most fundamental knowledge of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics could make that claim.

yes, entropy does always increase in a closed system, but the earth is not a closed system. we get a shit ton of energy input every day, courtesy of the sun.


(I was reading in one of my SCUBA magazines tonight...they had published an article about different fish, and had gotten into some biology stuff and mentioned evolution, and this dude wrote a letter all pissed off that they didn't represent evolution as a theory, and that it couldn't possibly happen due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

first of all, i have no problem with wanting evolution to be represented as a theory. i personally don't view it as established fact--at least not macroevolution.

the 2nd Law argument is fucking stupid, though.

and the 2nd Law can't be "proved", either. All we can say is that it's held true in every instance we know of. That was part of his argument against evolution, too. i might type in his letter sometime later if i feel like it.)

[Edited on January 28, 2006 at 10:16 PM. Reason : asdfasdf]

1/28/2006 10:14:27 PM

Point: People are stupid.

1/28/2006 10:28:48 PM

^

1/28/2006 10:29:18 PM

Haha, yeah I read that once in a Christian handout thing trying to debunk evolution. Even the guy who gave it to me had to concede that it was a weak arguement.

1/28/2006 10:41:04 PM

I mean, how can you dispute clear scientific arguments such as this one

1/28/2006 10:43:51 PM

Point: People do not know what a scientific theory is

1/28/2006 10:49:29 PM

look, there's even a graph and everything.

1/28/2006 11:25:06 PM

OMG PEOPLE ARE THE END OF THE LINE!!!!!!!

1/28/2006 11:27:55 PM

well obviously people are closer to perfect order than regular organisms

1/28/2006 11:29:09 PM

thought i'd see what wiki says on the issue

Quote :

"Another misconception is the claim that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. The second law holds that in a closed system, entropy will tend to increase or stay the same. The misconception is that entropy means "disorder" and evolution means an increase in order (thus, a decrease in entropy). This is a misunderstanding of both entropy and evolution. "Entropy" does not mean "disorder" in a generic sense. For one thing, there is no such thing as "order" in a generic sense (any set of objects may be ordered in any number of ways; disorder from one perspective may be order from another). Secondly, entropy refers specifically to differences in useable energy; an example of which is temperature differences. (See entropy for a more precise discussion.) What appears to be a violation of the second law is not evolution (meaning, the development of new species of life) but rather life itself. But the existence of life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics for two reasons. First, the second law of thermodynamics applies only to a closed system. Earth is not a closed system because it receives an energy input from the sun. However much life may proliferate on earth, the energy of the sun does dissipate over time. Second, as James Clerk Maxwell argued, the second law is not deterministic, it is probabalistic (see Statistical mechanics). For example, molecules within a container move at different velocities; the temperature of the contents is an average. The more time passes, the greater the probability that differences in temperature within the chamber will even out. This fact does not mean that at any given moment there is a small chance that differences in temperature will increase. As Lewis Menand has observed, Darwin's theory of natural selection operates in an analogous fashion: at any given moment most of the members of a species vary little from the average form. Nevertheless, at any given moment there are deviations from the average, and it is the natural selection of specific deviations that leads to a new species. In other words, Darwin applied the same statistical approach to biology that Maxwell applied to physics (Menand 2001: 197-199). When they consider rocks that just sit there, some people may think it is obvious that matter cannot organize itself. Matter, in fact, organizes itself in numerous ways. Crystals such as diamonds and snowflakes can and do self-organize. Likewise proteins fold in very specific ways based on their chemical makeup. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. While the chemical conditions on the relatively young Earth 3.5 billion years ago, when life evolved, are still being debated, the spontaneous synthesis of amino acids has been shown for a wide range of conditions, in such settings as the Miller-Urey experiment. "

[Edited on January 28, 2006 at 11:56 PM. Reason : .]

1/28/2006 11:31:45 PM

another example of super smart people using their own agendas to fuel a logically flawed debate

[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 12:09 AM. Reason : .]

