From twallace@trueorigin.org Sun Aug 1 00:21 EDT 1999 Received: from mail.ncifcrf.gov (mail.ncifcrf.gov [129.43.100.100]) by ncisun1-nf0.ncifcrf.gov (8.8.7/8.7.3) with ESMTP id AAA19072 for ; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 00:21:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: from floyd.qis.net (floyd.qis.net [209.150.96.22]) by mail.ncifcrf.gov (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA27206 for ; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 00:22:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from trueorigin.org (pm2-balt-104.qis.net [209.150.97.104]) by floyd.qis.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id AAA05898 for ; Sun, 1 Aug 1999 00:21:16 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <37A3CADE.4E8FEE90@trueorigin.org> Date: Sun, 01 Aug 1999 00:19:42 -0400 From: Timothy Wallace Organization: TrueOrigin Archive X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tom Schneider Subject: Re: TrueOrigin Feedback Response References: <199907300607.CAA00504@kaylor.ncifcrf.gov> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Length: 4197 Tom Schneider wrote: > I am now archiving this series at: > > http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/twallace/ Good. I trust that this post will be included, for I regret that I have neither the time, nor the interest, for rabbit trails and red herring. Let's cut to the chase... You began by assuming that I did "not understand that the entropy of an unisolated system can increase, at the expense of the rest of the universe," and asked whether I was "intentionally ignoring" the fact. I asked you to cite the specific passage(s) from my text which seemed to indicate your assumption to be true. Notwithstanding your failure to cite such a passage in which such a lack of understanding were unambiguously evident, I have explicitly indicated to you, in any case, that I do indeed understand that the entropy of an unisolated system can increase, at the expense of the rest of the universe. In short, your question has been answered. Since, in spite of this, you seem bent on attempting to leverage that principle into substantiation for evolution (and your message length is now exhibiting a pattern of increasing by roughly 50% per post), let's just distill this down to a couple of questions: 1) Evolution calls for the development of life itself and subsequent life forms from a purely natural process. Life does not function without the strictly controlled conversion of raw solar energy into useable energy. What are the specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes that led from zero such conversion capability in raw matter to the multiple and varied mechanisms and processes that are inherent in every living organism as we know them? [I have yet to receive an answer to this question that wasn't either pure conjecture and/or a denial that something more than raw solar energy was needed for life to spontaneously emerge from non-life. (2LOT certainly "allows" for the needed entropy changes, but those specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes don't just "happen" by themselves, and without them, there's no entropy change for 2LOT to "allow".)] 2) Evolution calls for the development of ever more volume and ever greater variety and complexity of data in the genetic code of living organisms as they allegedly first emerged, then progressed from, simplest forms to the present broad spectrum of variety. What specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes have led from zero genetic data in raw matter to the vast array of voluminous genetic data inherent in living organisms as we know them? [I have yet to receive an answer to this question that -- again -- wasn't either pure conjecture and/or an attempt to confuse the difference between heat entropy (as indicated in 2LOT) and general or informational entropy (as indicated in G2L). (Again, G2L certainly "allows" for the needed entropy changes, but those specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes don't just "happen" by themselves, and without them, there's no entropy change for G2L to "allow".)] If definitive, compelling answers cannot be provided to these two questions -- and to my knowledge they have not -- then 2LOT (one of the most solid scientific principles known to man) is no friend to evolutionary theory, for although it may be (mis)used as "evidence" that the above hypothesized entropy changes are "possible," the math by itself is useless without unambiguous corroborating observations. Repeated with great frequency are the standard oversimplifications about solar energy being adequate by itself and the alleged statistical "inevitability" of the statistically impossible (given "enough time"), but only a few of science's more objective leading figures even come close to honestly acknowledging the problem. (And that it isn't largely acknowledged is by no means ipso facto evidence that the problem doesn't exist.) Kind Regards, Tim :-> -- Timothy Wallace twallace@trueorigin.org http://www.trueorigin.org “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” — Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:35)