How Evolution Gained Prominence

[Bushido216]

Actually, your statement is patently false. If it were true that a closed system is required for 2LoTD to break down order into chaos, then cars sitting in a field would not rust, because they are in an open system. the fact is they do rust, as they are broken down from the transfer of energy from the elements in the atmosphere to the metal. That energy becomes unusable, and thus the 2LoTD holds true for an open system.

The same is true for such things as erosion. Rivers, lakes, and mountains are all part of an open system, according to your definition. Yet the actions of the water's energy on the mountain reduces the mountain over time, and the energy used for that work becomes forever unusable.

Also, the earth may indeed be an open system, but the universe is a closed system. So your argument fails on two levels. However, the fact that 2LoTD works marvelously in an open system is the real reason what you have said cannot be true.

Those aren't biotic processes. In a biotic process energy is wasted in the form of heat energy and, as you said, is basically lost forever. However, the sun bleeds energy off and we catch some of it. It is used by photosynthetic organisms and cold-blooded organisms to create food (stored energy) or to do work (move themselves about in order to gain food). In this sense, the sun and the earth are their own system within a system. While the universe may be a closed system there is nothing against a local system (the sun and the earth) increasing in energy so long as the net across the entire system follows the correct trends.

Biotic processes use the energy bleeding off from the sun to fuel their processes in lieu of the heat energy they, themselves, are bleeding off.

knaamasaying?

 

[LewisWildermuth]

Actually, order always degrades to chaos in closed sysems.

It may happen in open systems, but that is not always the case.

I would have to disagree, remember, most in this forum are using a layman’s definition of chaos.



After a universe enters heat death, all heat will be evenly spread, all energy will also be evenly spread, that is a very ordered system, not chaotic at all in layman’s terms.


It may not be the type of order we would prefer, but it is a very ordered system.

 

[Agape Theos]

I am truly sorry, Freodin, I did not realize I typed the wrong name. I posted my response to Forerunner, but couldn't remember who I was responding to. I typed your name, and was way off. I didn't see my mistake until tonight, and I have already typed two responses addressed mainly to you.

Your statements were not blithely made, and I am sorry to have accused you of that.

I was intending to respond, as I said, to Forerunner, who did make statements about amino acids and 2LoTD.

Also, to all the rest of you, I did not mean to sound as sharp as I did when I wrote. It came out that way, and I should have done a better job editing. Usually I am more gentile in my wording.

Anyway... I don't have much time. As someone asked if I was too busy to provide links...yes I am very busy. I am in either school or in the library all morning, and I work 9-10 hours a day until about 10:30 at night. I only have time to truly debate on the weekends. This means I probably won't be able to type a real response, with links and/or bibliography, until about Friday night.

I will do my best to get it done. I'll try to answer most of what has been asked or said directly to me. This includes more detail about amino acids, my definition for the 2nd law of thermodynamics (a paraphrase of what my books say, I assure you) and why I think these lead to a creationist's conclusion. It will probably be very long.

 

[yossarian]

Amino acids come in two flavors, right-handed an left-handed, what is called chirality. Out of 200 known amino acids, only 20 are benificial to life, and of those 20 only the left-handed ones can be used to manufacture proteins that living things use. If one single wrong-handed amino acid is introduced to the process, then the whole protien structure breaks down. In the proposed primordial sea scenerio, there would have been an even mixture of both charilities among amino acids. This has been shown repeatedly in lab experiments by evolutionists.

1: Nature. 2001 Feb 15;409(6822):797-801. Related Articles, Links

Comment in:

* Nature. 2001 Feb 15;409(6822):777-8.

Click here to read
A chiroselective peptide replicator.

Saghatelian A, Yokobayashi Y, Soltani K, Ghadiri MR.

Department of Chemistry, and Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.

The origin of homochirality in living systems is often attributed to the generation of enantiomeric differences in a pool of chiral prebiotic molecules, but none of the possible physiochemical processes considered can produce the significant imbalance required if homochiral biopolymers are to result from simple coupling of suitable precursor molecules. This implies a central role either for additional processes that can selectively amplify an initially minute enantiomeric difference in the starting material, or for a nonenzymatic process by which biopolymers undergo chiroselective molecular replication. Given that molecular self-replication and the capacity for selection are necessary conditions for the emergence of life, chiroselective replication of biopolymers seems a particularly attractive process for explaining homochirality in nature. Here we report that a 32-residue peptide replicator, designed according to our earlier principles, is capable of efficiently amplifying homochiral products from a racemic mixture of peptide fragments through a chiroselective autocatalytic cycle. The chiroselective amplification process discriminates between structures possessing even single stereochemical mutations within otherwise homochiral sequences. Moreover, the system exhibits a dynamic stereochemical 'editing' function; in contrast to the previously observed error correction, it makes use of heterochiral sequences that arise through uncatalysed background reactions to catalyse the production of the homochiral product. These results support the idea that self-replicating polypeptides could have played a key role in the origin of homochirality on Earth.

PMID: 11236988 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

theres more if you'd care to look
I think theres also an article on homochirality being selected for by UV light

 

[caravelair]

I think theres also an article on homochirality being selected for by UV light

here's an article about that:

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/AAO/local/www/jab/chirality.html