What is Evolution?

[hamashiachagape]

Today I want to teach a word to Evolutionists. The word is called "equivocation."

I have a Scientist friend who holds a doctorate in Pharmacology and a Bachelors in Biology. His major problem with Evolution, is that all of the evidence that he learned in school does not support it!

So where are Evolutionists going wrong?

Lets take a close look. How would most people define Evolution?

Would most say this is an accurate understanding by most Evolutionists? "In biology, evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations. When a population splits into smaller groups, these groups evolve independently and develop into new species. .."

I would see this definition as "begging the question." How they are developing into new species is the question that must be asked. This is done genetically according to a proper definition. Now, most people stop with "Evolution is change." But the complete information infers an increase of DNA information. Because if Evolution were change, then Evolution would actually be Creation Science. We'd have an absurdity on our hands, a self refutation. Creation Scientist Edward Blythe discovered change within a species, called Variation (not Evolution), well before Darwin understood the concept. The problem as Dr. Jonathan Sarfati puts it is that Evolution involves a change that requires an increase of genetic information, and 100s of examples of this, where Evolution is giving us none.

Now I know what most are inclined to do. My friend answered this objection for me. You will try to utilize Penicillin and Penicillanase. Again, my Science friend rightfully declares after his 8 years of secular college courses in Science, that the DNA information required is moving in the wrong direction for Evolution to occur. He learned this, at his university. Who better to know this than a Pharmacologist, right? He also stated that this example would never have enough time for it to work, and there would be no way for Evolution to occur.

And as well, my science friend confirms as does Creation Ministries International, that Entropy refutes Evolution's ability to function. DNA information is moving in the wrong direction, and there is no increases in their functions, as Dr. Werner Gitt proves in his book "In the Beginning was Information." Dr. Lee Spetner, a Scientist who worked for John Hopkins also agrees with this study. And Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, a doctorate in Physical Chemistry (certainly not a study to yawn at) also concurs.

What is really going on? From the information I've obtained, it actually appears that Scientists are ignoring information that does not support their information in order to attempt to make their theory work. They simply are in denial of the rest of the information.

And so the question remains, how can this be Science? Especially since this denies core principles of the Scientific Method?

If that is what Science is, then I don't want to be associated with its intellectual dishonesty.

 

[hamashiachagape]

The real issue can be seen in the Equivocation when we define Natural Science. It is defined as such - the sciences involved in the study of the physical world and its phenomena

This does not preclude God. Creation Science is absolutely correct when they state they are understanding of what Science is.

However, Evolutionists take this a step further. They do not understand what Science is. Equivocating directly on the word Natural Science. They define Natural Science as this - the doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations

But those who are well studied in Philosophy know that this is not the definition of Natural Science. It is actually Naturalism.

 

[ciaphas]

Right, I get very annoyed whenever people start using entropy as an argument against evolution. Entropy is completely irrelevant, firstly, it refers to a closed system. This is not the case with evoltution. Secondly, the relevant application of entropy is to thermodynamic analysis. Using it in terms of macro-biology is like using bernoulli's equation to try to predict the path of the planets.

 

[hamashiachagape]

Right, I get very annoyed whenever people start using entropy as an argument against evolution. Entropy is completely irrelevant, firstly, it refers to a closed system. This is not the case with evoltution. Secondly, the relevant application of entropy is to thermodynamic analysis. Using it in terms of macro-biology is like using bernoulli's equation to try to predict the path of the planets.

Dr. Jonathan Sarfati states that it applies to an open system, as does my friend. Both confer on this next statement. There is absolutely no limit to its usage in Scientific terms.

Its your objection it seems that is actually irrelevant.

 

[hamashiachagape]

Lets see what Dr. Jonathan Sarfati had to state about your special pleading fallacy:

Question 1: Open Systems

‘Someone recently asked me about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, stating that they thought it was irrelevant to creation/evolution because the earth is not an isolated system since the sun is constantly pumping in more energy.
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‘This does seem to be a valid point—do creationists still use this argument? Am I missing something here?’
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Answer 1:


The Second Law can be stated in many different ways, e.g.:

• that the entropy of the universe tends towards a maximum (in simple terms, entropy is a measure of disorder)
• usable energy is running out
• information tends to get scrambled
• order tends towards disorder
• a random jumble won’t organize itself

It also depends on the type of system:

