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We got hit with a worldwide flood of questions about thermodynamics and
information. I hope you brought your intelligently designed brain along as well
as a whole bunch of coffee, cause you're gonna need it for this special edition of
Genesis Week.
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And a welcome to this episode of Genesis Week, the weekly program of creationary
commentary on news, views and events pertaining to the origins controversy.
Proudly brought to you by the supporters of CORE Ottawa, Citizens for Origins
Research and Education, and now carried on the Christianima network - Christian
cinema at its finest! The Bible did not say "Love the Lord your God with all your
Mindlessness," but rather we believe God gave you a brain for a reason, and boy
are you gonna need it this week! Excellence in pirate broadcasting, we set
up the lower bay station in Toronto, where we continue to broadcast the
information the anti-creationist s don't want you to see or here, and giv ing glory
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wazooloo.com - that's me, or genesisweek.com and you will find us -
and you can also subscribe to our youtube channel to keep up to date and
get extras like CrEvo rants and special interviews with our guests. I'm your host,
Ian Juby.
I was inundated by requests and questions the past week or so about
thermodynamics and information. Requests from YouTube, several lengthy
debates on facebook, email and the likes. The two are subjects are intimately
intertwined, and In fact, my video on thermodynamics has been long overdue.
So we're devoting this show to making a formal exposition on the matter. Now, I'm
going to try to make a really, really complicated subject easy to understand
for the layman, but you're going to have to take your fish oil tablets and drink your
coffee or favourite energy drink for this one.
Thermodynamics is a powerful tool that can be used in the origins debate. The
LAWS of thermodynamics are well established, and affect every aspect of
the sciences, though the connection may not be obvious at first. What is
thermodynamics? Well, like aerodynamics is the study of the flow of air -
thermodynamics is the study of the flow of heat. Heat ALWAYS flows from a hotter
zone to colder zone, and we're going to focus on the first two laws of
thermodynamics:
The first law of thermodynamics states that energy is neither created nor
destroyed, it merely changes form.
The second law is the one that has the most significance to the origins debate,
and states that energy in the universe that is available to do work is continually
decreasing. All energy eventually becomes waste background heat, evenly
distributed throughout the universe. If heat only flows from hotter to colder
areas, but everything is the same temperature, then there is no heat flow,
and no energy available for work - it is a dead universe. So everything in our
universe is continually running DOWNHILL, towards this universal heat
death.
What on earth does this have to do with the origins debate? Let's start off with the
basics: Now I got into a PILE of trouble with CrEvo Rant # 94, Frogs are useful,
Part II - hoo boy! In that rant I simulated - SIMULATED - putting a frog in a blender
to make a point. I didn't actually blend a frog - I wouldn't do that! But apparently
my special effects were more effective than I realized, and really upset a lot of
people. Sorry. But the frog in a blender makes an easy to understand example of
the second law of thermodynamics: Our frog soup will now decay, and as it does
so, it will give off heat. This effect of decay producing heat is especially visible
with a rotting pile of sawdust or hay - the heat produced can be immense. Where is
this heat coming from? Well, energy from the sun was used to make this wood or
hay, when it was alive. When the plant dies, it starts to decay, and all that energy
that was used to build the plant, was effectively stored in the plant, and is now
released as waste background heat. This is another scientific and natural law
that evolution must violate - and it must violate it in two ways: The first and most
obvious being the production of the first life from non-life. We just saw what
happens even if we have complex cells which are dead - they don't come back to
life, they decay. So in order to produce the first life from raw chemicals, evolution
must act in opposition to this well established and observed process. But as
you will see, the second law also applies to the production of new species. If
evolution must violate scientific and natural laws, then by definition evolution
is neither scientific nor natural - it is a supernatural process.
The releasing of the energy back into the universe as waste background heat is
called entropy. Now I'm sorry - this will be confusing at first.
Technically, more entropy means less energy available for work. But it's
generally described as more disorder. For example, the cells in our frog are
incredibly complex - but as they break down, they break down into DIS order.
This is an INCREASE in entropy - more entropy is more disorder. If the frog is
living, and it makes a new cell, this is a DECREASE in entropy, a DECREASE in
disorder, an INCREASE in order and arrangement.
So we see entropy occuring around us all the time - complex items breaking down
into disorder and disarray, and releasing the energy that made them back into the
universe as waste background heat. You yourself have seen the laws of
thermodynamics in action, all around you.
