Bill Dembski, Isaac Asimov, and The Second Law of Thermodynamics

 
According to Bill Dembski, "The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics has never been a friend of materialistic evolution." [Granville Sewell on the 2nd Law]. His authority for such a ridiculous statement is none other than Granville Sewell, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas, El Paso. Biochemists have never had a problem with the 2nd law or evolution.

This is a good time to remind people of a famous quotation by Isaac Asimov—a biochemist— from his 1981 essay, The “Threat” of Creationism.
Creationists have learned enough scientific terminology to use it in their attempts to disprove evolution. They do this in numerous ways, but the most common example, at least in the mail I receive is the repeated assertion that the second law of thermodynamics demonstrates the evolutionary process to be impossible.

In kindergarten terms, the second law of thermodynamics says that all spontaneous change is in the direction of increasing disorder—that is, in a "downhill" direction. There can be no spontaneous buildup of the complex from the simple, therefore, because that would be moving "uphill." According to the creationists argument, since, by the evolutionary process, complex forms of life evolve from simple forms, that process defies the second law, so creationism must be true.

Such an argument implies that this clearly visible fallacy is somehow invisible to scientists, who must therefore be flying in the face of the second law through sheer perversity. Scientists, however, do know about the second law and they are not blind. It's just that an argument based on kindergarten terms is suitable only for kindergartens. [my emphasis - LAM]


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