• An isolated system exchanges neither matter nor energy with its surroundings. The total entropy of an isolated system never decreases. The universe is an isolated system, so is running down— see If God created the universe, then who Created God? for what this implies.
• A closed system exchanges energy but not matter with its surroundings. In this case, the 2nd Law is stated such that the total entropy of the system and surroundings never decreases.
• An open system exchanges both matter and energy with its surroundings. Certainly, many evolutionists claim that the 2nd Law doesn’t apply to open systems. But this is false. Dr John Ross of Harvard University states:
  
  … there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. … There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.1
  ​

Open systems still have a tendency to disorder. There are special cases where local order can increase at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. One case is crystallization, covered in Question 2 below. The other case is programmed machinery, that directs energy into maintaining and increasing complexity, at the expense of increased disorder elsewhere. Living things have such energy-converting machinery to make the complex structures of life.
The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction. Just standing out in the sun won’t make you more complex—the human body lacks the mechanisms to harness raw solar energy. If you stood in the sun too long, you would get skin cancer, because the sun’s undirected energy will cause mutations. (Mutations are copying errors in the genes that nearly always lose information). Similarly, undirected energy flow through an alleged primordial soup will break down the complex molecules of life faster than they are formed.
It’s like trying to run a car by pouring petrol on it and setting it alight. No, a car will run only if the energy in petrol is harnessed via the pistons, crankshaft, etc. A bull in a china shop is also raw energy. But if the bull were harnessed to a generator, and the electricity directed a pottery-producing machine, then its energy could be used to make things.
To make proteins, a cell uses the information coded in the DNA and a very complex decoding machine. In the lab, chemists must use sophisticated machinery to make the building blocks combine in the right way. Raw energy would result in wrong combinations and even destruction of the building blocks.
I suggest that thermodynamic arguments are excellent when done properly, and the ‘open systems’ canard is anticipated. Otherwise I suggest concentrating on information content. The information in even the simplest organism would take about a thousand pages to write out. Human beings have 500 times as much information as this. It is a flight of fantasy to think that undirected processes could generate this huge amount of information, just as it would be to think that a cat walking on a keyboard could write a book.
For more information on mutation, variation and information, see our Question and Answer pages on these topics, or Refuting Evolution.
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Question 2: What about crystals?

To quote one anti-creationist, Boyce Rensberger:

If the Second Law truly prohibited local emergence of increased order, there would be no ice cubes. The greater orderliness of water molecules in ice crystals than in the liquid state is purchased with the expenditure of energy at the generator that made the electricity to run the freezer. And that makes it legal under the Second Law.2
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Answer 2:

Rensberger is ignorant of the creationist responses to this argument. An energy source is not enough to produce the specified complexity of life. The energy must be directed in some way. The ice cubes of his example would not form if the electrical energy was just wired into liquid water! Instead, we would get lots of heat, and the water breaking up into simpler components, hydrogen and oxygen.
The ice example is thermodynamically irrelevant to the origin of life. When ice freezes, it releases heat energy into the environment. This causes an entropy increase in the surroundings. If the temperature is low enough, this entropy increase is greater than the loss of entropy in forming the crystal. But the formation of proteins and nucleic acids from amino acids and nucleotides not only lowers their entropy, but it removes heat energy (and entropy) from their surroundings. Thus ordinary amino acids and nucleotides will not spontaneously form proteins and nucleic acids at any temperature.
Rensberger also fails to distinguish between order and complexity. Crystals are ordered; life is complex. To illustrate: a periodic (repeating) signal, e.g. ABABABABABAB, is an example of order. However, it carries little information: only ‘AB’, and ‘print 6 times’.
A crystal is analogous to that sequence; it is a regular, repeating network of atoms. Like that sequence, a crystal contains little information: the co-ordinates of a few atoms (i.e. those which make up the unit cell), and instructions ‘more of the same’ x times. If a crystal is broken, smaller but otherwise identical crystals result. Conversely, breaking proteins, DNA or living structures results in destruction, because the information in them is greater than in their parts.
A crystal forms because this regular arrangement, determined by directional forces in the atoms, has the lowest energy. Thus the maximum amount of heat is released into the surroundings, so the overall entropy is increased.
Random signals, e.g. WEKJHDF BK LKGJUES KIYFV NBUY, are not ordered, but complex. But a random signal contains no useful information. A non-random aperiodic (non-repeating) signal—specified complexity—e.g. ‘I love you’, may carry useful information. However, it would be useless unless the receiver of the information understood the English language convention. The amorous thoughts have no relationship to that letter sequence apart from the agreed language convention. The language convention is imposed onto the letter sequence.
Proteins and DNA are also non-random aperiodic sequences. The sequences are not caused by the properties of the constituent amino acids and nucleotides themselves. This is a huge contrast to crystal structures, which are caused by the properties of their constituents. The sequences of DNA and proteins must be imposed from outside by some intelligent process. Proteins are coded in DNA, and the DNA code comes from pre-existing codes, not by random processes.
Many scientific experiments show that when their building blocks are simply mixed and chemically combined, a random sequence results. To make a protein, scientists need to add one unit at a time, and each unit requires a number of chemical steps to ensure that the wrong type of reaction doesn’t occur. The same goes for preparing a DNA strand in a correct sequence. See Q&A: Origin of Life.
The evolutionary origin-of-life expert Leslie Orgel confirmed that there are three distinct concepts: order, randomness and specified complexity:

Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [L. Orgel, The Origins of Life, John Wiley, NY, 1973, p. 189]
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Even the simplest known self-reproducing life form (Mycoplasma) has 482 genes, and it must parasitize more complex organisms to obtain the building blocks it cannot manufacture itself. The simplest organism that could exist in theory would need at least 256 genes, and it’s doubtful whether it could survive.3 See How Simple Can Life Be?
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The Second Law of Thermodynamics: answers to critics

 

[hamashiachagape]

Are you willing to put your credibility on the line against a Harvard professor? Even going by your philosophy that "Scientists" are always right.....yeah, not going very well for you guys here.

You should find a new argument .

 

[shernren]

Firstly, I believe in the love of the Messiah too!

Now: What happens when, in my brain, I think up a new idea?

Has the entropy of the universe decreased, stayed constant, or increased?

Has the entropy of my brain decreased, stayed constant, or increased?

 

[metherion]

Quantize the specificity, make a unit, make it testable. Is it quantized? No. Is it testable? No. Is there anything besides 'geez, this looks complex?'? No.

Besides, the uses of the word 'information' in your post have nothing to do with thermodynamic information. You argument is... equivocating.


Metherion

 

[metherion]

Firstly, I believe in the love of the Messiah too!

Now: What happens when, in my brain, I think up a new idea?

Has the entropy of the universe decreased, stayed constant, or increased?

Has the entropy of my brain decreased, stayed constant, or increased?

Well, since thoughts are electrochemical responses in the brain, some neurochemical reaction must have taken place.

So, that being a reaction, the entropy of your brain increased or stayed the same, because dS >= 0. And thus the universe would have too. And since the idea in your brain is NOT RELATED AT ALL TO THE THERMODYNAMIC DEFINITION OF INFORMATION... it is irrelevant. Just like the codes talked about.

Metherion

 

[hamashiachagape]

Firstly, I believe in the love of the Messiah too!

Now: What happens when, in my brain, I think up a new idea?

Has the entropy of the universe decreased, stayed constant, or increased?

Has the entropy of my brain decreased, stayed constant, or increased?

The problem with this claim is that you are assuming A Priori (Philosophy, Logic and Theology as examples) to be A Posteriori. Evolution, if it is Science, is centered around A Posteriori claims. The energy of the universe is going to decrease one way or the other based on A posteriori terms, and there is no limit to a Scientific application of this, which is what the Harvard gentleman was explaining. Based on applying your same understanding as above, you seem to be more than willing to merely accept Evolution as Philosophical in structure. I'd say there are many problems logistically with doing this.

I would ultimately think the second question would be more applicable. And that entropy is decreasing would still be relevant as it pertains to the brain.

 

[hamashiachagape]

Well, since thoughts are electrochemical responses in the brain, some neurochemical reaction must have taken place.

So, that being a reaction, the entropy of your brain increased or stayed the same, because dS >= 0. And thus the universe would have too. And since the idea in your brain is NOT RELATED AT ALL TO THE THERMODYNAMIC DEFINITION OF INFORMATION... it is irrelevant. Just like the codes talked about.

Metherion

Actually the useable energy would technically be running out. Your explanation is great for Science fiction however.

I can't believe, I the Creationist, am claiming this, be we are getting outside the realms of Science with these bizarre applications.

 

[hamashiachagape]

Quantize the specificity, make a unit, make it testable. Is it quantized? No. Is it testable? No. Is there anything besides 'geez, this looks complex?'? No.

Besides, the uses of the word 'information' in your post have nothing to do with thermodynamic information. You argument is... equivocating.