1/29/2006 12:09:14 AM

Quote :

"and the 2nd Law can't be "proved", either. All we can say is that it's held true in every instance we know of."

Have you ever taken a thermo course?


Do you know what it means to prove a scientific theory or law? I cant prove your name is theDuke866, only that it says theDuke866 ever time i read it. What does that even mean.... ? By your logic you could never prove anything. How could science work if we agreed to reject all laws of everything?

The history of science shows that nature obeys an underlying order of physical laws. Thats why most people dont believe in magic.




[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 12:23 AM. Reason : =]

1/29/2006 12:19:56 AM

Uh, I never bought the 2nd law. Didn't someone once conclude that due to an uncertainty principle or other, brownian motion, whatever... Given a closed system of matter, over enough time every possible configuration will take place.

For example, a closed system of 1 clock radio, over a million years will probabilistically decompose into the simplest elements possible (entropy increased). However, over the next billion/trillion years, due to brownian motion or other, will recombine probablistically until, eventually, given enough time and luck, a clock radio appears, along with a bunch of other recognizable combinations.

Such a result is nearly infinitely improbable, hence the long timeline.

Or is this no longer believed by physicists?

[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 12:26 AM. Reason : .,.]

1/29/2006 12:24:35 AM

Quote :

" Such a result is nearly infinitely improbable, hence the long timeline. "

I think mathematically, it would be infinitely improbable (since it would require an infinite time for that theory).

I doubt any physicist really "believed" that (that a radio could coalesce from the right matter), but there's no explicit law of physics that says it absolutely can't happen, so theoretically, it can happen.

1/29/2006 12:44:35 AM

Quote :

"JoshNumbers: By your logic you could never prove anything."

paging Gamecat

1/29/2006 1:10:58 AM

Part of the problem with this debate is that the idea that entropy is analogous with the spatial order or complexity of a system just isn't true. It is pretty easy to find examples of models where an increase in entropy of the system gives an increase in the order of the system. This is even true in closed systems. Take a look at models with long range interactions such as the a self gravitating gas or the long ranged ising model. So it is correct and all to made the argument about closed versus open systems but you really miss the greater point that shows how nonsensical it is to argue about entropy violating thermodynamics.

1/29/2006 1:50:28 AM

Evolution does not say things become more complex with time, only that they become more fit for survival which does not necessarily imply more complexity.

1/29/2006 2:11:46 AM

the wiki article doesn't look like 5-star wiki work, but came close to covering everything needed.

In classes I've had it pointed out that the 2nd law doesn't say that entropy will always increase. It will NECESSARILY increase in systems where the constituent parts are small to the point that the motion of any single particle won't be of significance, that's a physical law and will never be voilated. DNA was given as an example where a system of limited number of partices, and over limited time frames can decrease entropy, not just giving it to something else.

for this one

Quote :

"For example, a closed system of 1 clock radio, over a million years will probabilistically decompose into the simplest elements possible (entropy increased). However, over the next billion/trillion years, due to brownian motion or other, will recombine probablistically until, eventually, given enough time and luck, a clock radio appears, along with a bunch of other recognizable combinations."

I'd agree, if the clock was was the smallest clock mankind has ever made, and it was given many lifetimes of the universe to do this thing. But you can't really isolate something to the degree that would be necessary for that experiement anyway.

1/29/2006 2:13:22 AM

Quote :

"paging Gamecat"

Hahaha...

I was honestly thinking "oooh, this is a pretty interesting thread just as I read that.

But I am drunk, so it was probably funnier to me now that you said that than it will be tomorrow.

Essentially though, the point stands. In the absurdist sense that says everything must be falsifiable, anyway.

The entropy argument is pretty stupid, though. A smarter, though equally incorrect argument, would be that evolution can't happen because no species can belong to more than one family.

[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 2:32 AM. Reason : ...]

