This is from my answer to this question on Yahoo Answers after seeing a lot of nonsense posted:
IT SEEMS THAT there is a bit of a misunderstanding on the full implications of the 2nd Law: It is not just about heat flow, but also about complexity. Things in this particular universe do not tend to move toward increasing complexity, but instead tend to go the other way (entropy). It has been shown that our DNA, due to the cosmic rays of the sun and other problems, is losing alleles (parts), causing more health problems and defects. Please don’t confuse micro-evolution (which absolutely occurs) with MACRO-evolution, which has never been seen/proven/evidenced. This is why we do not have millions of transitional fossils that would confirm macro-evolution. Many adaptations (like better oxygen usage) are simply embedded in the DNA and are not used until needed.
The problem has always been that there is both an energy gradient against complication AND mathematical impossibility for macro-evolution (just study the impossibility of the eye alone being produced by evolution). There are hundreds of animals, insects, and symbiotic relationships that absolutely preclude macro-evolution. When you study the debate, you will find that most people will discard the facts in order to avoid the alternative: that there must be some”God” out there that made it all and us. It is this conclusion that we are not our own god or that there even is a god that people hate to the extent of ignoring empirical evidence (including so-called scientists). If you simply forget the ‘god’ idea and look at the facts alone you will come to the inescapable conclusion that this universe could NOT just happen on its own – some intelligence designed and built it. If you want to believe it was aliens or God – no matter. The facts show what they show. Question: If you calculate the size of the sun’s size 10,000 years ago (reverse rate of shrinkage due to ‘burn-off’ of the fuel), would this earth be here? Answer: No way! In fact the more we look at all factors like this, whether in biology, chemistry, or astrophysics, we keep running up against that 10,000 year wall. Don’t accept my word for it – do the research, I challenge you! And YOU can decide what you want about God or aliens, or whatever…
For a very complete but readable book on much of this (and o really blow your mind), see Dr.Walt Brown’s ‘In the Beginning” (www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ )… Dr. Brown answers the questions using scientific inquiry and facts, not religion. If his work is not accurate, then why has NO-ONE stepped forward to answer his 20-year challenge to a written debate on the subject.
ADDENDUM:
As I was trying to imply at the beginning of this reply, the second law does not in itself disprove macro-evolution – rather it is the implications involving the inherent property we call entropy. The 2nd law creates a great pressure for things to go from order (high complexity) to disorder (lower complexity) through the ‘evening out’ of thermal energy.
Frank Steigler (1) makes a pretty good case to show that the 2nd law does NOT preclude macro-evolution, but then at the end of his paper uses the telling word in the whole debate: design. The 2nd law creates a “downward” pressure against things becoming more complex. Due to certain chemical reactions set in motion by DNA, etc. plants and animals (primarily) resist this pressure to create more complex structures (growth, micro-evolution). The energy to do this comes from our sun. However, in order to get the massive changes dictated by macro-evolution and actually overcome entropy to the extent needed to effect these changes an additional element is needed. That element is DESIGN. Pro-evolutionists propose that probability (chance) alone, given enough time, will be able to bring about these changes. The problem here is that the entropy pressure is so great that the probabilities are incredibly low. Without the addition of some guiding intelligence (design), any meaningful changes that do come about are inevitably destroyed by the entropy pressure before they can propagate enough to remain ‘viable’.
Creationist Duane Gish comments:
“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.” (Duane Gish, Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of California at Berkeley)(2)
Interestingly, the sun, which must provide the energy necessary for macro-evolution, is also its worst enemy – causing the destruction of these supposed changes through heat, cosmic rays, and ultraviolet light. The simple addition of energy is not enough to overcome entropy (the effects of the 2nd law). However, when you add the factor of design, then the probability of change is enormously higher. This is what happens when we build things: we may have lots of energy, but without proper direction of that energy (design), nothing will get built. The pressure of disorder is just too high to overcome.
In the end, you will find this debate is ongoing, with some scientists saying it doesn’t matter, and others saying it is of utmost importance. Changes like those proposed by Macro-Evolution are not impossible if you add the element of design and guidance, but macro-evolution IS the proposition that these changes happen spontaneously. If the 2nd Law was the only pressure against it I would allow that macro-evolution is indeed possible, as I once did, but there are too many other natural and scientifically validated reasons it cannot happen in our universe. Therefore I have come to reject it as having no scientific validity.
Source(s):
(1) cf – Frank Steiger www.talkorigins.org/faqs/therm…
(2) Duane Gish, “A Consistent Christian-Scientific View of the Origin of Life,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4 (March 1979), pp. 199, 186
The term “macroevolution” frequently arises within the context of the evolution/creation debate, usually used by creationists alleging a significant difference between the evolutionary changes observed in field and laboratory studies and the larger scale macroevolutionary changes that scientists believe to have taken thousands or millions of years to occur. They may accept that evolutionary change is possible within species (“microevolution”), but deny that one species can evolve into another (“macroevolution”). Contrary to this belief among the anti-evolution movement proponents, evolution of life forms beyond the species level (“macroevolution”, i.e. speciation in a specific case) has indeed been has been observed multiple times under both controlled laboratory conditions and in nature.
