Recently we had some interesting comments on a post about Ben Stein’s upcoming creationist propaganda film, Expelled. Since the comments section was exceeding length of the original article, I thought it would be best to write a series of new posts and address each of “Seeker of Truth’s” objections to evolution one at a time.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics does NOT say evolution is impossible.
The claim:
“…referring to the universe as the system in question, not just the earth. The law of entropy as far as science can tell applies to the entire universe. Thus intervention from outside the universe would have been needed to inject order into it, or at least temporarily violate the law of entropy to produce the higher degree of order.”
The claim was buttressed by a quote from Duane Gish, a Ph.D. in biochemistry who works at the Institute for Creation Research:
“Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd… The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life.”
So, our commentor concluded:
“…for every transition from low order to high order system such as a single embryo growing in complexity into a human with fully developed organs, we see the effect of the external intervention of this transcendent agent who programmed the system through the genetic code to overcome the law of thermodynamics. Without this intervention natural laws could not have produced the precise complexity we see. Long periods of time would only increase the disorder of such system.”
This claim is based on a poor understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and a couple of flaws in logic. The law can be stated in a few equivalent ways:
In an isolated system, a process can occur only if it increases the total entropy of the system.
Heat cannot spontaneously flow from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature.
It is impossible to convert heat completely into work.
So first off, notice that the Second Law does NOT say that no order can arise, ever. It also does NOT say that heat can not be converted into work.
To apply thermodynamics to evolution, we first have to look at a reasonably closed system. The Earth is obviously not a closed system, since the sun is constantly inputting huge amounts of energy. The solar system as a whole, though, is pretty far away from any other stars so we can say it’s reasonably isolated. The sun is constantly fusing hydrogen into helium, pouring out energy in the process. This energy is lost as far as the sun is concerned, and only a tiny, tiny fraction of that energy even hits a planet where it could be used to do some sort of work.
So at this point all is well with the Second Law. The vast, vast majority of the energetic processes in the solar system occur inside the sun and the vast, vast majority of the heat generated is radiated off where it spreads thinner and thinner as it travels outward.
The teeniest fraction of a fraction of that energy hits the Earth. Now, the Earth itself is already radiating waste heat from processes like volcanism but those are so small (and also Second Law friendly) that we can ignore them for now. We know for a fact that the energy from the sun hitting the earth causes some spontaneous order to appear - uneven heating of different surfaces causes weather, for example. But those are big huge systems that require a lot of energy - the formation of proteins or RNA from simpler molecules would require a ridiculously small fraction of the energy it takes to create a hurricane. All of these processes are inefficient, never converting 100 percent of the incoming solar energy into work.
The claim of the creationist is: in a system where the vast majority of heat is radiated into space (high entropy, no work is done), the tiny fraction of energy that hits a planet which CAN cause the spontaneous generation of hurricanes CAN NOT contribute an even smaller fraction to inefficiently cause the spontaneous generation of proteins, RNA, etc. and then life. Not even over billions of years.
Stepping back for a moment, let’s look at the Second Law from a historical perspective. The first person to begin to figure out the Second Law was Sadi Carnot. He was trying to figure out how to convert heat into useful work, and he discovered that the efficiency depends on the heat differential. The Second Law is depressing for perfectionists because it tells us that you can never be 100 percent efficient. But it is not so depressing as Duane Gish and our commenter would have us believe - it is entirely possible for work to be done at a lower efficiency. If this were not true, Carnot would have given up on engines and we’d all be still be riding horses.
How does the Second Law really apply to evolution? Well, it tells us that evolution can not, say, fill the volume of the solar system with algae. It leaves plenty of room for the creation of a thin layer of diverse species on the surface of one little planet. Looking at the system as a whole, entropy and disorder is always increasing - evolution on Earth is a mind-bogglingly minuscule sideshow of localized, temporary order, not a violation.
Now for the flaw in logic. In our commenter’s second quote, we see the claim that the genetic code was programmed (by the creator) to overcome the Second Law. The genetic code is all over the place (you are shedding millions of copies right now through dead skin cells), so this means that violations of the Second Law can be found all over the place - amazingly common. With this many violations, we can’t really call it a law anymore, can we? This whole argument rests on the Second Law being absolute, and then posits that we are surrounded (and made up of) billions of instances of violations of that law!
We have a pretty good understand of the genetic code, and we’re learning more bout it every day. No one studying genetics or microbiology has ever uncovered any cases that violate the Second Law - it would be huge news! We have absolutely no evidence that the genetic code overcomes entropy. Every single chemical reaction that occurs within the cell results in the entropy of the system as a whole increasing.
So again, we come to my challenge to creationists from the previous article: give me evidence. You can’t just posit that DNA violates entropy without citing evidence that it actually does. You can’t just invoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics without showing specifically how it is violated. I’m sorry that this is hard work, but that’s just how science is.
Think I’m off base? Please tell me how in the comments below.
I’m sure you’ve seen the trailer and ads for the new movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed! with Ben Stein on TV or the internet. The premise of the movie is that Big Science the elitist scientific establishment is keeping Intelligent Design out of the classrooms and ruining the careers of any scientist who speaks in favor of it.
Did you know that all over the country, nay the world, people are being persecuted for their belief and intelligence? Did you know that a small, powerful elite controls everything that children are exposed to in school for their own devious, Darwinistic ends? Did you know that only a complete outsider, a rebel with nothing but guts and a heart of steel, can expose the truth?