1/29/2006 2:32:35 AM

Quote :

"Have you ever taken a thermo course? Do you know what it means to prove a scientific theory or law? I cant prove your name is theDuke866, only that it says theDuke866 ever time i read it. What does that even mean.... ? By your logic you could never prove anything. How could science work if we agreed to reject all laws of everything? The history of science shows that nature obeys an underlying order of physical laws. Thats why most people dont believe in magic."

well, i have a degree in mechanical engineering, so yeah, i've done a little thermo here and there.

What I meant is that we can easily prove, for example, that F=m*a. It's observable, measureable, etc. We can never prove that F=m*a will never fail us under any circumstances. There's a term for this line of logic, and I can't think of what it is...I can't seem to properly word the point I'm trying to get at.

To make it more clear as to how I find that in conflict with one of his arguments, I'll type up a couple of lines of his letter:

...it's a theory that fails classic scientific analysis, such as being observable. It's not been observed and it's not being observed.





that's really beside the point, though. What I find more interesting is people's willingness to cite the 2nd Law and hold it as the cornerstone of their argument when they clearly are totally ignorant of what exactly the 2nd Law means. It blows my mind that this thermodynamics based argument is so prevalent among people seeking to refute evolution. I mean, this guy isn't just some freak who pulled the 2nd Law argument out of his ass. It's somewhat common argument that I've heard a number of people make.

1/29/2006 3:21:46 AM

Well I would agree that to truly understand the 2nd law you need to understand how boltzman's distribution of energy among energy states.

Its also true that 'order' is 100% subjective. If you actually look at populations of energy states, the most ordered energy state is actually the one of HIGHEST energy. Equal populations of every state is infinite, or near infite, energy. LOWEST energy boltzman distributions of thermal energy is simply to have one level (the lowest) fully populated (no order).

Applying what really is a thermo explanation of how energy populates energy levels to other every day ideas like clean/dirty rooms and DNA is nonsense. Many people do it. The 2nd law IS proven, people just misuse it. The journal of chemical education is all over it.


[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 3:40 AM. Reason : -]

1/29/2006 3:37:05 AM

ok this is what i dont get about people that dont believe in evolution

they got skeletons of people that are like 6 million years old, and one named lucy thats like 4 million years old, and so basically what i dont get is that its obvious humans have changed over time, which kinda makes evolution sound like the logical statement

ok so what i dont get is, why do people still not believe in evolution

i mean i believe in god and stuff, but i dont get why people dont believe in evolution

1/29/2006 3:42:40 AM

aaronburro actually spent 6pages trying to argue that since corvettes look alive, and they didnt evolve, hominids must not have evolved.

they just all appeared on the same continent, one after another, because god waved his magic wand and put them all their. god kept using magic to make one species after the other. its completly flies in the face of the already mentioned history of science which has show magic doesnt exist, and that things follow underlying physical laws, not instances of magic.

[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 3:51 AM. Reason : 0]

1/29/2006 3:48:40 AM

Quote :

"history of science which has show magic doesnt exist"

Like theDuke866 said about f=m*a, science has not shown us magic doesn't exist. It has merely shown us that magic nearly never exists, not that one day merlin won't show up and blow our minds. Just because magic has never been seen to exist scientifically doesn't mean it is impossible, just highly improbably.

1/29/2006 10:28:09 AM

Quote :

"Applying what really is a thermo explanation of how energy populates energy levels to other every day ideas like clean/dirty rooms and DNA is nonsense."

yeah, that's also true. entropy is described as "disorder" for lack of a better description--it doesn't mean that my clothes are in a pile on the floor rather than hanging in my closet.

Quote :

"ok this is what i dont get about people that dont believe in evolution they got skeletons of people that are like 6 million years old, and one named lucy thats like 4 million years old, and so basically what i dont get is that its obvious humans have changed over time, which kinda makes evolution sound like the logical statement"

that's microevolution, or evolution within one kind. most people believe in that. the ones who don't are probably the same handful of retards who don't believe that dinosaurs ever existed, either. what people contest far more often is macroevolution...the idea that we started with a bunch of carbon sitting around, that it landed in the right place and became proteins and then single-celled organisms, and from there, with a shit-ton of intermediate steps over millions or billions of years, into human beings, dogs, fish, etc.



