Mathematician Granville Sewell as early ID theorist

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 3, 2015

Intelligent Design, Mathematics}

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Author’s note: To paraphrase Barbara Mandrell, I was ID when ID wasn’t cool. What, intelligent design still isn’t cool, you say? Oh…well, compared to 1985 it is.

I offer for your interest the Postscript to my 1985 Springer book, Analysis of a Finite Element Method: PDE/PROTRAN. This Postscript draws an analogy between the evolution of the software described in the book (now calledPDE2D) and the evolution of life, and it is primarily about irreducible complexity, although Michael Behe would not coin that term until 11 years later. It is also clear that I was an intelligent design proponent then, though I had never heard of that term either at the time.

In fact, as far as I knew, I was the only ID proponent in the world in 1985. I had never heard of anyone else who doubted unguided evolution yet didn’t believe in what would today be called “creationism.” Of course I now know that there were many of us, especially in the more mathematical sciences. We just didn’t have any way to publicly share our ideas then, since all scientific publications were controlled by Darwinists, who allowed less dissent than Pravda in the USSR. Well, they still are, but it is now occasionally possible to express dissenting viewpoints, and now we have the Internet, which makes it harder to completely suppress controversial points of view.

I included my ideas in a Postscript because there was no other way to express them in the scientific literature (believe me, I tried!). More.

Anyone with other stories to share about the very early days?

Note: Sewell is the author of In the Beginning.

See also:

