I’m guessing you are trying to argue that life violates the 2nd law (or some variation on that). The problem with that is I’ve already done some back of the envelope calculations on it (and so have many, many others) and I don’t see it. If you want to convince us, that might be a good place to start. The math isn’t that hard, it is middle school level math (add, subtract, multiply, divide fractions).
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Does this about cover it?
“life does not in any way conflict with or invalidate this law, because the principle that entropy can only increase or remain constant applies only to a closed system which is adiabatically isolated, meaning no heat can enter or leave, and the physical and chemical processes which make life possible do not occur in adiabatic isolation, i.e. living systems are open systems. Whenever a system can exchange either heat or matter with its environment, an entropy decrease of that system is entirely compatible with the second law.”
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Any proof for this ridiculous claim?
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And of course it can be done; but the creationist always seem to forget to include [the]nuclear reactor that is a million times bigger than the Earth in the Solar System that is pumping (by my estimate) 100000000000000000 joules/kelvin worth of entropy into the Earth in the form of radiation; per second.
eta: By my hand wavey argument, that is the entropy budget for life on Earth (10^17 j/k per second). Of course lots of other stuff will need to be covered by that budget (such as all the radiation leaving the Earth).
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I see the in tray is full again … let’s take a look at this shall we?
Cue duplicitous ex recto apologietc fabrication in 3 … 2 … 1 …
Since it’s obvious you slept through even the most basic of your science classes, answer this question.
A chemist mixes two substances in a test tube, and a chemical reaction takes place.
What magic reason exists to stop those same two substances taking part in a chemical reaction, if they’re mixed together in the natural environment?
If you think chemistry is something that only takes place when humans set up a laboratory, you really did sleep through your basic science classes.
Actually, one of the postulates that scientists propose, is that the requisite prebiotic chemical reactions were MORE likely to occur on the early Earth, because oxygen wasn’t a major atmospheric constituent at that time. It’s the reason why prebiotic reactions are conducted in a reducing or neutral atmosphere with no oxygen present. Oxidation by atmospheric oxygen interferes with several key steps in the process.
Did you even bother to learn anything about this topic, before engaging in sanctimonious apologetic pontificating?
Well first of all, the origin of life isn’t the remit of “atheism”, it’s the remit of SCIENCE. As you have already been told. That life originated via chemistry is a SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS, one that is being tested in the laboratory. The only activity my atheism requires me to take part in, is that of being suspicious of unsupported mythology fanboy assertions, and your fatuous and duplicitous ex recto apologetic fabrications merely add to the cogent reasons for that suspicion.
Once again, life isn’t some special “magic sauce” that’s added to the chemistry. Vitalism was killed stone dead by Wöhler in 1828, when he launched organic chemistry as a discipline in its own right.
Did you see that simulation I posted earlier, provided by a team of French scientists? In which “dead molecules” exhibited the requisite behaviours that we associate with life, without any special “magic sauce” being needed?
We have numerous peer reviewed scientific papers in circulation, documenting experiments demonstrating that a range of organic molecules self-assemble into relevant structures, simply as a consequence of electrostatic forces.
Once again, drop the magical thinking.
Well you’ve demonstrated repeatedly here that you’re completely ignorant about entropy and its actual behaviour, and indeed, I’m aware of papers that detonate a nuclear depth charge under that ignorance of yours. A common fallacy is the wholly non-rigorous association of entropy with “disorder”, however this is defined. This has been known to be non-rigorous by physicists for decades, because there exist numerous documented instances of systems whose entropy increases when they spontaneously self-assemble into ordered structures as a result of the effect of electrostatic forces. Lipid bilayers are an important example of this, which are found throughout the biosphere.
The following scientific paper is apposite here:
Gentle Force Of Entropy Bridges Disciplines by David Kestenbaum, Science, 279: 1849 (20th March 1998)
Phospholipids being an excellent example thereof. In fact, any chemical system in which there exists the capacity for electrostatic forces to apply to either aggregating or reacting molecules can exhibit this phenomenon. Which is why scientists have long since abandoned the notion that “entropy” equals “disorder”, which requires a thorough statistical mechanical treatment in terms of microstates in any case.