^yeah, i'm not sure we're doing a get job of conveying that point. there's a term for it, and i can't for the life of me remember what it is. doesn't really matter, though. that's just a side detail.

1/29/2006 12:14:16 PM

Lucy -> modern humans is a much bigger leap than what would be covered in microevolution.

1/29/2006 12:22:08 PM

Quote :

"Like theDuke866 said about f=m*a, science has not shown us magic doesn't exist. It has merely shown us that magic nearly never exists,"

ask any leading physicist if science has proven magic does not exist, he will say no.

1/29/2006 2:12:27 PM

^ I sincerely hope you're not being sarcastic. Lonesnark is dead on in his comments. It is entirely illogical to posit the nonexistance of "magic" with physics. Physics is afterall incomplete, indeed even contradictory in it's current framework. Physics can tell you about some properties and their interactions, but it is by no means a complete account.

In short, we may not be able to do "magic" but there is no logical reason to think that God cannot, or even that when God does "magic" he violates physical law. Rather, when God does "magic" he does it within a physics which we haven't discovered yet.

1/29/2006 2:43:42 PM

Quote :

"We can never prove that F=m*a will never fail us under any circumstances. "

yes we can, newtonian mechanics was shown to be incomplete a long time ago

1/29/2006 2:54:40 PM

Quote :

"Rather, when God does "magic" he does it within a physics which we haven't discovered yet."

that is the biggest cop out shit ever.

I hate that Christians like to throw that fucking bullshit around.

1/29/2006 3:00:48 PM

^^ok, ok, you know what i'm trying to say.

1/29/2006 3:39:08 PM

point revoked due to repetition

[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 4:37 PM. Reason : yep]

1/29/2006 4:34:35 PM

haha

you didn't read the thread, did you?

1/29/2006 4:35:43 PM

well, i did now

1/29/2006 4:36:43 PM

That was a funny thread

1/30/2006 4:18:56 AM

Quote :

"Rather, when God does "magic" he does it within a physics which we haven't discovered yet."

Then. Its. Not. Magic. And. Youve. Made. My. Point.

Quote :

"We can never prove that F=m*a will never fail us under any circumstances. "

Thats not the definition of a scientific laws. Laws arent immutable, they are testable and hold true 100% in any observations that have been done. If they are disproven, they change. Science could never say that a law will be unfailing for certain, you would need God to say that. Science postulates some ideas, which we accept so that we can move forward and make new discoveries.


[Edited on January 30, 2006 at 7:18 PM. Reason : -]

1/30/2006 7:09:50 PM

Nice graph.

It's just an example of how a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. The second law says the entropy change of the UNIVERSE is greater than zero. Earth is, by universal standards, infinitesimally small. Our entire planet could explode into smithereens and most of the rest of the stars in our own galaxy wouldn't even notice. Throw into that the fact that negative deltaG, what is really needed to drive something, can occur with order is increasing depending upon the temp. if the process is exothermic, and the whole premise is, to put it with a Scottish accent, CRAAAWP.

1/30/2006 8:40:40 PM

Define "magic". Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what your point is.

1/30/2006 8:44:46 PM

Quote :

"1 a : the use of means (as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces b : magic rites or incantations 2 a : an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source b : something that seems to cast a spell :"

in other words "physics which we haven't discovered yet" is NOT the same as magic.

i learned this in 6th grade.

