The Big Bang Theory

**Smacks himself repeatedly with a hammer for being dumb enough to be sucked back into this**

All lurkers out there - please take one college level physics and chemistry course to learn exactly why Jep is completely wrong here.

Believe what you want about your arguments Jep - they obviously are good enough to convince you of something, though I think that says more about you then it does about the strength of your arguments.

Bye - I've waste far too much time on this already.

“All lurkers out there - please take one college level physics and chemistry course to learn exactly why Jep is completely wrong here.”

JEP: All lurkers out there please use a little common sense and understand that if I were wrong, a PhD level physicist wouldn’t storm off in a huff. He would be eager to take each point apart and show the forum HOW I am wrong. He cannot do so, or he would do so. Learn to defend your faith against the asinine arguments of the secular humanists. Their inane opinions go against the most basic laws of science and they will quickly fold if you but shine a flashlight on their rhetoric.

”Believe what you want about your arguments Jep”

JEP: Thank you, I will.

”Bye - I've waste far too much time on this already.”

JEP: No, what you just did was lose a debate in about 5 posts. I quite fairly warned you that you would look silly if you chose to debate an IDist in this area. You wouldn’t listen and made me follow through. But just because we can’t agree professionally does not mean we have to hate each other. Get over this. Your ego will recover. Love to you, brother in the human race.

Joe: "3. The 2nd Law no more prohibits evolution from single-celled to large organisms than it prohibits the a zygote into developing into an adult human."

JEP: "Care to explain why this is true and what energy that speciation imports to overcome SLOT??"

I doubt he wants to bother. I, on the other hand, find much entertainment in debating christians. I'll go slowly (i.e., lots of paragraph separations) so that you can interrupt me at any time when I make a statement you disagree with.

Your contention is that the theory of evolution breaks (?) SLOT. Correct?

Your evidence for said contention is that progress from single-celled organisms, to simple multicellular organisms, to complex multicellular organisms, requires an overall decrease of entropy in the system, which breaks SLOT. Correct?

Based on the assumptions that:
1) You've already stated that the earth is a non-closed system, and, therefore, there is constant energy transferrence to and from the earth; and
2) Genetic evolution is a result of mutation, allowing natural selection, larger gene pools, et cetera; and
3) Radiation causes mutation;

We can come to the conclusion that energy introduced into our subsystem (earth) from other parts of the system itself (universe) in the form of radiation, although causing no net increase of entropy throughout the system itself, can (and does) cause genetic evolution.

If anyone sees flaws in my logic, please point them out with evidentiary support.

Today at 04:32 AM Jeptha said this in Post #95 So you don’t see how definitions of SLOT that apply only to closed systems when we are dealing only with open ones are not helpful?

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What? The Kelvin-Planck and Clausius statements refer to heat reservoirs! Only apply to closed systems? Cobblers.

You don’t see how definitions of SLOT that deal only with heat when we may not be looking at a heat system are not helpful?

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Of course we're looking at a heat system. This is thermodynamics we're talking about. You can add degrees of freedom, by considering systems with nonzero chemical potential or charge for instance, but it's still thermodynamics. Now, if you meant that we're dealing not with thermodynamic entropy, but rather the information equivalent, then we're no longer talking second law at all. Some informational entropies obey analogous laws, others do not. But that's a whole new ball game. You seem to be a touch confused here.

Hmmmm….Are you lost, Martin? We don’t care if a reaction or event is spontaneous or non-spontaneous

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Then why did you bring it up?

Yesterday at 10:40 PM Jeptha said this in Post #96

“As you have noted, energy can be used to reverse the entropy of a system. As the Earth and its biosphere are an open system (the Sun provides energy), complex systems are allowed to develop without violating the SLOT.”

JEP: You are oversimplifying this, Frag. It is true that in certain few cases the Sun can order matter. The photosynthetic process in plants is one good example. But in most cases, the sun actually works to increase entropy. When the sun hits a frozen pond, it melts it and the pond becomes more disordered. When the sun hits your car, the paint peels and the dashboard cracks. That’s why I asked Joe to go stand out in the sun for a few days and report back on how much younger he got. It just don’t work this way in animals. It wouldn't done anything to order speciation, either.

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The sun provides energy for life to become more complex through photosynthesis. This energy is passed from plants to other organisms.

