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From: j.nobel.daggett@gmail.com (LDagget)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: 2nd law clarifications
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2025 09:08:08 +0000
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On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 6:53:02 +0000, MarkE wrote:

> Are these statements correct? Could they be better expressed?
>
>
> Local entropy can decrease in an open system with an input of free
> energy.
>
> Free energy alone is not sufficient to maintain or further decrease low
> local entropy: an energy capture and transformation mechanism is also
> needed.
>
> Extant life *maintains* low local entropy through its organisation and
> processes.
>
> Evolving life *decreases* low local entropy through the ratcheting
> mechanism natural selection acting on random mutations in instances
> where that evolution increases functional complexity and organisation.
>
> There is no other known mechanism apart from natural selection that does
> this. For example, neutral drift alone increases entropy.

There's so much fuzzy language in there that replying is bound to
explode
things into an extended attempt to us clean up the language enough  for
one to understand the claims in scientific language.

So let's bypass that, besides, it's been done before.

Instead, consider this. The broad objection is that creationists or
their
bedfellows try to claim that evolution is somehow a decrease in entropy.
Such a claim is superficially nonsensical. Here's why.

Evolution is a result. In a simple example of adaption, an initial
population of bacteria begin with an enzyme that is effective against
one antibiotic but has very low efficacy against a related antibiotic.
These things work such that at very low concentrations of the antibiotic
the low efficacy is sufficient to allow the bacteria to keep growing
but at higher concentrations bacterial cell wall growth is inhibited
and the bacteria stop growing.

so the usual processes take place because they can't be stopped.
Imperfect
DNA replication occurs, mutations of the antibiotic resistance enzyme
occur, most have little effect but occasionally there are mutations that
result in increased activity against the related antibiotic (a new
drug).
So now bacteria with the mutation can grow faster than those without
the mutation. The process repeats, the gene pool evolves to have more
and more of the antibiotic resistance gene with higher efficacy and
that's evolution.

Now where and how do people claim that is a violation of the 2nd law?

Let's help with that. The process involves millions of bacteria growing,
reproducing, and sometimes dying. The process is the sum of all of these
events. Each and every cell consumed food, and metabolized it. The sum
of their life processes can be cartooned like the metabolism of glucose
C6H12O6 + 6 O2 ==> 6 CO2 + 6 H2O    This reaction increases entropy.
It still increases net entropy when coupled to charging ADP to ATP.
The sum of all of the chemical reactions that have to take place for a
cell to grow and replicate represents a relentless increase in entropy
comparing the reactants to the products.

Now how do the creationists claim that summing up all of these millions
of positive increases in entropy represents a decrease in entropy?

That's the essence of their nonsensical claim. At each and every step
along the way, all the chemical reactions are increasing entropy.
Entropy increases when DNA is replicated. There's negligible difference
between a perfect copy of a gene and a copy with a mutation. Either
way, it's an increase in entropy.

The only way that evolution can be considered a decrease in entropy is
thus revealed to be by a failure to look at the actual processes
involved
and to instead resort to hand waving about loosey-goosey attempts to
invoke related concepts like __disorder__.