The criticism is rejected by the scientific community, which holds that there is ample evidence that macroevolution has occurred in the past. The terms macroevolution and microevolution as used in mainstream science relate to the same processes operating at different scales, but creationist claims misuse the terms in a vaguely defined way which does not accurately reflect scientific usage, acknowledging well observed evolution as “microevolution” and denying that “macroevolution” takes place. Evolutionary theory (including macroevolutionary change) remains the dominant scientific paradigm for explaining the origins of Earth’s biodiversity. Its occurrence is not disputed within the scientific community. While details of macroevolution are continuously studied by the scientific community, the overall theory behind macroevolution (i.e. common descent) has been overwhelmingly consistent with empirical data. Predictions of empirical data from the theory of common descent have been so consistent that biologists often refer to it as the “fact of evolution”.
Nicholas Matzke and Paul R. Gross have accused creationists of using “strategically elastic” definitions of micro- and macroevolution when discussing the topic. The actual definition of macroevolution accepted by scientists is “any change at the species level or above” (phyla, group, etc.) and microevolution is “any change below the level of species.” Matzke and Gross state that many creationist critics define macroevolution as something that cannot be attained, as these critics describe any observed evolutionary change as “just microevolution”.
For more information do some real research rather than just going to a creationist propaganda website.
As our science gets more refined (by the increase of data we can verify) evolution as an explanation of how life came about and how we ended up with the organs and species we have is being discredited – not the reverse. Certainly the mathematical probability of a successful evolutionary change is so small that any successful changes would most likely be negated by some other disadvantageous change or simply by extinction of that genetic line by predators, cataclysm, climate change, etc. The chances of the process of evolution “creating” the diversity and organs we see in nature is so small that to believe in such a process one must have much more faith in the process having occurred than is required by the belief in intelligent design. Science is not a force or a person, it is the study of our universe – and so far that study does not support a rational evolutionary theory as the explanation for said universe – especially when evolutionary theory must ignore the laws of physics to ‘work’. This does not seem to keep people from rather believing in evolution as a faith, which is what it is. It denies common sense.
To get a sense of the probabilities involved read “Can Evolution Produce an Eye? Not a Chance!
by David N. Menton, Ph.D.”
Here is an excerpt:
BTW, facepalm, science does validate the Intelligent Design theory, as much as it can, being “inside the box”. If you would do some “real” research you will discover the absolute impossibility of the earth’s biodiversity – and, indeed, life itself – having it’s origin through evolution alone. There had to be design and energy added to the equation. What you are spewing here is the kind of propaganda we are fighting. I fear you will soon be in the embarrassing position of finding yourself discredited, kind of like Al Gore…
I appreciate the efrfot you went to, to deconstruct Brownback’s op-ed. But I don’t think it is useful or effective or even accurate to characterize what he is putting out as based on ignorance of biology. You could sit Brownback down with a biology text and a tutor for a semester-long course, and he could earn an A in the course, and it would make no difference, because he isn’t interested in the biology, he’s interested in using theology to advance a political career. Also, in using politics to advance a theological worldview. The biology is irrelevant. He may believe it, he may not. Doesn’t matter. In fact, he concedes that evolution (of some sort) actually occurs he’s not an idiot, he’s not uneducated. But he knows how to talk so that the people he’s talking to, hear the message he wants to deliver. What matters, ultimately, for Brownback, is God, and he will find a way to reconcile everything else in life with that, even evolution; he can even manage to say in an op-ed Yes, evolution, but no, not really, it’s creationism . You can’t counter that kind of thinking with mere facts. It isn’t as if he’s ignorant of the facts, or as if you could just present him with a certain tipping point number of facts that would make him go oh! I see! Well, then, I must have been all wrong! My bad! For him, the consequences of being willing to accept evolution as a truth , as a worldview, are so dire, that evolution must be opposed as strongly as possible even if one knows that scientifically speaking it’s actually correct. What the ID folks are opposing is not scientific accuracy; they are opposing science as a worldview, as the primary way of understanding the world. Creationism makes Man (and I do mean Man, not woman) special in a way that evolution can never make him special, no matter what wonderful works of literature and art we produce. Evolution puts us beside the animals; Creationism gives us dominion over them, and makes us like God, not like apes. Creationism helps maintain patriarchy, the dominion of man over woman; evolution threatens the God-ordained wifely submission to her husband. I could go on it worries me that scientists are so often trying to do battle with creationists with facts, when the creationists are waging a war of ideas and worldviews.
First, I have no idea how you got the idea this had anything to do with Brownback, and, second, you state that creationists are waging a war of ideas and worldviews, completely ignoring the fact that those who oppose God and His Word, AND good science are similarly waging a war of ideas and worldviews against those who reasonably believe in a creationist model of origins.