It is basically the same as using solar energy to power a refrigerator, but using carbohydrates instead of electricity.

Jeptha,

go forth and buy a few grams of KCl. Toss it into water. You will notice two things.
Water getting cold and KCl solving.

Buy a flask of concentrated ammonia. Get a glass, pour some of it into it and let it stand. Glass gets cold.

Two examples of impossibilites according to your "theories" (no spontaneous endothermic reactions)

Why don't you tell the nice folks at THIS board all about entropy and heat as it pertains to biological organisms.

If you are too shy, and don't want to impress us too much, I can go ahead and post your thoughts on this matter, whihc I have archived.

JEP: No, what you just did was lose a debate in about 5 posts. I quite fairly warned you that you would look silly if you chose to debate an IDist in this area. You wouldn’t listen and made me follow through. But just because we can’t agree professionally does not mean we have to hate each other. Get over this. Your ego will recover. Love to you, brother in the human race.

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To Jeptha

You are the one who looks silly to those of us who know some thermodynamics. You haven't yet managed to look as silly here as you did on ARN but I expect you will get around to it in time.

All lurkers out there please use a little common sense and understand that if I were wrong, a PhD level physicist wouldn’t storm off in a huff. He would be eager to take each point apart and show the forum HOW I am wrong. He cannot do so, or he would do so. Learn to defend your faith against the asinine arguments of the secular humanists. Their inane opinions go against the most basic laws of science and they will quickly fold if you but shine a flashlight on their rhetoric.

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To Lurkers,

Apparently Joe doesn't want to spend a virtually endless amount of time correcting Jeptha's many errors. Maybe other will. Good luck.  Jeptha uses such a combination of things that are either correct but irrelevant or that sound correct and are wrong or are obviously wrong and in some cases backwards that it does take quite a bit of time to sort through them all.  He posted enough last night that it would take several hours to write a post refuting his claims in detail and correcting his errors. He is also a consumate nitpicker as some have already observed. Ask the people who spent months trying to straighten out his twisted thermo on ARN last year if you don't believe me.


To repeat the question for Jeptha and that subset of creationist who believe that the second law prevents evolution; 

What specific step required for macroevolution is prevented by the second law of thermodynamics?

Jep has not answered this question and neither has any other creationist.  All you see are hand waving arguments about information and complexity.  We all understand that evolution occurs in an open system where local decreases in entropy can occur.  Evolution requires a series of things to occur including mutations and natural selection. None of the required steps can be shown to violate the second law so evolution can't be shown to violate the second law.  End of story. 

To those debating Jeptha 

I hope you are having fun because as I said before you are wasting your time. A case in point, Jeptha was given many examples of spontaneous endothermic reactions during the debate on ARN and here he still says that he learned in Freshman Chemistry that they don't exist. You have to understand that Jep's definition of spontaneous is apparently not the definition that you are familiar with from studying chemistry. You may think that spontaneous means that the reaction will occur spontaneously when the ingredients are mixed. I guess it means that to nearly everyone but not to Jeptha. He is like Humpty Dumpty

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." 

 "The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."


   "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master—that's all."
from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

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By Jep's definition if a reaction has to absorb heat to proceed it is not spontaneous. At least here he has a definition, even if different from the logical definition that is normally used. He was completely clueless about this when it came up on ARN and he bugged out not long after that. 

The Frumious Bandersnatch

Ask the people who spent months trying to straighten out his twisted thermo on ARN last year if you don't believe me.

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As someone who debated Jeptha at ARN and even before in another forum (where his nickname was JEP), I can confirm that Jepodynamics, as it has been called many times there,  is indeed quite different from thermodynamics.

 

Thank you for the warning. I shall shake off the dust of this willed ignorance and move on to something productive.

“Your contention is that the theory of evolution breaks (?) SLOT. Correct?”

JEP: No. My contention is that man did not morph from a single celled critter via a billion speciations each more complex than its predecessor. This is what SLOT disallows. Not evolution, but complex macroevolution.

”Your evidence for said contention is that progress from single-celled organisms, to simple multicellular organisms, to complex multicellular organisms, requires an overall decrease of entropy in the system, which breaks SLOT. Correct?”

JEP: That one’s pretty good.

