Hurricanes and Evolution

[ProbePhage]

For those of you who still think that "information" cannot be added to a system, what do you say about hurricanes? Here we have the chaos and "entropy" of the Earth's weather patterns, and out of that chaos evolves (yes, evolves) an extremely organized system with characteristics such as max wind speed, gusts, diameter, translation speed, etc. It is capable of absorbing warm water and gaining strength, and expending it upon land or cold water and thus losing strength. It is, like I said, an extremely organized weather system, that evolved out of "standard" chaos. In other words, "information" was added.

If this is possible, why not evolution?

 

[Logic]

No no, hurricanes can be explained by science because we can see them. You have to be able to observe it for it to be considered science. Millions of criminals have been convicted on false premises.

 

[nyjbarnes]

For those of you who still think that "information" cannot be added to a system, what do you say about hurricanes? Here we have the chaos and "entropy" of the Earth's weather patterns, and out of that chaos evolves (yes, evolves) an extremely organized system with characteristics such as max wind speed, gusts, diameter, translation speed, etc. It is capable of absorbing warm water and gaining strength, and expending it upon land or cold water and thus losing strength. It is, like I said, an extremely organized weather system, that evolved out of "standard" chaos. In other words, "information" was added.

If this is possible, why not evolution?

You are talking about wind, heat, and cool air coming together amongst moisture and forming a cyclical weather pattern.

It's not a living organism that is in the sense that it can't procreate. It's not very comparable. I can see how you can use the entropy theorem to establish the reverse of disorder to order. But I don't see how you can think that a hurricane would be evidence on that sole point alone, would constitute evidence for evolution.

Logic, even for an evolutionist, you should be ashamed for even alluding to agreeing with him.

 

[funyun]

You are talking about wind, heat, and cool air coming together amongst moisture and forming a cyclical weather pattern.

It's not a living organism that is in the sense that it can't procreate. It's not very comparable. I can see how you can use the entropy theorem to establish the reverse of disorder to order. But I don't see how you can think that a hurricane would be evidence on that sole point alone, would constitute evidence for evolution.

Logic, even for an evolutionist, you should be ashamed for even alluding to agreeing with him.

He's not saying it's evidence of evolution at all. What he's saying is that the ridiculous Creationist argument that complexity can't arise on its own is ridiculous.

Anyway, a hurrican grows and it reacts to it environment, two essential characteristics of living things.

 

[ProbePhage]

You are talking about wind, heat, and cool air coming together amongst moisture and forming a cyclical weather pattern.

It's not a living organism that is in the sense that it can't procreate. It's not very comparable. I can see how you can use the entropy theorem to establish the reverse of disorder to order. But I don't see how you can think that a hurricane would be evidence on that sole point alone, would constitute evidence for evolution.

Thank you funyun. nyjbarnes, with your automatic defenses you have read my post completely wrong. I was not posting evidence for evolution, but was destroying the creationist argument that complexity can't arise on its own.

 

[awstar]

Thank you funyun. nyjbarnes, with your automatic defenses you have read my post completely wrong. I was not posting evidence for evolution, but was destroying the creationist argument that complexity can't arise on its own.

Are you including the destruction of life and property (existing complexity) inside or outside your model for evolved complexity?

 

[Nathan Poe]

Are you including the destruction of life and property (existing complexity) inside or outside your model for evolved complexity?

Irrelevent. Humans are complex, and they destroy life and property (existing complexity) all the time.

 

[Remus]

Here we have the chaos and "entropy" of the Earth's weather patterns, and out of that chaos

A compelling argument, however you do have one flaw. The earth's weather patterns are not chaotic, but only have the appearance of some randomness due to our lack of understanding. They are actually quite ordered. So hurricanes are just order from order.

 

[ego licet visum]

For those of you who still think that "information" cannot be added to a system, what do you say about hurricanes? Here we have the chaos and "entropy" of the Earth's weather patterns, and out of that chaos evolves (yes, evolves) an extremely organized system with characteristics such as max wind speed, gusts, diameter, translation speed, etc. It is capable of absorbing warm water and gaining strength, and expending it upon land or cold water and thus losing strength. It is, like I said, an extremely organized weather system, that evolved out of "standard" chaos. In other words, "information" was added.

If this is possible, why not evolution?

No stupid, God creates hurricanes to smite the evildoers in Florida! Duh....

 

[Aeschylus]

To be honest I think the OP is as confused as the creationists on this one.

The problem is that people unfamliar with thermodynmaics, particularly creationists often think that the the second law of thermodynamics is: "Things tend from a state of order to disorder"; there are sevral ways of staing the second la,w but this is not the second law of tehrmodynamics, it is infact a precis of the second law and not a particularly good one at that. It does not bother them that this precis is meaningless without a rigourous scientific defintion of 'order' and disorder' that is consistent with the actual second law of thermodynamics.

Infact there is no rigorous defitnion of order and disorder, so you simply cannot use this staemnt to draw any conclusions whatsoever. if you were todefine ordr and disoreder in a way that is consitent with thermodynamics, you must realize that this defintion does not correspond to the general dictionary defintion of the words 'order' and 'diorder' as there is nothing to stop a pile of rocks with no apparent order being more 'ordered' than a house.

Creationists have tried to define 'order' as 'complexity', this is complete rubbish as by any reasonable defintion of complexity (complexity is not rigorously defined either, but I feel that a reasonable defintion would be the number of microstates of a sysetm) 'disordered' systems are more 'complex' than 'ordered' systems. They have also tried to coopt Shannon's information theory to say that the information of a syetm can never increase, but this simply shows thta they don't even know what information theory is! Shannon's information theory is not about general trends in general systems, it is simply about the transmission of a signal. Infact in more general defintions of information whih usuually involve microstates the amount of information always increases!

I would like to see how creationists, jusing their pseudosceintific version of 'entropy' can explain self-organising molecules - molecules that order themsleves into patterens.



Also Remus the earth's waether patterns are chaotic, chaos theory (which in general studies sytems that are extermely sensitive to inital conditons) actually has alot of it's origins in the study of weather patterns.

 

[awstar]

Irrelevent. Humans are complex, and they destroy life and property (existing complexity) all the time.

Wouldn't that be scientific evidence that the human species is actually devolving, rather than evolving?

 

[Aeschylus]

Wouldn't that be scientific evidence that the human species is actually devolving, rather than evolving?

No it isn't anything of the sort, also there is no such thing as devolution in biology the only time I've herad the word is in reference to consitiutional affairs.

 

[ProbePhage]

No stupid, God creates hurricanes to smite the evildoers in Florida! Duh....

Indeed! Actually, I have a funny story about that. I live in Orlando, and a couple days ago, in our newspaper The Orlando Sentinel, governor Jeb Bush was quoted as saying that there's nothing we can do about all these hurricanes and the best we can do is pray, and that he himself planned on praying for Ivan to change course.

Well, Ivan did change course. Instead of hitting the Florida Keys and going up the state, the latest predictions have it going around the keys, gaining strength in the Gulf, and hitting Tallahassee head-on.

I shouldn't be laughing, but I am.

 

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Why is that funny?

Predictions of hurricane's paths are just that: predictions. While weather prediction methods may be quite sophisticated, where there is chaos there is always uncertainty. Yes?

Point is, you could just as easily roll dice to see if the hurricane will hit. Then when your dice roll result is confirmed by the hurricane you could claim the dice have godlike powers.