Do the doctrines of evolutionism protect the Bible?

I had said previously that

"There is no where near enough pressure to save you. With out any evaporization, that is enough heat to increase the temperature of ALL of the water of the oceans over 3200 F. What would happen in practice is that you would heat until the surface was 212 F (a bit more actually) and then the heat would go to evaporation. The sea levels would drop until everything evaporated. I could not find a steam table that went up to 3200 F to see what pressure would be required to keep it from boiling. As an example, however, 1.5 miles of depth would be enough to allow water to be heated to 700 F without boiling. Now mind you that ALL the water would have to be deeper than 1.5 miles. Any water any more shallow would instantly boil away at that temperature."

Well I consulted a steam table and soon realize my problem. The critical pressure of steam is 3193.5 psig and and the critical temperature is 705.5 F. So it does not even make sense to talk about liquid water and a temperature of great than 705.5 F. There is no pressure high enough to have liquid water above that temperature because you are above the crital temperature. Also from the steam tables, it takes about 906 BTU/lb to heat water at 32 F to the critical point. SO, from the previous heat values from Baumgardner, you would be able to heat the oceans past the critical temperature over three times and still have a lot of heat left over. Everything in, and on, the sea would be cooked. Except that there would not be any sea. If would all be vapor.

 

BobRyan keeps harping about entropy. Lets lay out the essential steps in the theory of evolution and let BobRyan show what part, if any, the theory of entropy plays in blocking it from happening. Hint - it does not block it from happening. here we go:

(a) A given population lives up to the limit of the food supply and goes on, generation after generation.

Hmmm. We see this happening, so we know entropy can't forbid this from happening.

(b) From time to time mutations happen to the genes.

Hmmm. We see this happening, so we know entropy can't forbit this from happenign.

(c) Some mutations give the next generation a disadvantage, and those individuals stuck with them don't reproduce as well. Other mutations give the next generation an advantage, and those individuals blessed with them reproduce better.

(hmmm. Nothing there that 2lot would FORBID . . )

(d) Over time, this process results in the favorable mutations coming to replace what was there before, and this is evolution.

(hmmm. It looks like 2lot DOESN'T forbid evolution after all!)

 

Bob

Once you concede Pual's four points including that "other mutations give the next generation an advantage, and those individuals blessed with them reproduce better" you have lost the argument. You have shown us nothing to suggest the entropy prevents evolution. The only source you are using on this discourse does not think that entropy prevents evolution. Which makes it a strange choice for reference material. You have to twist and selectively quote him to make your point. A more complete quoting of your Asimov reference would find him stating explicitly that entropy is not a problem. You even say, in your own words, that "it is a straw man to suppose that YEC does not allow for beneficial mutations." Then what is it that entropy prevnts and HOW does it prevent it. Grab a thermo book, read and understand all the equations, and show us the specific problems.

 

I'm going to interrupt with a question again, showing my ignorance but it's worth it since I want to know!
Are there scientists who challenge the law of thermodynamics? I don't understand how it can be an unchanging law. Can't energy, gravity, all that change because of forces outside of earth?
The sun, stars, comets, all that. Doesn't that help renew energy, and not always at the same levels, although within certain limits that we have any knowledge of.
Eke, I can't word this right, but maybe got my question through anyhow..
Gina

 

Hi Gina

It is not ignorance. Thermo is a difficult subject for those with the background and can be completely baffling to those without it. If you look at the name you should see that thermodynamics is the description of how heat or energy (thermo-) flows or is transferred (-dynamic). Much of what we know about thermo was developed in parallel with the steam engine.

The short answer is that no, thermodynamics is not in doubt. Thermodynamics defines how just about everything you can think of functions. That it has been designated a "Law" in science indicates that it is well established indeed.

Now, having said that, it is also statistical in nature. There was an experiment two years ago where a scientists showed in an experiment that the entropy of tiny, plastic balls in water could decrease for short periods of time spontaneously. This was not a violation of entropy. It was because of the statistical nature, small short violations are possible. It is like chance.