Granville Sewell’s important contribution to physics: Entropy-X

and

Granville Sewell on how to challenge a scientific consensus

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Comments

Do you think that the manufacture and use of computers is consistent or inconsistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
If mother nature was the manufacturer, yes.Virgil Cain_{December 14, 2015
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harry: It appears that you do not comprehend Sewell’s point at all. Handwaving. Let's start with this. Do you think that the manufacture and use of computers is consistent or inconsistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics?Zachriel_{December 14, 2015
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Zachriel @ 40, It appears that you do not comprehend Sewell's point at all.harry_{December 14, 2015
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harry: In both open and closed systems the laws of probability apply. Of course the laws of probability apply. harry: If some people actually believed that a laptop PC might get assembled mindlessly and accidentally, would you encourage them in their belief with remark? Of course not. But it has nothing to do with the the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is not violated in the making of computers.Zachriel_{December 13, 2015
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harry @ 38, Oops. ... encourage them in their belief with that remark?harry_{December 13, 2015
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Gordon Davisson @ 37, Again, other than life itself, name ten examples of the laws of physics applied to a mindlessly formed natural environment bringing about significant functional complexity. You can't. Life on Earth is a spectacular, singular exception to what all the evidence we have been able to gather about the Universe tells us: That Sewell is absolutely right. In both open and closed systems the laws of probability apply. The only causally adequate explanation for life is intelligent agency, exactly like the only causally adequate explanation for a laptop PC is intelligent agency.
Net result: as far as the second law is concerned, the Earth’s entropy could be decreasing by up to 3.7e14-3.8e13 = 3.3e14 J/K per second without there even being a question that the second law was being violated (at least at this whole-Earth level).
If some people actually believed that a laptop PC might get assembled mindlessly and accidentally, would you encourage them in their belief with remark? If not, why not?harry_{December 13, 2015
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Harry: I hope the rest of your day went better. I am working on a response to the Sewell paper, but unfortunately he makes a lot of mistakes and it's taking me a while to sort them out and explain them coherently. I'm partway through, but can't say for certain when I'll finish. The base problem is that Sewell simply doesn't understand thermodynamics. In some cases, he can't make sense of some thermodynamic principle, assumes the problem must be with the physics rather than his understanding, and rejects it as obvious nonsense (e.g. compensation and conversion between different types of entropy). In other cases, he thinks he understands something (when he doesn't), and takes his "understanding" and runs with it (e.g. the relation between thermodynamics and probability). In still other cases, he simply makes up things that make sense to him and assumes they have something to do with actual thermo (e.g. X-entropies). The net result is a mess. But because he's using his intuition as a guide, it's an intuitively plausible mess; it just doesn't match up with reality terribly well. Anyway, I'm working on it and will post when I have something reasonably complete. In the meantime, a quick reply to kairosfocus: as Zachriel pointed out, you're ignoring the energy leaving Earth, and you really need to take that into account. The Earth receives high-temperature (low entropy) heat from the sun, and dumps low-temperature (high entropy) heat to deep space. If you look at this in terms of free energy or negentropy, it's the influx from the sun that's more important; if you look at it in terms of entropy (as you're doing), the efflux to deep space is far more significant. But in any case, if you want the full picture you need to take both into account. The sunlight reaching Earth carries about 3.8e13 J/K per second of entropy (see my calculation here), and hence adds that much entropy to the Earth's inventory. The entropy of the thermal radiation leaving Earth is much harder to calculate exactly, but it's at least 3.7e14 J/K per second. That's almost a factor of 10 higher than the influx (and realistically it'll be significantly higher than that). Net result: as far as the second law is concerned, the Earth's entropy could be decreasing by up to 3.7e14-3.8e13 = 3.3e14 J/K per second without there even being a question that the second law was being violated (at least at this whole-Earth level). Now, realistically, there's no chance at all that the Earth's entropy is decreasing anything like that fast. Essentially, the second law says that entropy can be produced, and can move around and change form, but cannot be destroyed. The actual rate of change will depend on the entropy flux in/out of the Earth (estimated above) and the rate that entropy is produced on Earth. The second law doesn't tell you anything at all about what the production rate is; all it addresses is the destruction rate, which is zero. The second law also doesn't place any limits on conversion between different types of entropy, so in addition to not saying whether there'll be an actual entropy decrease on Earth, or how much (other than less than the net efflux rate), it also says nothing at all about what form the entropy decrease might take. Your argument about the difficulty of a blind search isn't related to the second-law constraints; thermodynamics simply doesn't address that type of question. This is the sort of thing I was talking about as being like applying the law of gravity to the stock market. Aside from thermodynamics, the argument based on the assumption of a blind search is simply wrong. As Winton Ewert recently admitted, "I agree that weak long-range interactions should produce a fitness landscape somewhat smoother than random chance and this fitness landscape would thus be a source of some active information," which means that evolution can do better than blind search, even without any intelligent assistance. The real question is whether evolution can do enough better. Winston goes on to say "We disagree in that I do not think that is going to be a sufficient source of active information to account for biology. I do not have a proof of this." In order to settle this question completely we'd need to know a lot more about the overall fitness function (and how smooth or rough it is) than we actually do. But in the meantime, if you base your argument on the assumption that unassisted evolution = blind search, you're arguing from an assumption that's known to be false.Gordon Davisson_{December 11, 2015
