Friday, February 20, 2009

Science and Religion Able To Coexist Only Via Ignorance?

One would think that no one right now would dare to use the tired and faulty argument of using the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (Entropy) to try to debunk evolution. But nooooooooo...... Human stupidity and ignorance can never be underestimated.

This writer is trying so very hard to justify creationism by picking apart not only evolution, but what "scientists" do. This is, of course, assuming that Mr. Anthony Nocket has actually seen and understood what and how scientists actually work. But that's not the reason why I'm picking what he wrote apart. If he wrote this garbage on his own personal webpage, I wouldn't have bothered. There's way too much crap out there to waste precious seconds of anyone's life to comment on. But this apparently is some small news organization, and unless someone actually debunk this, the same misinformation gets perpetuated.

He repeated the same, erroneous attack against evolution:

So as not to open a veritable Pandora’s box, I’ll close with a parable from Thermodynamics Laws: Verse 2. Disorder (or entropy — for those concerned with vernacular) always increases.

How then does life stay together and function, when it’s thermodynamically unfavorable even to keep water from evaporating?

From a physical standpoint, judicious invocation of “intelligent design” appears more legitimate than randomness.


This is a very clear example of "Imagination without knowledge is ignorance waiting to happen". I've already debunked this kind of argument (and so has many others if one cares to actually LEARN. In fact, there have been papers that showed HOW the 2nd Law actually works in promoting evolution! Another paper describing entropy and evolution by Dan Styer describes it even more succinctly. Do you think Mr. Anthony Nocket read them before he made this silly comment? No prize for getting the right answer.

But what is also incredulous is how he is able to fool himself. He applies some set of "law" onto others, but he then sidestep it for himself. For instance:

Here’s the scenario as I see it: God creates physics, physics dictates chemistry and chemistry dictates the rest —including evolution.

The problem is that scientists studying a particular branch of science get bogged down in the minutia, not contemplating the bigger picture. This is precisely why evolutionary biologists have taken flak before, and will, no doubt, continue to do so.

A scientist tries to understand nature empirically, but not its physical origin; this is, for now, the realm of pseudoscience.


So if his "scenario" requires something to create something, then the logical question one would ask is, "Who created God?" If one replies that God doesn't need to be created, that it can simply exist, then what's to prevent us from saying the same thing about the origin of the universe, that the beginning of the Big Bang, for example, had no creator, that it simply existed?

He is correct in one aspect, though. That this is now in the realm of PSEUDOSCIENCE! I bet he didn't exactly look in a dictionary or figure out what "pseudoscience" actually meant before he used it. Wait till he found out that it is more of a derogatory description of what he is believing in! :)

Zz.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a creationist I’m glad you brought up Prof. Dan Styer’s paper

Confusing thermodynamic and information entropy is a growing problem and that confusion is the subject of a high profile debate over Prof. Styer's paper that attracted comments from Prof. Styer himself. It's at theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53199. Styer wrote, "Bob Enyart speaks long and hard about the difference between "heat entropy" and "information entropy". It is quite clear from context that by entropy I mean 'thermodynamic/statistical mechanical entropy.'"

Evolutionists who think the American Journal of Physics equations resolve evolution's problems with information entropy questions can be shown Prof. Styer's clarification. We creationists appreciate Prof. Styer clarifying this issue.