On Creationism

See the article here where thermodynamics is abused : http://www.panspermia.org/seconlaw.htm Brig Klyce is Honorary Associate Professor at Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology. He is an advocate for " Cosmic Ancestry ", described on his web site as: Cosmic Ancestry implies, we find, that life can only descend from ancestors at least as highly evolved as itself. And it means, we believe, that there can be no origin of life from nonbiological matter. Without supernatural intervention, therefore, we conclude that life must have always existed. Klyce is no creationists, but he does seem  to fall under the Intelligent Design label, and he abuses the Second Law like the best of them. His strategy is to claim it applies to any sort of entropy you feel like. Much of the article is correct; he describes thermodynamic entropy well, then looks at logical and information entropy, and much of that is sound too. Then he claims the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to logical and i...

This is an article at Answers in Genesis that abuses thermodynamics . http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/02/12/just-add-energy Andrew McIntosh is Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds. This guy really should understand this stuff, right? Let us see what he says: The principles of thermodynamics, even in open systems, do not allow a new functional biological structure to be achieved without new machinery already being in place. Wow. A Professor of Thermodynamics and Combustion Theory seriously said that? It is telling that McIntosh does not present any maths with the article; I would love to see how he works this requirement for "new machinery already being in place" into: S(i) < S(f) ... where S(i) is the initial energy, S(f) is the final energy. That is all the Second Law says. Entropy at the end is greater than entropy at the start. There is nothing in there about mechanisms or machinery or anything about how ...

Another article at the Institute for Creation Research that abuses thermodynamics , this one by Henry Morris. http://www.icr.org/article/51/247/ Henry Morris has a Ph.D. in hydraulic engineering; I would guess that a knowledge of thermodynamics would be part of that, so again, this is a guy who should know better. The article starts with a lot of discussion on the words, and in fact is rather wordy all the way through. Part way through the second on the Second Law, he presents his argument about the First Law (go figure): ... Similarly, the First Law shows that the universe could not have begun itself. The total quantity of energy in the universe is a constant, but the quantity of available energy is decreasing. Therefore, as we go backward in time, the available energy would have been progressively greater until, finally, we would reach the beginning point, where available energy equaled total energy. Time could go back no further than this. At this point both energy and time mus...

This guy is a mathematician, indeed a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas, El Paso. Let us look at the abuse of thermodynamics by Granville Sewell: http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/AML_3497.pdf Here is an opening comment that seems to summarise his position: Of course the whole idea of compensation, whether by distant or nearby events, makes no sense logically: an extremely improbable event is not rendered less improbable simply by the occurrence of ‘‘compensating’’ events elsewhere. According to this reasoning, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room are rusting into scrap metal—and the door is open.1 (Or the thermal entropy in the next room is increasing, though I am not sure how fast it has to increase to compensate computer construction!) There is all sorts of nonsense in there that you would think a university professor would know about. Let us start ...

The Institute for Creation Research has an article by Duane Gish with some abuse of thermodynamics : http://www.icr.org/article/177/ The article says: The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that matter and energy always tend to change from complex and ordered states to disordered states. No. Overall entropy increases, but in one place it may well decrease. A simple example would be a hot cup of coffee. As it cools its entropy decreases. The second law is not being broken; as the cup cools heat is lost to its surroundings and overall entropy increases. Further, the Second Law has nothing about complexity - it is only about entropy, which is disorder of energy. This is a common addition that creationists like to slip in. They make it clear that this guy has a Ph.D., so he should know what he is talking about. He has a degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. in biochemistry, both from decent universities, so it is seems a good bet he knows and understands thermodynamics. When he is pedd...

A great example of abusing thermodynamics can be seen in the book The Mystery of Life's Origin, by Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen. Chapter 8 is available on-line here . This chapter was written by Thaxton, who has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, so really should know better. He considers the entropy when polypeptides form. A polypeptide is a sequence of amino acids, and he compares a random sequence with five each of the twenty biologically active amino acids to a specific sequence: For a random polypeptide of 100 amino acids, the configurational entropy, Scr, may be calculated using eq. 8-2c and eq. 8-7 as follows: Scr = k lncr since cr = N! / n1!n2!...n20! = 100! / 5!5!....5! = 100! / (5!)20 = 1.28 x 10 115 (8-8) The calculation of equation 8-8 assumes that an equal number of each type of amino acid, namely 5, are contained in the polypeptide. Since k, or Boltzmann's constant, equals 1.38 x 10 -16 erg/deg, and ln [1.28 x 10 115 ] = 265,...

For some reason the laws of thermodynamics get particularly abused by creationists. Undoubtedly this is because most of them do not understand them, but a few do, and they should know better. For them, it looks like deliberate deceit. This post introduces the laws, and subsequent pages on this topic will look at the claims of creationists (and one IDist) who hold at least a doctorate and should understand the subject. There are four laws and, like a C-style array, they are numbered from zero. The important two are the first and second. The First Law The first law says that energy (of which matter is one form) is conserved. That is, for any change, the energy at the end of the process is equal to the energy at the start. That energy may have moved around or been converted into a different form, but the total overall energy is the same. Mathematically: E(i) = E(f) ... where E(i) is the initial energy, E(f) is the final energy. The Second Law The second law says that entrop...