I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard the “Life violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics” canard . . . starting when I was 11 years old, when I read The Planet that Wasn’t by Isaac Asimov.
Instead of considering life, let us–instead–consider a common refrigerator.
The inside of a refrigerator is constantly colder than the room that it sits in. Further, the environment around the refrigerator is warmer than it would be if the refrigerator wasn’t there.
Does the refrigerator violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Should the Second Law of Thermodynamics be discarded? Or does mankind have the power to supercede this law of physics when it’s convienient to do so?
No . . . absolutely not!
When the refrigerator is unplugged, the interior of the fridge begins to warm up immediately, and the point of this exercise is that the power supply to the fridge must be considered . . . as should the power plant that burns the coal (or oil, natural gas, uranium,* etc.), and then we need to consider how the energy got into the coal . . . which means that we need to consider the Sun.
When we consider these steps that bring energy into the refrigerator, we discover that the Sun has had an increase in entropy that is much greater than the corresponding decrease in entropy represented by the cold interior of the refrigerator.
Life is like this.
Life does–indeed–represent a decrease in entropy, but this is at the expense of a vast increase in entropy elsewhere, mostly the sun.
This is why life doesn’t violate the laws of entropy and thermodynamics, and if anyone asks about the uranium that I mentioned earlier, then keep in mind that it was synthesized in supernova explosions, and the same reasoning is just as relevant.
I am surprised that these religious people don’t think that this seeming contradiction between life’s intricacy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics occurs to scientists.
Do they think that all scientists are so lost in malice that they wish to spite God? For what purpose?
Of course this reasoning seems to suggest an “ultimate energy source” which the theists call God . . . which mirrors the debunked “prime mover” argument.
We may not know why the Universe began with a minimum of entropy, but not knowing why or how doesn’t mean we should automatically invoke God.
If we always used God as a substitute for curiosity and skepticism, then women would still be dying from sepsis of childbirth instead of doctors washing their hands before attending a woman in labor.
BTW, I did paraphrase Asimov in much of this post, which I want to clarify because I don’t plagiarize.