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kairosfocus: an energy importing open system is liable to see entropy rise significantly absent coupling and conversion to work. With regards to the Earth, it absorbs energy as emitted by the Sun, then dumps energy into the cold of space; therefore, solar energy *flows* through the Earth's surface system. Due to this flow, some areas will have low entropy and other areas will have high entropy, and the Earth's surface system is in constant and chaotic change. So we have a quintillion objects all neatly stacked. Something comes along and disperses the objects willy-nilly, leaving a jumble. Then the quintillion objects form into a delicate tapestry. Does this represent a violation of thermodynamics?Zachriel_{December 11, 2015
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kairosfocus @ 32
... an energy importing open system is liable to see entropy rise significantly absent coupling and conversion to work.
Exactly.harry_{December 11, 2015
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GD, 28:
4: X hardly ever happens. You’re trying to use claim #4 to support claim #1, and that’s not logically valid.
Nope. Statistical thermodynamics gives statistical underpinnings to the classical form of the 2nd law in terms of, the logically conceivable possible states are so overwhelmed by the statistical weight of predominant clusters that they are practically unobservable. Too much haystack, the needles are too deeply isolated. For 1,000 bits, there are 1.07* 10^301 possibilities. These bits can be viewed as descriptions of node arcs networks describing configs in a description language reduced to structured y/n qs. In the end that is what AutoCAD etc do. An observed cosmos of 10^80 atoms changing state at 10^12 - 14 times/s, for 10^17s would be so overwhelmed by the field of possibilities that a direct search for FSCO/I rich clusters would be utterly overwhelmed. Converting the number of tries into a straw sized unit, the haystack for the config space would dwarf the observed cosmos. And you would only be able to sample one straw from it. Effective odds of finding a needle in such a haystack without intelligent direction: nil. And if you imagine that there are searches that are golden, the set of searches of a set is effectively the set of subsets. Search for golden search then is blindly searching the power set of the config space, of order 2^[1.07*10^301], calculator smoking territory. Worse, FSCO/I naturally requires clusters of specific highly constrained configs. That leads to a pattern of deeply isolated islands of function in the config space, setting up the blind needle in haystack search challenge. The evolutionary materialist accounts of origin of cell based life, protein families, and body plans are not plausible in the face of this challenge, obfuscations and dismissive talking points notwithstanding. The only reasonable, empirically tested and reliable cause of FSCO/I is intelligently directed configuration, aka design. Which is commonly ideologically locked out. KFkairosfocus_{December 10, 2015
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PS: When that coupling-conversion system involves functionally specific complex organisation and information beyond 500 - 1,000 bits [FSCO/I], one is epistemically entitled -- per inference to best inductive and analytically supported empirically reliable explanation -- to infer design as key cause. This points directly to intelligent design of cell based life and of major body plans including our own.kairosfocus_{December 10, 2015
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Harry, in fact the Clausius expression is based on considering two subsystems inside an isolated system passing d'q of heat from hot to cold subsystem. The source, at higher temp, loses some entropy and the recipient gains some, but as - d'q/Thot is less than + d'q/Tcold, overall entropy rises. The micro picture is that the second's gain in no of ways to arrange mass and energy so greatly overwhelms the reduction in the first that k ln W net rises, if you will for simplicity. In short, as I have pointed out for years, an energy importing open system is liable to see entropy rise significantly absent coupling and conversion to work. KFkairosfocus_{December 10, 2015
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Gordon Davisson @ 27,28 What is your response to Sewell's Entropy and Evolution? He makes a very compelling case that since "The second law is all about using probability at the microscopic level to predict macroscopic change," and since "the laws of probability do not apply only to isolated systems," the textbook assertion that "In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from an arrangement of lesser probability to an arrangement of greater probability," can be generalized to open systems as "Natural (unintelligent) forces do not do macroscopically describable things that are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view." In other words, the Earth being an open system does not explain dumb, lifeless matter mindlessly and accidentally assembling itself into the ultra-sophisticated, digital information-based nanotechnology of life, the functional complexity of which is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. The Earth receiving energy from the sun makes it an open system, but that does not magically allow the virtually impossible to occur.harry_{December 10, 2015
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harry: Have you read Granville Sewell’s Entropy and Evolution?
C. A tornado hits a town, turning houses and cars into rubble. Then, another tornado hits, and turns the rubble back into houses and cars.
So we have a quintillion objects all neatly stacked. Something comes along and disperses the objects willy-nilly, leaving a jumble. Then the quintillion objects form into a delicate tapestry. Does this represent a violation of thermodynamics?Zachriel_{December 9, 2015
