DR Faulkner has a new article where he attempts to revive the old argument that the second law of thermodynamics (2LoT) prevents abiogenesis and evolution. Most of the article recaps a physics textbook for the definitions, and then updates a few old probability based claims against evolution*, relating them to 2LoT. BUT THEN IT GETS INTERESTING; Faulkner gives a summary of Creationist beliefs starting with Whitcomb and Morris and working up through the 1970s. There was quite a lot of debate about just when and how 2LoT began and how it may have selectively applied.
* Those probability claims could also be used to prove that anything even slightly interesting cannot exist, and that it’s impossible you are reading this sentence right now. It always amazes me that someone like Faulkners, who can obviously do the math, doesn’t take the next step to consider the consequences of their own conclusion.
I’m looking at the PDF that I found by following your link. I’m on a page with the page number 208 (at top left). In the right hand column, I find:
So this is where Faulkner is assuming design. That is followed by essentially circular reasoning to show that there must be design.
But it is wrong. Such machinery does arise spontaneously. The weather systems that we experience (hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornados) have regions of decreased entropy. The driver of these is presumably the energy from the sun and the rotation of the earth.
Admittedly, those regions of decreased entropy are relatively short lived. But volcanoes and underwater thermal vents provide longer lasting thermodynamic activity. I’ll note that origin of life researchers are looking at these natural thermodynamic processes as possible starting points for life to get going.
Faulkner accuses evolutionists of dismissing Paley’s argument for design with a wave of the hand. But here, Faulkner is dismissing well known observed natural phenomena without even a wave of the hand.