Evolution and Entropy

Now you made me find the time stamp where he talks about it. I set it to the beginning of that section https://youtu.be/RJeUH7IhQHo The video description has the rest of the time stamps. Let’s see if I can summarize: The tornado shows a state of low entropy or self-organization but at the molecular state you’re generating entropy. Then he talks about equilibrium (I didn’t understand that part) and that OoL is the modern day version of a perpetual motion machine. :upside_down_face: Now I don’t feel bad calling it embarrassing for scientists. Well, I didn’t before anyway. :blush:

Why do you think that scientists find unanswered questions embarrassing? Scientists love unanswered questions. That’s why people do PhDs, for starters. In fact, if there were no more unanswered questions, they’d be out of a job.

Scientific theories are not falsified by unanswered questions; they are only falsified by contradictory data. Unanswered questions only call a scientific theory into doubt if the theory predicts that they should have been answered by now. The origin of life does not fall into that category.

You’d really need to do the maths to demonstrate that to be the case.

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It’s not that it’s unanswered question, it’s the fact that they’re trying to answer it.

How doesn’t it? Life is ubiquitous on this planet. They have to make sure life doesn’t interfere with their experiment. Miller describes in the video how scientists in one paper realized the problems and appeals to selection. Exactly how does that work when nothing is replicating? Scientists aren’t even thinking logically.

I didn’t see that it had anything to do with math, just logic.

We’re talking about entropy and thermodynamics here. Just because old mate’s YouTube video claims that OoL violates the laws of thermodynamics doesn’t mean it does. Especially in the long history of flawed claims in this field. His argument is of the same kind.

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That’s fine. But I’d like you to actually give an argument for why he’s wrong, rather than just claiming he is.

Well of course they’re trying to answer it. That’s what people do with unanswered questions. As I said, it’s why people do PhDs, for starters. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.

Let’s put it this way. What, exactly, is falsified by the fact that we don’t know how life got started? More specifically, what, exactly, predicts that we should have an answer to that question by now, and how, exactly, does it make that prediction?

That’s because you’re going by an explanation of entropy that has been over-simplified to try and make it understandable to people with no mathematical background. Entropy is defined by precise mathematical equations, and you need to use illustrations, analogies and approximations to help people get at least some kind of understanding of what is going on. However, these will of necessity be over-simplifications, at best only approximate and at worst misleading. As will any logic that relies on it to draw a conclusion.

Maths isn’t intuitive. It is complex and technical and doesn’t always work in ways that you would intuitively expect. To give one example, most people believe that as the amount of information increases in a system, entropy decreases. Once you do the maths, however, it turns out that the exact opposite is the case: information and entropy are in fact one and the same.

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I’ve done research in the field of biochemistry, and I can tell you right now that is bovine excrement. There is energy going into those reactions, such as the energy from hot springs or solar energy. This allows for thermodynamically unfavorable reactions to occur.

Anyone who calls abiogenesis a “perpetual motion machine” or forbidden by thermodynamics should be embarrassed.

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If abiogenesis is forbidden by thermodynamics then so too is the continuation of life. They involve the same chemical reactions.

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I’ve already agreed with that point on this forum. Ask @Dan_Eastwood :wink:

Chemical evolution.

Life is everywhere. If it can some together on its own multiple times…

[No doubt there were many early cells of this type]
5.6: First Cells - Biology LibreTexts

…surely it can come together with the help of someone who can design an experiment and understands the absolute basics of what a cell needs to include to replicate.

Bacteria are all over. Surely then a simpler cell should arise easily by experiment.
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/bacteria-are-all-around-us-and-thats-okay.

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:clap: But we already have threads about GE.

Good. Then you’ll understand why “logic” is not a substitute for mathematics.

That is not an exact answer.

  1. What, exactly, do you mean by “chemical evolution”?
  2. How, exactly, does not knowing how life got started falsify it?