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Gordon Davisson, Have you read Granville Sewell's Entropy and Evolution? I think you would find it very helpful. It won't take long to read it. It can be found here: http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.2/BIO-C.2013.2 I wrote 5 or 6 paragraphs of commentary on the conclusions I had drawn from it, then submitted my work, and found that I had been logged out and all I had written was lost. ;o) I hope that happening doesn't signify how things are going to go today. I have to get ready to go to work now. If you don't mind, read it and let me know what you think of it. I will respond more fully to your remarks when I can.harry_{December 9, 2015
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Other than life itself, name ten examples of the laws of physics applied to a mindlessly formed natural environment bringing about significant functional complexity. Snowflakes have some intricacy, but no functional complexity.
Why? I agree that we don't see many examples of highly-complex functional systems other than life and human-created examples, but that in no way supports the claim that the second law forbids such systems. Here's a hierarchy of claims; each one implies all of the claims after it, but none logically implies any of the claims before it: 1: The second law of thermodynamics forbids X. 2: X is impossible. 3: X never actually happens. 4: X hardly ever happens. You're trying to use claim #4 to support claim #1, and that's not logically valid.Gordon Davisson_{December 8, 2015
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Harry, you're making a number of mistakes, some trivial and some important. I'll try to explain the important ones, but I need to start with straightening out a couple of minor ones.
Ultimately things do reach a state of equilibrium and only increase in entropy from there.
First, after a system reaches a state of equilibrium, its entropy is not going to change. At equilibrium, no macroscopic change takes place, so the system's thermodynamic state will not change at all. Second, you seem to be assuming that entropy increase = approach to equilibrium, which is only true for isolated systems. For non-isloated systems with equilibrium boundary conditions, they will tend to approach equilibrium with their surroundings, but it's entirely normal for their entropy to decrease as they do so. For instance, for a system that's isloated except that it exchanges heat with its surroundings at a constant temperature, the Helmholtz free energy will decrease toward a minimum as it approaches equilibrium, but entropy might either increase or decrease. Ok, now we get to an important problem: for a system with non-equilibrium or changing boundary conditions, the second law gives no reason to think the system will approach equibrium at all. Ever. The Earth has non-equilibrium boundary conditions. It exchanges heat with both the sun's photosphere (at a temperature of around 6,000 Kelvin) and deep space (temp around 3 Kelvin). And since it takes in heat from the sun (a high temp = low entropy) and dumps heat to deep space (at low temp = high entropy), that heat flow is constantly driving Earth away from thermodynamic equilibrium. The Earth might reach an approximately stationary state where thermodynamically irreversable processes on Earth drive it towards equilibrium at the same rate the heat flow drives it away (so they effectively cancel and it stays in the same state), but this is very very different from thermodynamic equilibrium. The heat flow through Earth powers a wide variety of non-equilibrium phenomenon on Earth, including (but not limited to): - Weather of all kinds (well, except still air) - The temperature difference between the poles and the equator - The hydrologic cycle - Life, including metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction, and evolution If the heat flow through the Earth were to stop for some reason, the Earth would run down and approach thermodynamic equilibrium. It would look nothing at all like the Earth does today: - Weather would run down. Winds would die down and the atmosphere would settle down to a uniform temperature, with no clouds, rain, or ... well, anything even slightly interesting. - All above-sea-level lakes and rivers would drain into the world ocean and never be replenished by rain and snow. - Without an energy source (the sun), plants would die. Then the herbivores that eat them, followed by the carnovores that eat them. Life needs usable (non-equilibrium) energy to do any of the things life does, and without it... life ends. (Well, except for deep-ocean vent communities; they get their free energy from radioactive decay deep in the Earth, rather than from the sun. They'd probably keep going until they radioactive elements had mostly decayed away, which would take billions of years. But eventually they'd die too.) The things you are talking about, functional complexity, instructions, etc are all completely irrelevant to thermodynamics. Trying to apply the second law to them is like trying to apply the law of gravity to the stock market -- it may sound good if you don't know anything about the actual physics involved, and it might possibly work as a metaphor, but as far as the actual physics is concerned it's pure garbage. Oh, and as for the universe as a whole: it's expanding, which means the second law doesn't require it to approach equilibrium. To oversimplify quite a bit, when system is expanding (or contracting, or generally has changing boundary conditions) its equilibrium state is a moving target. If the equilibrium state changes faster than the system approaches it, the system gets left behind in a non-equilibrium state. Currently it's not expanding very fast, but during inflation (and even during the early post-inflation expansion) the actual state would've been left far behind. I'm not a cosmologist, but AIUI the universe was far from equilibrium even before the inflationary phase, but whether that's surprising or not depends entirely on what process produced that state, and we don't know that. Insisting that it must be ID is a pure argument from ignorance.Gordon Davisson_{December 8, 2015
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Zachriel @ 25, You still dodge the issue. Other than life itself, name ten examples of the laws of physics applied to a mindlessly formed natural environment bringing about significant functional complexity. Snowflakes have some intricacy, but no functional complexity. Order is not functional complexity. Intricacy is not functional complexity. Significant functional complexity only comes about via intelligent agents. Life is the most functionally complex phenomenon known to us. Give me ten reasons why it is rational to just assume it came about mindlessly and accidentally when there is no evidence whatsoever that significant functional complexity ever arises mindlessly and accidentally. It doesn't because it would have to overcome the inexorable tendency of matter to disintegrate. Yes, limited order arises due to the properties of certain elements but that is nothing like functionality that can, as Hawking put it, "sustain itself against the tendency to disorder."harry_{December 8, 2015