Metherion

Odd application to DNA I would say. After reading about Shannon's Theory, Francis Collins, who has a few right applications, and Dr. Werner Gitt, it would appear that Creation Scientists are right. Secondly, I was actually making two claims within the post. One was Thermodynamics related, the other was based around DNA.

Instead, your understanding was centered around obfuscation.

 

[ciaphas]

Are you willing to put your credibility on the line against a Harvard professor? Even going by your philosophy that "Scientists" are always right.....yeah, not going very well for you guys here.

You should find a new argument .

This is absolutely stupid, I could just as equally say that Stephen Hawkings recently stated that god was not needed to explain the universe and he has a list of scientific honours as long as my arm.

I can give a very common example of this misuse and misunderstanding of entropy. If I add milk to a glass of water, the milk will dissolve into the water, showing an increase in "entropy" (yet again, i hate to use the term in such a way but it gives an example of how you were using it). In a warm room, there will reach a point where all of the water has evaporated leaving the milk, the "entropy" of the glass of milk has decreased, yet that of the whole room has increased.

This very simple point shows that in open systems entropy can decrease in small pockets, provided the entropy of the whole system tends towards maximum disorder. (P.S. please try to have smaller and more succinct posts to put your point accross, it gets laborious reading through the many paragraphs that you copy and paste into the thread)

 

[hamashiachagape]

This is absolutely stupid, I could just as equally say that Stephen Hawkings recently stated that god was not needed to explain the universe and he has a list of scientific honours as long as my arm.

I can give a very common example of this misuse and misunderstanding of entropy. If I add milk to a glass of water, the milk will dissolve into the water, showing an increase in "entropy" (yet again, i hate to use the term in such a way but it gives an example of how you were using it). In a warm room, there will reach a point where all of the water has evaporated leaving the milk, the "entropy" of the glass of milk has decreased, yet that of the whole room has increased.

This very simple point shows that in open systems entropy can decrease in small pockets, provided the entropy of the whole system tends towards maximum disorder. (P.S. please try to have smaller and more succinct posts to put your point accross, it gets laborious reading through the many paragraphs that you copy and paste into the thread)

Except Stephen Hawkings is not a Theologian.

Is it really necessary to address the silliness of your practical application? Where is the energy being used? The person pouring the glass of water. This is then transferred to the carton of milk, the milk going into the glass. No increase of entropy has truly occurred.

So now we are arguing AGAINST science.

 

[ciaphas]

Well richard Dawkins is a proffesor of biology, you can't keep on with this argument that your single academic validates those claims.

 

[hamashiachagape]

Well richard Dawkins is a proffesor of biology, you can't keep on with this argument that your single academic validates those claims.

My Biology friend has done plenty of research on Dawkin's Biology; he thinks he's full of bull. His words, not mine. To be polite, his understanding doesn't stand up to Scientific scrutiny, and probably because of the fact that his Philosophy is so confused. As well, Sarfati has completely debunked in his understanding in this book here - The Greatest Hoax On Earth? Refuting Dawkins on Evolution

Its also interesting how Dawkins is employed at a Christianized institute, and then he turns around and wants everybody to get rid of their Christianity. There have been prominent Atheists who make the claims that "Dawkins makes me embarassed to be an Atheist." If only Atheism had a foundational basis to work this contradiction out......

 

[ciaphas]

Let me run through this; originally I stated that your example of DNA couldn't be directly assosciated with the laws of entropy, then you said

Dr. Jonathan Sarfati states that it applies to an open system, as does my friend. Both confer on this next statement. There is absolutely no limit to its usage in Scientific terms.

. This was then followed by you stating that my example couldn't use entropy in this case. A complete U-turn!

 

[hamashiachagape]

Let me run through this; originally I stated that your example of DNA couldn't be directly assosciated with the laws of entropy, then you said . This was then followed by you stating that my example couldn't use entropy in this case. A complete U-turn!

No, I didn't state that your example couldn't use entropy. What your example was demonstrating was not what you claimed it demonstrated.

 

[ciaphas]

Your friend is a theologian, therefore we should accept his knowlege of the application of entropy in open Biological systems more than a professor of Biology? The entire basis of one argument was that I shouldn't argue against a harvard proffessor. I merely stated that someone who disagrees with him has far more accolades, Dawkins holds honorary doctorates from half the universities in Britain! (I'd call that being respected in your field) Richard Dawkins - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[ciaphas]

How does my example not show what I was trying to point out, a disordered system (the glass of milky water) became less chaotic.