[Edited on January 30, 2006 at 9:15 PM. Reason : -]

1/30/2006 9:13:09 PM

The Big argument with the 2nd Law of thermo, as I've heard it is this:
Evolution goes against the 2nd law of Thermodynamics...(everyone knows and it's already been discussed)
rebuttle: BUT the 2nd law can be overcome with Energy (thus closed system vs open system, already been discussed)

rebuttle: BUT inorder for the 2nd law to be overcome using Energy, the energy has to be applied with an inteligent/meaningful source. Examples: Bombing Japan, There was a ton of energy applied to Japan in WWII, but we didn't increase Order, we incresed choas. Anything that we really know of breaks down faster because of the sun (including our selves for the most part) The only natural, biological thing that we know of that can harness and use the power of the sun is chlorophyll, which is very very complex. So, to reiterate the main point, inorder for the 2nd law to be over come, there must be inteligently applied energy, applying energy will only do nothing or increase choas.

1/30/2006 9:21:22 PM

Interesting Read:
From http://www.angelfire.com/moon/astronomy/entropy.html

Quote :

" It's easier to scramble an egg than to unscramble it. Entropy is a measure of the scrambledness of the energy, and because there are more ways to be scrambled than to be unscrambled, the scrambledness of the energy tends to increase. The entropy tends to go up. Energy is simply the nature of the underlying existence showing through in space and time, and its amount remains constant. It is only the quality of the energy, its usefulness, that gets degraded. And entropy is a measure of this degradation."Die Energie der Welt bleibt konstant; die Entropie strebt einem Maximum zu." (The energy of the world remains constant the entropy strives to a maximum.) -- Rudolf Clausius (1822-1888). This is a statement of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. And the term laws doesn't mean edicts, but ally statements about how matter behaves. Physics is about how matter behaves, and these are statements about that. This is simply a statement that although the energy in the Universe remains constant, the entropy tends to go up. Negative entropy is a measure of the usefulness of the energy. Gravitational energy and the kinetic energy of large moving objects is completely usable. Heat energy is not, because the directions of the motions of the particles have been scrambled. That's what we call heat. And temperature is a measure of the mean kinetic energy of the molecules. When you panic stop on the freeway, the kinetic energy of your large moving vehicle gets scrambled to heat by friction in the brake drums and the brake shoes, the tire and the road. If you could unscramble it, it would once again be the kinetic energy of your large moving vehicle. Now if, instead of being scrambled by friction in the brakes, the energy had been run into a flywheel (which is a large moving object), you could have used it to restart your car. That's how they restart the mail trucks and the milk trucks in Europe. Since all living organisms must find and use a source of energy less scrambled at the start, life is impossible except in a world that is going from bad to worse. All living organisms live in this cascade of increasing entropy by directing streams of the increase through their forms. For all living organisms, negative entropy is food. When you eat it, it's cake; when you're through with it, you push the plunger. In the last century, and in the early days of this century, it was usually taken for granted that the mix of the chemical elements in the Universe was given at the time of creation, if there was a creation, or had been around forever, if there was a forever. (It was not known then that the other chemical elements are fashioned from hydrogen in the bellies of the stars.) And it was thought that if you just shuffled the mix long enough, it might come out in the present configuration again. But there was the problem of entropy. It was already known that entropy tends to a maximum and would surely go up. (In those days the expansion of the Universe had not been noted, nor its extent.) Then, considering the consequences of the continuously increasing entropy, it was thought that the Universe would eventually reach a "heat death." It was thought that eventually every chemical reaction that could have taken place would have taken place, and that everything that could have fallen would have fallen. And it was thought that when all these other energies had gone to heat, the Universe would be just a little warmer and life would be muffed out. Now it turns out that, like life, the formation of galaxies and stars would also be impossible except in this cascade of increasing entropy. A galaxy could not be formed by stars falling together because the stars would be too lonely to collide. The entropy would not go up because the stars would not collide and therefore the energy of falling would not be scrambled to heat. Galaxies are formed when clouds of hydrogen fall together because the clouds are big enough to collide. The clouds, unlike the stars, are large with respect to the spaces between them. So the particles of each cloud collide with the particles of the other cloud and thus scramble their motions to heat. (Stars like the Sun have a density of more than a pound per pint, whereas the density of the interstellar clouds is closer to a pound per billion cubic miles.) It is because of their large sizes that the clouds collide, and the energy of falling is transformed to heat. We say that the entropy has gone up. Similarly, stars are formed when clouds of gas and dust collide because the entropy goes up as the energy of falling is transformed to heat. (Stars are not hot because of nuclear fusion at the core. They are hot because the energy of falling has been transformed to heat. The heat released by fusion simply keeps them from collapsing farther and thus getting too hot. But it's only temporary.) Locally, within the Universe, the entropy goes up. However, for the Universe as a whole, the entropy may not go up. The observable Universe has a border, some fifteen billion light years distant in all directions, imposed on us by what is called "the expansion." It is imposed on the observer by the fact that all the distant objects appear to be moving away. At some fifteen billion light years from us (at the present apparent rate of expansion), they are estimated to be receding at the speed of light. It is this apparent" expansion" that imposes a border to the observable Universe because things receding faster than the speed of light are not observable. And if the rate of expansion were increased, the border would of course be closer. Now, when we consider matter near the border, its radiation, as seen by us, would be red-shifted (lowered in frequency) much as the pitch of the fire engine's bell is lowered where the fire engine has passed us and is going away. But if the energy of the radiation of the distant particles is lowered, so too is the energy of the panicles themselves, and therefore also their mass. (We know from Einstein's 1905 equations that what we see as matter is just potential energy. Swami Vivekananda had suggested this to Nikola Tesla some ten years earlier. But Tesla had failed to show it.) Now there are two very interesting consequences of this apparent lowering of the mass. First, radiation running through a field of low-mass particles would be so often picked up and reradiated that it would be thermalized to 3° Kelvin and would appear as the background radiation discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965. Second, if the mass of the particles approaches zero, their momentum must also approach zero (because the momentum is the mass times the velocity, and the velocity approaches a constant). But if the momentum approaches zero, so does our uncertainty in that momentum. Then, by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, our uncertainty in where they are must approach totality. (According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, if we can know where a particle is, we cannot know its momentum. Likewise, if we can know its momentum, we cannot know where it is. So if we can know the momentum of a particle at the border, we cannot know that it's at the border. We cannot know both its momentum and its position.) Now if the particles thus recycle by "tunneling" back into the observable Universe as hydrogen (with its gravitational energy thus restored) then the entropy of the whole Universe might not increase."