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harry: Ultimately things do reach a state of equilibrium and only increase in entropy from there. Ultimately may be billions of years. Meanwhile, the Earth is in constant flux. harry: That does not mean there is never, ever an emergence of some kind of trivial order that is the inevitable result of the laws of physics being applied to some environment, like the emergence of crystals and snowflakes. The order in a single snowflake is well beyond the "Universal Probability Bound" for a random assortment of water molecules.Zachriel_{December 8, 2015
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Zachriel, You create distractions from the central point being made because you don't have an answer to it. Ultimately things do reach a state of equilibrium and only increase in entropy from there. That does not mean there is never, ever an emergence of some kind of trivial order that is the inevitable result of the laws of physics being applied to some environment, like the emergence of crystals and snowflakes. Again, tornados sometimes drive nails into boards, too. That does not mean it is reasonable to expect that a tornado will build a house, or that digital information-based nanotechnology (life) can be brought about merely by the mindless application of the laws of physics to a natural environment. As Hawking points out, a set of instructions are necessary for that to happen.
Storms bring water over the land, like a pump, allowing plants to grow.
Plants are a form of life. Life can't come about without a set of instructions. Before there was life, before the instructions for life were written, storms brought water over the land and the land got wet. That was it. How life was arrived at is the question, so It is begging the question to use plants as an example of increasing order.harry_{December 7, 2015
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People have a lot of common experience with things becoming more ordered, e.g. snowflakes.
And given TIME those snowflakes will become more disorganized. At least TRY to address what you are responding to.Virgil Cain_{December 7, 2015
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harry: "It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time." That is not quite correct. People have a lot of common experience with things becoming more ordered, e.g. snowflakes. harry: "the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always increases with time. " That is correct. harry: "However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases by a greater amount." That is correct. harry: Lightning, wind and storm are destructive releases of energy. Storms bring water over the land, like a pump, allowing plants to grow. In any case, you said, "They {such as oceans} reached a state of equilibrium, and can only increase in entropy from there, due to the inexorable tendency of matter to disintegrate." An equilibrium can be disrupted by the flow of energy, and that can result in reductions in local entropy.Zachriel_{December 7, 2015
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Zachriel @ 16
You suggested that entropy can only increase. While it must increase globally, there is nothing preventing local decreases of entropy. That includes lightning, wind and storm, and crashing waves.
I cited Hawking saying
It is a matter of common experience, that things get more disordered and chaotic with time. … the total amount of disorder, or entropy, in the universe, always increases with time. However, the Law refers only to the total amount of disorder. The order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases by a greater amount.
Lightning, wind and storm are destructive releases of energy. They don't build anything. Yeah, a tornado might occasionally drive a nail into a board, but that doesn't mean that tornados can build houses. Overall, tornados destroy things. Overall, entropy can only increase.harry_{December 7, 2015
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Coldplay - Miracles (Official Lyric Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7atDQreame4 John Tesh • We Three Kings • Christmas in Positano, Italy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJbfLcD9O9sbornagain_{December 6, 2015
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Zach, it is precisely because of the initial 1 in 10^10^123 low entropy condition of the universe, (and 'infinite time'), and the atheist's rejection of the living God who brought the universe into being, that atheists are the ones who are forced to believe that mythological angry sky gods, flying spaghetti monsters, fluffy pink unicorns, and every other possible imaginary thing, are real in some other universe.
Multiverse and the Design Argument - William Lane Craig Excerpt: Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1 in 10^10(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1 in 10^10(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 1 in 10^10(123). (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison [The Road to Reality (Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5]). Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On naturalism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse. — Penrose puts it bluntly “these world ensemble hypothesis are worse than useless in explaining the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe”. