From morbius@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu Wed Jun 28 14:43:13 EDT 1995
Article: 189634 of alt.atheism
Path: newsfeed.pitt.edu!minerva!morbius
From: morbius@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu (Edouard Morbius)
Newsgroups: talk.origins,alt.atheism,sci.physics
Subject: Re: 2nd law of thermo and evolution
Date: 27 Jun 1995 21:10:41 GMT
Organization: Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh

In article <3scg4k$ci3@sun4.bham.ac.uk> Rehan Ahmad <ahmadr@eee.bham.ac.uk> writes:
[snip]
|magidin@beirut.berkeley.edu (Arturo Magidin) wrote:
|>Why? Why? Why? Why are people ->this<- stupid?
|>
|>For those who think the 2nd law of thermodynamics somehow applies
|>to the evolution debate, please go to your nearest wall and hit your
|>head until a hole develops. Maybe some sense will fall in.
|>
|>2nd Law talks about closed systems. Last time I checked, the
|>Earth wasn't a closed system.
|>
|
|This is not sufficient argument to say that since earth is not closed
|hence all anamolies are justified. It can be argued that there exists NO
|completely closed system. Does it mean 2nd law doesn't apply nowhere!

This is pure Creationist obscurantist bullshit. Entropy can decrease
locally at the expense of a correspondingly greater entropy increase
elsewhere.  This is *not* an "anomaly"; this is exactly what happens here
on Earth. Each day the Earth absorbs energy from the Sun and radiates the
same amount of energy back into space. However, because the surface
temperature of the Sun is ~5800K while that of the Earth is only ~300K,
the entropy absorbed is much smaller than the entropy radiated away (check
out _Physics of Climate_, by Peixoto and Oort, for entropy balance
calculations).  Thus, the Earth loses a vast quantity of entropy each day,
so there is no conflict between the 2nd law and evolution. 


Edouard Morbius