[Edited on January 30, 2006 at 9:37 PM. Reason : bolded something]

1/30/2006 9:36:18 PM

Quote :

"The Big argument with the 2nd Law of thermo, as I've heard it is this: Evolution goes against the 2nd law of Thermodynamics...(everyone knows and it's already been discussed) rebuttle: BUT the 2nd law can be overcome with Energy (thus closed system vs open system, already been discussed) rebuttle: BUT inorder for the 2nd law to be overcome using Energy, the energy has to be applied with an inteligent/meaningful source. Examples: Bombing Japan, There was a ton of energy applied to Japan in WWII, but we didn't increase Order, we incresed choas. Anything that we really know of breaks down faster because of the sun (including our selves for the most part) The only natural, biological thing that we know of that can harness and use the power of the sun is chlorophyll, which is very very complex. So, to reiterate the main point, inorder for the 2nd law to be over come, there must be inteligently applied energy, applying energy will only do nothing or increase choas."

Evolution does not go against the 2nd Law, and the 2nd Law is not "overcome" by applying energy. That's what the 2nd Law is--entropy always increases in a closed system. When you add energy, you no longer have a closed system, and the 2nd Law does not apply.

Furthermore, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thereby creating chaos (or evolving into more highly developed forms of life and thereby increasing order) has nothing to do with entropy (I mean, it does, but not at all in the sense that you're thinking). Defining entropy as "chaos" or "disorder" is a simplification, becuase it's a relatively tough concept to fully wrap your mind around. That "chaos" or "disorder" is not at all meant in the generic sense like you're thinking of (i.e., a brick wall collapsing into an unorganized mess of brick and mortar).

and take away the sun and see how much faster people break down.


