thomas malloy wrote:
OrionWorks wrote:
Thomas sez:
The Cruncher's point being that there aren't enough seconds,
throwing the dice once per second, over the past 15,000,000,000
years to have tried all the potential combinations. And that's
just for the first genome. Stanford's point is that the system
is deteriorating, it's evolution in reverse
And Stanford's point being?
Trying "...all the potential combinations" is not the goal for which
All three of us, Stanford, the Cruncher and I believe that the web of
life was divinely ordered. I have previously made the case that, if
the earth sun system is viewed as a closed system, then the web of
life is reversing the second law of thermodynamics.
You've said it, quite frequently. That's not the same as "making the case".
The second law can be stated either in terms of entropy or in terms of
energy; the consequences are identical regardless of the formulation.
Second law, in the "energy" formulation:
"Heat cannot spontaneously flow from a material at lower
temperature to a material at higher temperature."
Alternative formulation:
"It is impossible to convert heat completely into work."
In plain English, the *first* law says that total energy is conserved.
The *second* law says /usable/ energy /decreases/; we can only actually
use energy if it is allowed to "run downhill" to a region of lower
energy density, and that process can't be continued indefinitely
(eventually we fill up all the places the energy could run to).
Can you present any evidence that life processes cause heat to "run
uphill"? That's what you're claiming, if you say life violates the
second law.
If life can do that, then you can make a living perpetual motion
machine, which requires no energy input from outside. Can you do that?
I don't think so. Last I heard you needed input from the Sun to keep
the living things on Earth in gravy. Sunlight is converted to chemical
energy, at low efficiency, by photosynthesis, and from there, every life
process just uses up some of that chemical energy, either by
fermentation or oxidation, throwing off waste heat in the process, as we
might expect from the second law. There is nothing magical about the
process, and nothing which violates the laws of thermodynamics -- unless
you care to present evidence otherwise.