If you have questions, ask. I don't know a lot about thermo, but I know enough to get by.

 

Gina, thanks for taking a serious interest in these matters. Bear in mind that entropy is not energy. Entropy refers to disorder, or the same thing, temperature. Its really a very abstract idea.

Take your diamond wedding engagement ring. Its very ordered - all the carbon atoms tied down to one spot in the crystal. Knowing where one is means you know where the neighbors are.

But the atoms are vibrating, wiggling, since your ring is at room temperature, and that means there's a little less certainty where the atoms are. If you heat it up in the stove, the entropy increases.

Then you cool it down and the entropy in your diamond decreases.

Now the 2nd law of thermodynamics is that the total amount of entropy doesn't ever decrease. But - and it is a very big but - it is possible for entropy to decrease in one spot, PROVIDING the entropy increases somewhere else, even more so.

So when your diamond ring cools down, the entropy in the diamond goes down, but what happened to the total entropy of the universe? It went up, because the heat shed by the diamond went to warming up the air around it, making the air enough warmer that the total entropy goes up.

All knods of devices make order increase and entropy become less, at the expense of increased entropy elsewhere in the universe.

BobRyan likens entropy to your messy house. So if you pickup the house, you made the house more orderly. Where does the entropy increase, that this decrease in the messiness of the house is possible? Your exertions create heat energy that warms the environment; your trash goes out to the landfill; your dirty mop water goes down the drain; things like that. The mess isn't really done away with, it is moved away from where it counts.

The same thing is perfectly possible in the case of evolution. If accumulating beneficial mutations can, in fact, cause evolution to work, it is not a violation of entropy to do this, because all along the way generations and generations of individual members of the evolving group die and their bodies decay, representing a loss of organization that should satisfy anyone's hunger for missing entropy increase, regardless of how they are defining entropy.

Ultimately the extra entropy of the earth - which would, indeed, kill us all if we didn't have a way to get rid of it - is shed in the form of infrared radiation going out into space.

It is of passing interest that because the universe is expanding, the amount of entropy in a cubic mile of average space is, in fact, decreasing. This does not contradict the law of increasing entropy because the expansion of the universe creates so many more cubic miles all the time that the total amount of entropy can increase while the amount per cubic mile can decrease.

What a marvelous device by the creator of the universe to make life possible! Because if the universe were not expanding, entropy would doom all life from the beginning!

Isaac Asimov went to some lengths to describe how entropy in fact allows for evolution and if anyone is interested I could dig up some of his musings on the subject for further consideration.

BobRyan's skepticism, we all know, has other roots than the science of thermodynamics. We shan't let him get away with unchallenged misstatements of fact about what science says, however.

 

Thanks, that was helpful.

For the record, what are you? Are you a Christian evolutionist and this is what your belief comes down to when trying to show that evolution is possible?
Are there examples of beneficial mutations that we've seen and know of? If you've already listed some of them I've missed it.

Gina

 

What reptiles have done this? Is a loss really a gain?
If their dark caves were destroyed or they were somehow driven out, is it just as likely that there would be another beneficial mutation and they'd redevelop eyes, and are there examples of that happening?
Gina

 

"It is you that must bend and twist the clear statement Asimov made when he said "THIS is what the 2nd law is all about""

Simple yes or no question.* Does your reference, in the sentences immediately following those you quote, tell the reader exactly why entropy is not a problem for evolution? Do you not think that this shows that you are twisting and selectively quoting Asimov?

"I gave an example of mutation - losing functionality and benefiting the organism."

