OK, I read this. I actually *did* try AIG the other day; I know they have a page of, in essence, bad arguments for creationism that one shouldn’t use. (The list is not nearly long enough IMHO.) I wanted to see if this was one of them.

I didn’t find this link the other day.

So after a couple of explanations of entropy, we get to a paragraph that starts with: “Evolutionists have offered various theories of how the naturalistic origin and development of life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics.” And this is where they go off the rails.

“However, merely being an open system does not automatically mean that entropy decreases.”

Who claimed that it automatically does mean that?

“However, these inputs are insufficient in themselves to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics.” Mere assertion.

Discussion of Prigogine. It’s important not to conflate two things. One is evolution, which happens to living things *once they are living things* the other is abiogenesis, which is the question of how things became alive in the first place. Scientists are *very* confident that evolution happens, and yes that includes macro-evolution. Biology as a science would literally make no sense at all without it (it’s not a case of “they’d have to rewrite the narrative,” it’s a case of the mass of facts we know about living things would crumble to a list of unconnected trivia rather than a coherent whole). And obviously abiogenesis happened. We just don’t know how. Huge progress has been made in this, apparently, but we don’t have the final answer, and it’s possible we never will because it might end up being a case of “here are three ways it *could* have happened, but we don’t know which one actually *did* happen…and there might be a fourth way we don’t know about” It’s certainly more than Prigogine’s work. Given the professional YECs’ predilection for fastening onto something that turned out to be untrue in the light of later knowledge, while ignoring other things, I have to wonder why they chose Prigogine as an example. (I personally had never heard of him until now.)

“Again, the appeal is made to the magic of open systems. But merely being an open system in not sufficient to contradict the second law of thermodynamics.”

Uh, it wouldn’t be a contradiction; the law specifically allows for it by stating that entropy must not decrease in a closed system. If it’s not closed, then other outcomes are possible, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes in an open system the entropy will increase, sometimes it won’t, sometimes it will decrease.

They seem to be trying to imply (without coming right out and saying so) that someone is claiming that in an open system, entropy *will* decrease. No one is saying that. They bring up the example of a dead organism decaying as if it’s a counter example to such an (alleged) claim.

“The problem for creationists is that we have yet to generate a rigorously formulated entropy-based hypothesis that clearly shows that life cannot arise through natural undirected processes.”

Indeed.

“However, evolutionists generally have failed to produce a reasonable argument which agrees with observation that the second law of thermodynamics does not prohibit evolution.”

I’m not at all sure what they think would be adequate here. Recognizing that the Earth as a whole is not a closed system, you add in the Sun. The Sun is 99 percent of the Solar System, and its entropy is steadily increasing. That swamps any decrease in entropy in (parts of) the Earth including you and me. That argument is reasonable enough, honestly. They’re just asserting it’s bullshit and haven’t actually backed that up.

There is a very famous debate (readily findable on youtube) between Bill Nye and Ken Ham (the head honcho of AIG). At one point during the questioning, they are asked, what it would take to change their minds. (At 1:49:44)

Ken Ham says NOTHING could change his mind. Bill Nye says, “one piece of evidence,” and lists examples. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI)

The simple fact of the matter is, Ken Ham goes into the topic with a belief what the answer *must* be. He *starts* with the conclusion he wants to reach and he, and his organization, will selectively cherry pick and spin to to support that. He’s as bad as any leftist YSM puke with an agenda. In this case, his organization picked *one* paper that made extravagant claims as to its own significance and use it to condemn the entire argument that the second law of thermodynamics is not violated by evolution (or abiogenesis); again all they have when you boil down that article is their own assertion that “yes it does”

I have very little beef with *old* Earth creationists. If you posit that the Earth is old (as it, frankly, actually appears to be, very overwhelmingly so, obfuscations to the contrary notwithstanding) and that evolution happened (again, as it actually appears to have done, again, very overwhelmingly so despite obfuscations to the contrary), but then want to insist that God guided/steered the process, that’s a different level of disagreement, than young earth, flood geology, wham-bam-everything-made-at-once. That, I fear, verges on Flat Earther level of dang-near-certain-to-be-wrong.

“One problem I have with a literal interpretation is the continually used phrase, roughly, “and there was evening and there was morning, the (insert sequential number here) day”. I believe this phrase occurs even before the sun was created.”

There are *old* earth creationists who interpret “yom” (the Hebrew word used here) as some indefinite period of time. Apparently it can be used in the same way as we would say “Back in Washington’s day” where clearly not one sunset-to-sunset day is meant.

Yes, there are people who state that evolution is a “fact” and that is because they believe it to be as likely to be wrong, as for the earth to be flat. Yes, technically one is never exactly 100 percent sure but when you round to the nearest millionth of a percent, *that* turns out to be 100 percent. And similarly for the Earth being old (which it would have to be for evolution to function, but even if evolution were somehow disproved, that wouldn’t mean the Earth is young.

“Theory” is a much stronger word to a scientist than it is in common speech. Scientists talk about the theory of gravitation. the atomic theory, and so on; no one disputes these but they are theories. Actually the fact that it’s pretty solid, is why they call it a theory.

There has in fact been a fair amount of argument in recent decades not about whether evolution happened, but exactly *how* it happens. That should not be confused with doubt over whether it happened at all; again the evidence is simply overwhelming, when not being cherry picked by professional creationists. Who, frankly have turned out to be either grossly stupid/incompetent, or liars every time I’ve looked into a particular individual.

You risk my not noticing notification of the reply in the flood of other things saturday.

So best to wait until Sunday in any case.