”1) You've already stated that the earth is a non-closed system, and, therefore, there is constant energy transferrence to and from the earth;”

JEP: Earth is an open system but I don’t really think there is anyone I’ve discussed this with thus far on the board that really understands these systems, so please allow me to define them: An open system can freely exchange both matter and energy with its surroundings. A closed system can exchange energy with its surroundings but not matter. An enclosed greenhouse is a good example of a closed system. And an isolated system can exchange neither energy or matter with its surroundings. Isolated systems do not exist in reality and I can assure you that Carnot’s steam engines were NOT isolated systems as they thought in the 1840s.

”2) Genetic evolution is a result of mutation, allowing natural selection, larger gene pools, et cetera;”

JEP: Mutation is not all that causes evolution but it seems to be the leading contender among evolutionary biologists. And let’s just define evolution as a change in the gene pool of a population over time

“3) Radiation causes mutation;”

JEP Radiation is ONE resource of mutations, yes.

”We can come to the conclusion that energy introduced into our subsystem (earth) from other parts of the system itself (universe) in the form of radiation, although causing no net increase of entropy throughout the system itself, can (and does) cause genetic evolution.”

JEP: This is but one source of mutations. But you are missing the big picture. If radiation causes mutations, this is disorder from order. Logical entropy will increase.

“Of course we're looking at a heat system. This is thermodynamics we're talking about.”

JEP: That one is funny. What are you going to do with logical entropy and informational entropy that has not a thing to do with heat?

“Now, if you meant that we're dealing not with thermodynamic entropy, but rather the information equivalent, then we're no longer talking second law at all.”

JEP: This is funny too. Here. Please do some reading and bring yourself up to snuff on this subject. Although this author is a bit confused on closed systems, he does have a good grasp of the three kinds of entropy:
http://www.fm/7-sphere/supp/supp17.htm

“You seem to be a touch confused here.”

JEP: *chuckle* You think its me, huh?

JEP: This is but one source of mutations. But you are missing the big picture. If radiation causes mutations, this is disorder from order. Logical entropy will increase. [/B]

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A mutation is not disorder, it is merely a change. For point mutations, if you have a certain amount of nucleotide bases or a gene that becomes mutated, it is still the same number of bases or one gene, just with a different set of bases.

For other types of mutation, such as a substitution, information is rearranged or copied wholesale.

Deletion, another type of mutation, is a simple removal of information, not a change in entropy. Is the number 2 less ordered than the number 3?

“The sun provides energy for life to become more complex through photosynthesis. This energy is passed from plants to other organisms.”

JEP: Frag, you’re still just a little confused on this. Clausius was one of the fathers of thermodynamics and was quite the free thinker. One day he envisioned in his mind a water-wheel that was four foot wide setting under a dam being turned by a falling stream of water that was 8 feet wide. 4 feet of this stream of water was missing the wheel. So what kind of energy was this water that missed the wheel? It certainly was not energy to his system, the water-wheel. He then named this energy, entropy—a word similar to energy, but noting it to be distinct from energy. He then defined his new word as: Entropy: “Energy that is not available for work.” This was our first entropy and we cannot confuse energy with entropy as they are not the same bananna in the same system.

”It is basically the same as using solar energy to power a refrigerator, but using carbohydrates instead of electricity.”

JEP: But again you are confusing energy with entropy. The body uses energy just as a car uses gasoline: to function. But the process of the body imputting this energy actually raises entropy in the body. The more you eat the quicker you will die. Let me show you why.

The body cannot directly use this energy in the form of food, so it takes the sugars in this food and breaks it down into phosphates called ATP and ADP via this formula:

C6H12O6 + 6O2 -------------------> 6CO2 + 6H2O + 38 ATP

Now we have ATP that can be used directly by the body for energy at the cellular level; and every time you lift your arm you use up a million molecules of ATP or so. So how does this raise entropy?

It raises entropy because whenever heat is raised in a system thermodynamical entropy must rise.

The above reaction is an exothermic reaction that puts off heat when it reacts. In fact it lets off 7 kcal of heat per mole of ATP produced.

Are you with me now? This is the simplified version and we can get into the biochemical coupled reactions in cellular respiration should anyone care to be bored to death.