Yes, your animal who finds itself living in a dark environment. So. tell me why there could not be a mutation that slightly increases the number of photo receptors in the animal's eye, enhancing his low light eyesight and making him more likely to survive. How would the chemicals know ahead of time that this mutation was not allowed? What about a mutation that slightly altered the light receiving chemical so that it was sensitive to a different range of wavelengths of light and better adapted it to low light. How would the chemicals know to not let this happen? How would the chemicals know not to allow any bioluminescent chemicals to develop? You say you allow beneficial mutations but then you arbitrarily exclude ones you do not like without an explanation of why.

"Asimov says that this applies to biological systems and Asimov GIVES that as the perfect example of "What entropy is all about". You respond "Wong Asimov! show me the equations to prove biological systems suffer decay due to entropy" (AS IF biological systems were not really composed of molecules and chemical reactions). Your approach is absurd UTEOTW. How do you expect to be taken seriously using that method? Here is an example with gass - PV=nRT affects the blowing up of a balloon and blood gasses equally well. Your approach is to deny the link between Biological systems and the chemical systems driven to equilibrium upon which they are based AS IF that is a compelling argument. "

Do you really understand thermodynamics, Bob? I have said, repeatedly as you continue to misquote me on this, that entropy and thermo apply to everything. But not in the way you suggest. Entropy has a large part to say in which reactions can happen spontaneously and which are thermodynamically favorable. We can use Gibb's free energy to tell us what these favorable reactions are and where their equilibrium will be. Great use of thermo. I have used thermo to make these predictions. If you say that thermo prevents evolution, then prove it. You cannot. Both because you have not studied thermodynamics and because thermodynamics does not prevent evolution. You are the one taking an "absurd" approach. You can do nothing but continue to throw your mined and incomplete quote out. There has yet to be a logical and critical discussion of what exactly about entropy you think prevents evolution.

* I think the true answer here is the third answer. "I do not know because I have never read the reference. I am getting the quote from someone who quote mined it because I think it sounds good. He is the one who is not fully quoting Asimov. I bear no responsibility for not fact checking the source to see if it was a correct quote." This asertion is supported by the way you reference the quote. You say it was in the "Smithsonian Institution Journal." I do not believe there is such a journal. If you had the actual reference in front of you, you would have cited it correctly. According to the Smithsonian, the article in question appeared in Smithsonian magazine.

 

Beneficial mutations are seen often in the sense that we can tell that one came along. For example, it is a common occurance for a population of bacteria that have no resistance to peniccilin spontaneously develop resistance to it. Mutations were involved, but it is only in the past few decades that we actually have the tools to dig into the genome and say aha! THAT was the gene that changed! The same thing with insect resistance to DDT.

But when we look at the evidence of change over millions of years - it is plain that mutations had to play a part. For example, whales losing their hind legs, retaining only a scrap of bone or bones where they were and in some species of whales even that scrap is missing.

Obviously the former land animal had a few other mutations along the way to become transformed into the magnificent behemoth he is today.

The evidence that this all happened is in the vestigal scraps where the legs used to be, the transitional forms that have been uncovered, and ion the genetic relationships we have discovered through genetic analysis.

 

Gina

Yes there are many examples of benficial mutations. I listed about half a dozen a week or so ago in either this thread or the other one going on. I am headed to bed now, but I can answer more questions tomorrow if you wish.

 

Oh, I'm definately a Christian, have been all my life, and at church I play the piano, am elected Sunday School director, Deacon, on the faith team, . . . have tithed all my life.

Like UTEOTW, I want people who are torn between the truth of God and the truth of Science to realize these things are not truly in conflict.
It may be necessary to part with the particular interpretation presented by BobRyan but it is not necessary to part with God in order to accept the truths we have learned in the laboratory and in the field.

 

Bekenstein is also an evolutionist, like Asimov. Funny how all these people who truly understand entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics don't see it as any problem for evolution.

 

I've read about salamanders as well as fish loosing their eyes. You can see vestigal parts of the eyes in such cases, just as horses have vestigal shin splints, which harken back to their three-toed ancestors.

Here's a link to a picture of vestigal bones in whales:

http://www.epud.net/~richmond/science/science.htm