This is applied to the physics and physical chemistry of lipid bilayers in the following paper:
Electrostatic Repulsion Of Positively Charged Vesicles And Negatively Charged Objects by
Helim Aranda-Espinoza, Yi Chen, Nily Dan, T. C. Lubensky, Philip Nelson, Laurence Ramos and D. A. Weitz, Science, 285: 394-397 (16th July 1999)
in which the authors calculated that the entropy of the lipid bilayer system increased when it arranged itself spontaneously into an ordered structure in accordance with the laws of electrostatics.
I have both papers in my collection, and can provide full expositions of them if required.
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So he’s resurrecting Canard #28 from my creationist canard list?
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How do you know it’s not happening today and is simply outcompeted by the vast array of existing lifeforms? Just curious.
UK Atheist
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So you’re just believing what someone else has claimed with no apparent logic of your own? Is it really that clever (of you) to just believe what you’re being taught by people whose teaching methods can very easily be likened to brain washing?
I get we all have to take stuff on trust but religion’s problem is that you have to take EVERY major claim on trust, something that isn’t true of science.
UK Atheist
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I already told him that the requisite molecules would be consumed as food by existing life forms, but I suspect he’ll pretend he wasn’t informed of this after his next reboot.
Bacteria alone would consume amino acids and nucleotides on a grand scale if they appeared in the environment. Heh, several bacterial serotypes have evolved to consume synthetic chemicals manufactured by humans.
For example, a Japanese Flavobacterium serotype evolved the ability to consume nylon monomers and oligomers as a food source. Other serotypes have evolved to consume petroleum products, and if memory serves, at least one serotype has evolved the ability to live in sulphuric acid.
With that information to hand, even an elementary student of bacteriology would quickly conclude that numerous bacterial serotypes would consume raw amino acids and nucleotides with ease. Indeed, I suspect serotypes involved in decay already consume raw amino acids generated by the degradation of proteins by other bacterial serotypes.
Even a cursory glance at data on bacterial metabolism, reveals that they utilise a huge array of chemical substrates for energy generation.
But I suspect our latest mythology fanboy has learned nothing of this.
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He may not even come back, though the latest version of the drive by proselytising, it that they spin round the block for a few days, then strike again, and on and on…
If he’s a scientists then I’ll bet cash his posts are a windup.
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What is a windup, please?
noun: windup
1.
INFORMAL•BRITISH
an attempt to tease or irritate someone.
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Thank you very much.
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Don’t be confused. The hurdles to any naturalistic explanation for life are immense, huge, mathematically insurmountable. James Tour has a lecture about this on Youtube. Tour is a heavily published research synthetic chemist with hundreds of patents and many papers to his name in respected peer reviewed journals.
He begins by summarizing the work he and his team do and have done, citing many examples from nanomachines and synthetic chemistry. As he explains, he began with this to subdue the predictable cries of “credentials - what are his credentials” and he certainly has credentials.
He is the recipient of many science awards and is also a member of the Royal Society, so I think we can take it, he understand the science.
There’s a law in biology - the law of biogenesis - it is like some other laws, very well established empirically, masses and masses of supporting evidence. To argue that this is not a law or was not a law at some point in the past would require no less evidence than similar claims about the conservation laws or laws of thermodynamics.
And here is a series that takes a long look at Tour and his work.
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Ahh yes, the fake “professor” who has no publication history in chemistry, is not a Professor or Doctor and has not received any awards like the Feynman prize, NASA Space Act award, Arthur C. Scope award and is a member of the Royal Society (I could go on…).
Funny how many here rant and rave about the necessity of credentials yet when a dissenter turns up with lots of credentials and credibility, they clutch out desperately at any old “debunker” they can find irrespective of their weak credentials in the field.
The fake professor has a lecture on special relativity for example, I debunked it recently in a comment I posted to that video, here, you can read it if you like.
I was only using your standards….I think you’re calling me out for doing precisely what you have done. Fascinating.
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Please show us all where I used a fake professor as a means of debunking someone’s position.
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Here Tour stops to ask if there are any synthetic chemists in the audience, he does so to give them an opportunity to call him out if he’s lying:
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