That only predicts that it got started somehow. It doesn’t predict that we should have figured out how.

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I’m not talking about inheritance of DNA. I am talking about the metabolic activities going on in all your cells on a second by second basis. Producing ATP from ADP requires a local reduction in entropy, and it happens all of the time in your cells. The conversion of CO2 and H2O into complex carbohydrates in plants (i.e. photosynthesis)is a local decrease in entropy. If that didn’t happen then there wouldn’t be complex life.

If life produces local decreases in entropy then there is nothing stopping the same thing happening outside of life. It is just that simple. Entropy is not a problem for the origin of life. Now, there could be other major hurdles, but entropy isn’t one of them.

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I already did, in the OP. Entropy increases in a closed system. Earth is not a closed system because of all that solar energy coming in. The chemical processes of abiogenesis were driven by that energy source, so there continues, in the closed system of the whole universe, to be a net increase in entropy, with local decreases. The argument has already been made, and his claims are made in either ignorance or dishonest exclusion of that non-closed nature of the systems described.

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This old saw again?? Even AiG gave up on this one years ago.

Seriously. No one seriously uses the 2LoT arguments against evolution. The answer is that energy is expended to maintain order, and TOTAL entropy still increases.

Looked for the old AiG article where they say this, but can’t find it. Maybe they recanted? :wink:

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This. Completely nonsensical assertion.

The 2nd law merely says that in so far as some subset of a system moves from higher to lower entropy, it will take energy to facilitate this, and most of it will be lost as heat.

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But we’d like you, just once, to actually provide some evidence to support your claim that you’re right and all of these working scientists are wrong.

What people claim in YouTube videos is not evidence.

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Granville Sewell started out by saying he was talking about the “Second Law” and then later saying he was talking about something like it, but appied to “order” and not to the distribution of thermal energy. He also always turns off comments or posts somewhere (ENV, for example) that does not allow comments. There have been multiple threads at TSZ and at PT about his assertions (just use Google: Granville Sewell Skeptical Zone or Google: Granville Sewell Panda’s Thumb. He also has impressive looking equations that say nothing much more than that when you have some substance that is spreading around by diffusion it can only be maintained in a local concentration by having more of it flowing in. The equations ignore chemical interactions between the substances, and chemistry is, well, kind of important to biology.

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And GE was shown to be a fantasy in those threads. And you didn’t understand half the arguments. But some guy “on your side” said science-sounding things and ended them with concluding assertions that stated the opposite, so I guess that’s it. You’re sold, the matter is solved to your satisfaction.

It’s always this same stupid routine. “Hey guys I saw this dude say this thing that I find confirming to my beliefs, so I instantly believed it and he doesn’t have to prove it right, he merely has to say it. So either prove him wrong or I’ll continue to believe he’s right with a level of conviction as if God Himself was using his flesh as a megaphone.”

Oh by the way, did you find Sanford’s references for those those sporulating viruses yet? How about those “natural reservoirs” where viruses magically replicate without mutating? You even been looking for those or did Sanford merely have to write it and that made it true?

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How do you know I didn’t understand them adequately even if I don’t explain myself well, and just didn’t think they were very good? I admitted where I thought Sanford could strengthen his argument. I am still considering the papers on epistasis and how that affects GE. I think it explains bacteria as far as I can tell.

No, that’s not true about me at all. The science presented should have predictive power. If I really was that gullible, I wouldn’t actually care about hearing what you have to say and wouldn’t spend time on this forum. I just don’t feel like paying attention to dead ends.

@T_aquaticus @ProfBravus we already have a thread here on Miller’s argument. Obviously I’m not the one to explain it, and it obviously was an argument beyond entropy. Brian Miller: Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life

Ooof: I am teaching 3 courses and managing major changes in our Department and moving my wife into a new office, and … and…

I absolutely do not have time to read about 10 papers and counterpapers to even make a start on the arguments.

Happy to find the time to read 1, and to receive suggestions as to which.

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