[ Long ] A Philosophy of Science v. Pseudo-Science

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crystals, snowflakes etc.

Or let's lift great weights to great heights. An intellect comes up with an idea of a crane to do the job. Skilled minds and hands divert energy and materials to make the machine using entropy in every step of the process. Smarty, with the benefit of his recently aquired great insights, comes along and proclaims that because the energy to build and operate the crane comes, ultimately, from the Sun then the Sun built the crane. Now, I just happen to know for sure that Central Australia gets lots and lots of solar energy but not one giant crane has ever spontaneously appeared in the desert.

Oh well, counters Smarty, "that only applies to non-biological systems. Energy applied to biological systems creates an increase in order and complexity opposed to entropy". Smarty has never heard of the "Law of Morphology" (which is really only entropy applied to biological systems) which says, simply, that "the more complex an organism and the more often it is reproduced, the more likely it is that something will go wrong in the process".

So, the thousands of generations of Drosophilla (fruit flies) that have been subjected to every imaginable radiation "stimulus" to produce "sped up" "evolution" have only ever produced some wreckage of their DNA or genome... not one super-human spaceman.

Ultimately, untold thousands of generations of diligent and wise housekeeping Mums are in tune with reality... the Smartys are not.

Order is a product of Intellect, Will, and Life.

Have you ever heard of enthalpy?

Have you ever heard of enthalpy?

I have given him the math, but he is completely blind to any reason. His philosophy goes something like, If it disagrees with the bible it cannot be true no matter the evidence.

... Creationist sources ignore, deny or distort the evidence for evolution and "quote mine" to present a straw-man caricature of this subject. So anyone who relies on creationist sources for their information about evolution forms their opinion based on LIES they were told. And to tie in with the conspiracy nuts, somehow there is a huge conspiracy of atheist scientists who the creationists claim are making all this stuff up to deny God and mislead the public. IF there is a conspiracy about evolution, it is GOD who is the mastermind, because all the evidence of the physical world clearly shows evolution happens.

They do? Do you actually have anything - anything at all - to back up these accusations? It's easy enough to whine about 'creationists' (whoever they are), and how they are apparently destroying science, but I want clear evidence of this, and not just someone's (no doubt, biased) opinion.

The theoretical maximum amount of energy that can be produced or absorbed by a reversible (chemical) process? What has that to do with the creation of order?

Here is something that I've been working on for a while - indicators that an extraordinary claim may be delusional, irrational, or otherwise refutable. I may have posted this previously, in whole or in part, but recent pseudo-scientific claims have inspired me to post it again. <... snip...>

Excellent summary, Fnord!

Entropy and enthalpy are intrinsically linked.

The universe tends towards entropy, but reactions in which entropy decreases are still energetically viable if the drop in enthalpy makes up for that. See here.

Life is an exercise in making reactions more efficient so that enthalpy changes allow entropy to decrease.

For example, proteins are more stable than amino acids or primitive polypeptides. Assembling proteins from RNA code is more efficient than just hoping they assemble without a plan. Then DNA is better than RNA, because you've got an extra strand for redundancy and it's less reactive (hence "deoxy").

David given your understanding of entropy and the second law. Can you explain why the earth is not in thermal equilibrium with cosmic space?

Indeed can you explain why the whole universe is not in thermal equilibrium?

Good. So you accpet that we get energy from the sun and therefore this planet is not a closed system, you also accpet that heat energy is not uniform throughout the universe.
The next question is what happens to all that solar energy. For example do you accept the principle of the conservation of energy?

The next question is what happens to all that solar energy.