Now the anti-creationists will do a song and dance about open systems, closed
systems, isolated systems, and energy from the sun.
An isolated system is a thermodynamic system in which everything is encased
within a boundary and there is no exchange of heat, work or matter between
the system and the outside world. For example, we might have a solid box
floating in outer space that is super-insulated. The box is the
"boundary." Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. Its walls are solid, so
no work can be done through the box, and it's super insulated, so no heat gets
in, and no heat gets out.
Sometimes people will mix up isolated systems with closed systems. A closed
system is a thermodynamic system where material cannot enter or leave the system,
but heat and work can. For example, the cooling system on your refrigerator would
be considered a closed system. It gets energy from the wall socket, and
exchanges heat with the room, but the system is effectively sealed.
Then there's open systems - an open system is where heat, work and matter
can both enter and leave the system. An open box would be an example.
Some anti-creationists have said that the laws of thermodynamics only apply to
isolated systems. This is hog wash: isolated systems do not exist! Let's take a
look at our box in space: It doesn't matter how good our insulation in the box is,
some heat will get in, or escape. It doesn't matter what you build the box out of,
eventually it will fall apart in accordance with the second law, and thus even matter
will be able to get in and out.
To be technical, closed systems do not exist either, though we can get really
close. Again, using your fridge as an example, there will be leaks of the coolant
from the system, through the valves or microscopic leaks. Though these leaks
will be basically negligible - usually for decades in the case of a fridge, it is
material escaping the system. Eventually the system will break down enough to
where matter can freely enter and leave the system.
Most anticreationists simply recite Mark Isaak's page on the talkorigins website.
Isaak makes numerous fatal errors of fact and logic, which then gets repeated
uncritically all the time. He tries to explain away the problems of evolution and
thermodynamics by saying:
This is first of all false just by definition of a closed system: closed systems
exchange heat, energy AND work across the boundary, and as professor Berger at
Bluffton University points out:
It is true that we get meteors and asteroids hitting earth, and thus adding a
little matter to earth - but this amount is negligible. For example, if we were to
scale up our fridge to the size of earth, the leaks of refridgerant from our fridge
would be equivelent in scale to the matter exchanged with earth and the universe,
yet the refridgeration system on your fridge is considered a closed system.
Secondly, Isaak is insinuating that the laws of thermodynamics do not apply to
open systems, which is again patently false. The laws of thermodynamics most
certainly do apply to open systems, as Professor of thermodynamics Dr. Andrew
McIntosh points out in detail in his paper here, complete with the math should you
care to look:
Thirdly, let's give Isaak what he wants! As I pointed out in CrEvo Rant 94, if we take
our frog soup and put it out in the sun to make use of some of that incoming
energy, it doesn't reverse or slow down the decay process - it ACCELERATES it!
The exact opposite of what the anti-creationists are calling upon the suns
energy to do!
Isaak also finishes off his page with the usual argument about snowflakes and
crystals in rocks: "You can see order come and go in nature
Waitaminit - a second ago, he was claiming that you could work around the
second law and gain order by adding energy from the sun - then he gives
snowflakes and crystals as an example of alleged order arising out of these
processes. You viewers are smart - I think most of you will clue in to his error: His
examples require the REMOVAL of heat, not adding heat from the sun!
Furthermore, these systems only become so "ordered" and then proceed no further
- sand ripples do not turn in to sand castles, for example. Lastly, this has
absolutely nothing to do with the astonishingly complex organization of
chemicals to make life - here's why:
Crystals, like a snowflake or geodes, do not form when the matter is above melting
temperature. The molecules already want to stick together in a crystaline structure,
but the heat keeps them bouncing off of each other and in a liquid form. It's like
magnets wanting to stick to each other in a certain way, but energy keeps them
apart. Remove the energy, and they just stick together the way they want.
But the building blocks of life are the exact opposite - think of it like trying to
force magnets together in a way that the magnetic fields oppose. It REQUIRES
energy to assemble them, and KEEP THEM THAT WAY. UNlike crystals,
biopolymers want to break apart - not self-assemble.
Biopolymers are lego: having all of the separate parts and just adding sunlight
doesn't do you a lick of good. You need directed energy to assemble them - and in
particular, you need a MACHINE to direct the energy in a useable form
We're going to take a break - you got 30 seconds to get another coffee, and then
we'll be right back!