I, personally, am not making an argument for evolution. I am, however, saying that using the 2nd Law to refute evolutionary theory is utterly ridiculous, to the point of being comical.

I'm not trying to be a dick. I know that entropy is a sort of abstract concept that's tough to explain or understand. I'm trying to help you understand it, here...I mean, this isn't my interpretation or anything. It's not a philosophy--the idea that the 2nd Law conflicts with evolution is just flat out wrong.

[Edited on January 30, 2006 at 11:27 PM. Reason : asdf]

1/30/2006 11:23:41 PM

Just listing the argument as I've heard it, don't really consider the biggest argument for/against evolution.

1/31/2006 12:26:12 AM

The following text was NOT reprinted with permission from the author/guerilla ontologist:

Quote :

"I will now disprove the theory of evolution. Nothing up either sleeve. Behold-- 1. An animal can belong to only one taxonomic family. For instance, a critter cannot belong to the set of all kangaroos and the set of all Irish pub-keepers, can it? Or the set of all lobsters and also all rhinoceri? Or even to the set of all U.S. Senators and all ring-tailed baboons--however amusing we may find that last idea? 2. The offspring of any two animals also can only belong to the one taxonomic family, that of its parents. When horses mate, little horses get born, never little owls. Rats bring forth other rats, not hummingbirds. Salmon do not give birth to wombats. Etc. Even when cross-species fertilization occurs, e.g., the mating of a horse and a donkey bringing forth a mule, the mule belongs to the same family (equines) as the parents, even if not to the same species as either. No biology text will challenge any of these "laws" or generalizations. 3. However, if evolution exists, some animals must produce offspring who do not belong to the same taxonomic family as themselves. Two fish must have brought forth something, some biological monster, some kind of not-fish...an amphibian. Two reptiles must have produced a mammal. And, most crucially for the evolutionists war with the Bibliophiles, two apes must have given birth to a not-ape...a human, or a proto-human. But we have just seen that this cannot happen, according to biological and genetic laws. No two animals can produce an animal not of their own family. Ergo, evolution cannot occur. Simple as 1-2-3."

1/31/2006 12:28:50 AM

Quote :

"Just listing the argument as I've heard it, don't really consider the biggest argument for/against evolution."

Right, I'm trying to rephrase it so you hear it correctly. It not only isn't the biggest argument for/against evolution, it isn't an argument for/against evolution at all. It has no bearing whatsoever.

i heard this argument made in church all my life, and it sounded fishy, but until my days in the MAE Dept at NCSU when I actually learned what entropy is and what the 2nd Law entails, I could never really put my finger on it.

[Edited on January 31, 2006 at 12:48 AM. Reason : asdf]

1/31/2006 12:46:29 AM

Quote :

"Define "magic"."

Is that what the wizards at the Federal Reserve do to our small, greenish, portraits of Presidents that gives them a greater marketable value than small, greenish, portraits of Presidents made by Uncle Tony's basement printer in Queens?

1/31/2006 1:21:28 AM

Quote :

"Two fish must have brought forth something, some biological monster, some kind of not-fish...an amphibian."

People have no idea what "gradual change" means, do they?

Wherever you put the cut-off point between "fish" and "amphibian" it is going to be an arbitrary line you made up in your head.

Quote :

"An animal can belong to only one taxonomic family"

There again. Who gave us a list of taxonomic families? God? You? If we accept this as true, the all we need to conclude is that a taxonomic family can change over time. Not suddenly, at no point does the child not look exactly like the parents. However, the 100th generation may/may not look like the original ancestors.

1/31/2006 1:34:55 AM

the laws of thermodynamics apply to energy and heat, not physical "disorder" such as a messy room or scrambled eggs.

1/31/2006 11:18:07 AM

Quote :

"People have no idea what "gradual change" means, do they? "

quite obviously, they lack the capability to understand such difficult concepts

1/31/2006 11:42:07 AM

^^thats my stance

1/31/2006 1:50:25 PM