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/multiverse-and-the-design-argument Why Most Atheists Believe in Pink Unicorns - May 2014 Excerpt: Given an infinite amount of time, anything that is logically possible(11) will eventually happen. So, given an infinite number of universes being created in (presumably) an infinite amount of time, you are not only guaranteed to get your universe but every other possible universe. This means that every conceivable universe exists, from ones that consist of nothing but a giant black hole, to ones that are just like ours and where someone just like you is reading a blog post just like this, except it’s titled: “Why most atheists believe in blue unicorns.” By now I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but I’ll say it anyway. Since we know that horses are possible, and that pink animals are possible, and that horned animals are possible, then there is no logical reason why pink unicorns are not possible entities. Ergo, if infinite universes exist, then pink unicorns must necessarily exist. For an atheist to appeal to multiverse theory to deny the need of a designer infers that he believes in that theory more than a theistically suggestive single universe. And to believe in the multiverse means that one is saddled with everything that goes with it, like pink unicorns. In fact, they not only believe in pink unicorns, but that someone just like them is riding on one at this very moment, and who believes that elephants, giraffes, and zebra are merely childish fairytales. Postscript While it may be amusing to imagine atheists riding pink unicorns, it should be noted that the belief in them does not logically invalidate atheism. There theoretically could be multiple universes and there theoretically could be pink unicorns. However, there is a more substantial problem for the atheist if he wants to believe in them and he wants to remain an atheist. Since, as I said, anything can happen in the realm of infinities, one of those possibilities is the production of a being of vast intelligence and power. Such a being would be as a god to those like us, and could perhaps breach the boundaries of the multiverse to, in fact, be a “god” to this universe. This being might even have the means to create its own universe and embody the very description of the God of Christianity (or any other religion that the atheist otherwise rejects). It seems the atheist, in affirming the multiverse in order to avoid the problem of fine-tuning, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. The further irony is that somewhere, in the great wide world of infinities, the atheist’s doppelganger is going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma.” https://pspruett.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/why-most-atheists-believe-in-pink-unicorns/ Pink Fluffy Unicorns Dancing On Rainbows - music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xWhG4UU_Y A Matter of Considerable Gravity: On the Purported Detection of Gravitational Waves and Cosmic Inflation - Bruce Gordon - April 4, 2014 Excerpt: Thirdly, at least two paradoxes result from the inflationary multiverse proposal that suggest our place in such a multiverse must be very special: the "Boltzmann Brain Paradox" and the "Youngness Paradox." In brief, if the inflationary mechanism is autonomously operative in a way that generates a multiverse, then with probability indistinguishable from one (i.e., virtual necessity) the typical observer in such a multiverse is an evanescent thermal fluctuation with memories of a past that never existed (a Boltzmann brain) rather than an observer of the sort we take ourselves to be. Alternatively, by a second measure, post-inflationary universes should overwhelmingly have just been formed, which means that our existence in an old universe like our own has a probability that is effectively zero (i.e., it's nigh impossible). So if our universe existed as part of such a multiverse, it would not be at all typical, but rather infinitely improbable (fine-tuned) with respect to its age and compatibility with stable life-forms. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/04/a_matter_of_con084001.html
Can 'you' (if there were a 'you' in atheism) say, 'epistemological failure of the atheistic worldview'? Interestingly when an atheist denies the reality of God, that atheist, of logical necessity, ends up denying the reality of his own conscious experience, i.e. of his own ‘personhood’, which happens to be the most sure thing that a person can know about reality. https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/why-dawkins-should-have-listened-to-the-philosophers/#comment-591212bornagain_{December 6, 2015
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bornagain: We Don’t Actually Know What Triggers Lightning Strikes It's an angry sky-god hurling thunderbolts at the wicked in the Vale of Tempe below. http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/119/779/11977906_640.jpgZachriel_{December 6, 2015
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We Don't Actually Know What Triggers Lightning Strikes - Aug. 2013 Excerpt: Lightning is a natural electrical discharge—but scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what triggers it. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/08/lightning_strikes_what_causes_lightning_is_a_mystery_could_it_be_cosmic.html Physicist finds mysterious anti-electron clouds inside thunderstorm - May 13, 2015 Excerpt: Says Dwyer, "We really don't understand how lightning gets started very well because we don't understand the electrical environment of thunderstorms. This positron phenomenon could be telling us something new about how thunderstorms charge up and make lightning, but our finding definitely complicates things because it doesn't fit into the picture that was developing." http://phys.org/news/2015-05-physicist-mysterious-anti-electron-clouds-thunderstorm.html Job 38:35 "Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?"bornagain_{December 6, 2015
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harry: Your link provides me with a picture of lightning striking over the ocean and nothing else. That's right. Lightning is far from equilibrium. harry: If the article not displaying was suggesting that somehow lightning striking the ocean generated life, No. You suggested that entropy can only increase. While it must increase globally, there is nothing preventing local decreases of entropy. That includes lightning, wind and storm, and crashing waves.Zachriel_{December 6, 2015
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Your link provides me with a picture of lightning striking over the ocean and nothing else. The rest of the page is blank. If the article not displaying was suggesting that somehow lightning striking the ocean generated life, reminiscent of the old Frankenstein movie with lightning strikes generating life in the Frankenstein monster (Boris Karloff), and Colin Clive, playing mad scientist Henry Frankenstein, exclaiming "It's alive!", then I will find it as convincing than your other arguments, which is to say I won't find it convincing at all.harry_{December 6, 2015
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harry: They reached a state of equilibrium, and can only increase in entropy from there, due to the inexorable tendency of matter to disintegrate. This is not equilibrium. https://treasurytoday.com/~/media/articles/2015/03/2015-03and-04-tta-09-t-stormy-sea-with-lightning-ss149368970-300x200.ashxZachriel_{December 6, 2015
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