[funny music]
Funny, fast and furious! Ian's CrEvo Rants cover a multitude of topics in an
easy to understand, comical way. Complicated subject that normally make
your brain hurt, hurt a lot less when Ian explains them...
while wearing his anti-government mind reading equipment. Have questions about
Carbon 14 dating? Natural selection, thermodynamics, or...
what on earth is he doing there?
Three volumes of rants on DVD, take your pick for $15 each plus S&H or order all
three as a package and save yourself ten bucks! Order on line today at Ian's
bookstore.
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In the first half of the show we were talking about how, contrary to the
anti-creationist claims, you need more than just energy to make biopolymers and
life. Let's now take a look at what else is needed.
Biopolymers have a lower entropy - they have less disorder, and more order. Is
that a reversal of thermodynamic laws? No, this is a local decrease, watch how
this works. Let's take a look at your fridge again to understand what's going on here.
The inside of your fridge wants to balance out to room temperature - this 2nd law is
observable when your kids are standing there holding the fridge door open. But
the refridgeration system reverses this process, and pulls the heat out of the
fridge, transferring the heat into the room. That's why the grill on the back of
your fridge is hot. So the inside of the fridge is doing the opposite of the 2nd
law, but only locally - in other words, only inside the fridge. Well the refridgeration
system has losses - the compressor has a whole pile of friction, which slows it down
and produces waste heat, a lot of the electricity is wasted as heat, etc... So
there's a whole pile of energy that is used to reduce entropy in one area, and a
whole pile of energy is wasted in the process as waste background heat.
Notice a few things here: The entropy was reversed only in a LOCAL area - but the
entropy in the entire universe actually increased with a bunch of wasted heat
produced in the process. Secondly, to accomplish this feat, a MACHINE was
required. Machines require design, information - intelligence. Machines do
not just assemble themselves.
Adenosine Triphosphate, called ATP, is the fuel for your muscles. Adenosine
DIphosphate has two phosphate molecules, and is fused together with a
third phosphate to make ATP. There are countless numbers of machines in your
body called ATP synthase that fuses the ATP molecules together. This machine
uses energy you provide from your food and oxygen. It is not 100% efficient, so
some of the energy is wasted as waste background heat. The ATP has a lowered
entropy, but the entropy in the universe has increased, exactly in accord with the
2nd law. Notice that a MACHINE was required to do
this. Not just energy, like sunlight, but a MACHINE.
You can start to see why Dr. McIntosh wrote:
What is a machine? Dr. McIntosh provided an excellent definition:
So talking about snowflakes and life in the same sentence, as if the processes that
formed one had any resemblance to the formation of the other, is like comparing
geodes and the space shuttle - there is no comparison. Why? because it took
MACHINES controlled by INFORMATION (or intelligence) which directed ENERGY
to build the space shuttle. (animate these texts for the slide in
And thus we see the connection between machines, information, thermodynamics,
and the origins question. As Professor McIntosh points out,
In other words, you have to know how to build the machine, before you can build
the machine!
Intelligence is required to make a machine. As pointed out by Claude
Shannon, after whom Shannon information theory was named,
information very much follows laws similar to thermodynamics: Information
only comes from information - information only flows to an area lacking in
information - in other words you do not see stupid giving rise to intelligence.
As Werner Gitt points out, there is a lot more to information that you think: In
order to communicate information you need a sender and receiver, they both
need to agree upon the language they will use, and they need to agree upon the
method of communication, be it writing, telephone, email, whatever.
You can communicate information in a number of ways - you can use ink and
paper, you can use dots and dashes via radiowaves, you can use light over
fiberoptic cable, or you can use chemicals - like DNA.
We represent the chemicals in DNA as letters. Having letters does not mean you
have information - but you can use letters to convey information. What changed?
The sequence of letters were the RESULT of information. You'll notice that the
information is neither matter, nor energy - it is something outside of the
matter/energy realm, because you can use matter or energy to convey the
information - in fact the information CONTROLS the matter or energy.
Just as the arrangement of letters in a book is not caused by the chemistry of
ink and paper, there is no chemical reason that the letters in the DNA
arranged themselves in the sequence they did . In fact, left to natural laws, the
letters in DNA would not arrange themselves AT ALL!
The information in a book is not the result of the book - rather, the book is the result
of the information. In like fashion, the information contained in the DNA is not
the result of the DNA, the DNA is the result of information!
If you make random changes to a book, you will not get new information - you will
be CORRUPTING the information in the book. It's the exact same thing with DNA -
by making unguided changes to the letters of the DNA, you are CORRUPTING
the information in the DNA, not producing new information.
Now if you were to ADD information to the book, that would be new information, but
notice that adding information required intelligence and intelligent design?
The molecular machines of life are built from the information carried by the DNA -
including the machines that actually make the DNA, and repair it. But yet, in all
information systems, random changes to the information is NOISE, it doesn't
produce new information, it destroys the information we already had. Evolution is
supposed to operate by making changes to the DNA to produce new molecular
machines - but this cannot work because new machines require a thermodynamic
step "uphill," assembling biopolymers which do not want to assemble. You need
information to direct the energy in a specific way to make the new machine -
but new information requires intelligent design.
Now at this point, some people start jumping up and down and getting really
excited, saying that I'm arguing from incredulity. In other words, I find it too
incredible to believe that new information could arise out of noise, which has
nothing to do with whether or not it is possible. I can't help but notice that
you're arguing from incredible imagination and calling it "science." I am arguing from
OBSERVATION. We do not design a washing machine on a computer, only to
have the file corrupted and wind up with plans for the space shuttle. It is
absolutely no different in the living world: What we OBSERVE throughout nature is
noise destroying information - not once ever, ever, ever, in the entire history of
planet earth, have we seen information arise from nothing.
Every example of alleged evolution that you will find represents a LOSS of
information, not a gain.
Why is this happening? Why are we losing information over time? Because of
the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The information in our universe has to be
communicated on a substrate of some kind, but the substrate is subject to the
laws of entropy! In other words, the books, CD's, heiroglyphs, etc... are all
decaying! As a result, the information that's written on them is also decaying.
It's exactly the same with the information in the DNA - and that was the whole point
of CrEvo Rant #78, the boat that don't float.
So: If your brain hasn't melted yet due to the heat of entropy, let me summarize it
all like this: to control thermodynamics producing and maintaining life AND
diversity, you need intelligence. Intelligence that is outside of matter and
energy. Intelligence that DESIGNED life, and controlled matter and energy in order
to produce life and all of its diversity. Could that designer be Zoltar the space
alien? No, because Zoltar would be a physical entity who is not outside of
matter and energy, and besides which, it only brings up the question: Where did
Zoltar come from? No, whatever intelligence this was that
created life, it was life outside of the laws of thermodynamics who was able to
control the matter/energy realm - in other words, a supernatural being - God. Now
which God? There really is only one God it could be: Jesus Christ, who proved He
was God with miracles too numerous to count - miracles which directed matter
and energy to reverse thermodynamics, showing He was King over all - even the
laws of nature. Rising up from the dead to show you and I that He was in control of
entropy, and the way to eternal life. He loves you dearly, but because of your
sins, He cannot allow you into that new heaven and new earth and eternal life. In
Romans we read that the wages of sin is death, and ALL have sinned. If you
sinned, you are worthy of death - but then Jesus stepped in, lived a life in the form
of a human, but never sinned once. He was the only human being ever to live
who earned His way into heaven. He then died a sinner's death. It's like a court of
law - you have been convicted and the judge has handed down your sentence,
you are to be punished by death. A stranger in the room who has never done
any wrong, steps up and asks the judge to give him your punishment, and let you
go free. But that man Jesus, in exchange wants you to live your life as if you were
Him. That means turning from your sins, and accepting this unspeakable gift.
Won't you do that today? All you have to do is pray, and tell Him you are turning
from your sins, and ask Him to save you, and Jesus said "him that cometh to me I
will in no wise cast out."
[scary, dramatic music]
Wahoo! Mail for me?
Hmmmmm......
[scary, dramatic music]
In response to last week's show, nitroboy756 wrote in on youtube:
Thank you for this excellent question. I had a friend of mine who carries out
bacterial genetics research send me a response:
Well we are waaaay out of time - I'm your host Ian Juby, thanks for watching and
hope you'll join us next Genesis week - remember the words of our Creator, the
Lord Jesus Christ who said "I am the way, the truth and the life - no man comes to
the Father but through me." God bless.
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