“Two examples of impossibilites according to your "theories" (no spontaneous endothermic reactions)”

JEP: I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. I have never asserted there is no such thing as spontaneous reactions that lower entropy and endothermic reactions that raise entropy, they are just rare.

This is the very reason I worded my definition of SLOT so carefully: With any spontaneous reaction or process, entropy will “TEND” to increase. Do you see the “TEND” in there? This means it won’t happen 100% of the time, but it will most of the time (Maybe 99%???).

“Why don't you tell the nice folks at THIS board all about entropy and heat as it pertains to biological organisms.

If you are too shy, and don't want to impress us too much, I can go ahead and post your thoughts on this matter, whihc I have archived.”

JEP: Well paint me red and call me a barn. I would recognize those two sentences anywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the distinguished Dr. Scott Page a biology professor at Norwich University (Mr. moderator: Neither Scott nor myself care about keeping our true identities secret on the Internet).

Scott likes to follow me around the Internet and collect my writings. He once actually featured the dum kreationist Jep on the home page of Norwich University but I think they made him take it off.

Scott is really confused in the realm of science and he so misunderstands my musings on thermodynamical entropy that he thinks we ought to be able to take the temperature of a baby and an 80 year old man and observe a massive temperature change. Why don’t you go into that for the forum, Scott.

“As someone who debated Jeptha at ARN and even before in another forum (where his nickname was JEP), I can confirm that Jepodynamics, as it has been called many times there, is indeed quite different from thermodynamics.”

JEP: Welcome, Oliver. For those of you who don’t know Oliver, he is a thermodynamicist living in France. Oliver is a great guy but seldom will he actually attempt to take even one of my posits and refute it. Oliver’s main problem is that he seems to have his head stuck in one of Carnot’s steam engines and simply cannot see the big picture of thermo. I don’t hold that against him, though.

“Is the number 2 less ordered than the number 3?”

JEP: Neither number is any more or less ordered than the other. It took the same amount of energy to type both of them into your computer.

“A mutation is not disorder, it is merely a change. For point mutations, if you have a certain amount of nucleotide bases or a gene that becomes mutated, it is still the same number of bases or one gene, just with a different set of bases.”

JEP: Although there are a few beneficial mutations we can think of, by and large most mutations are harmful ones. Dr. Eyre-Walker of Sussex University (I think) recently completed a study that shows the human genome to be degrading at the rate of about two harmful mutations per generation:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/mutation990127.html

What this means is that the human genome is disordering rapidly and will in the future become so disorganized that homo sapien will no longer be able to function. We will enter a phenomenon known biologically as mutational meltdown where the species rapidly goes into extinction.

This is not order or even neutral. This is stark disorder. Any time you have mutations changing healthy genetic tissue into something else, the organism will eventually suffer.

Today at 08:58 PM Jeptha said this in Post #112 That one is funny. What are you going to do with logical entropy and informational entropy that has not a thing to do with heat?

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I addressed those in the very next sentence. Pay attention.

This is funny too

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I don't suppose you'd care to explain exactly what you find funny about it?

JEP: Neither number is any more or less ordered than the other. It took the same amount of energy to type both of them into your computer.

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That was more or less what I was implying.

JEP: Although there are a few beneficial mutations we can think of, by and large most mutations are harmful ones. Dr. Eyre-Walker of Sussex University (I think) recently completed a study that shows the human genome to be degrading at the rate of about two harmful mutations per generation:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/mutation990127.html

What this means is that the human genome is disordering rapidly and will in the future become so disorganized that homo sapien will no longer be able to function. We will enter a phenomenon known biologically as mutational meltdown where the species rapidly goes into extinction.

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Of course, mutations are bound to occur. This is predicted and required by the theory of organic evolution. DNA copying is over 99% accurate, but there must be a small margin for error that allows evolution to occur.

The example of the human genome propagating harmful or neutral mutations is not significant overall, because medical technology has eliminated natural selection in humans. Any species that do not have the benefit of such technology are subject to natural selection, the evolutionary mechanism for regulating harmful mutations.

This is not order or even neutral. This is stark disorder. Any time you have mutations changing healthy genetic tissue into something else, the organism will eventually suffer.

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My purpose in the previous post was to show that each individual mutation is, in itself, thermodynamically neutral.

I'm not sure what you're arguing. Are you saying that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics?