Erik Anderson, thanks for your post giving readers the opportunity to comment on my new video and Biocomplexity paper. As you noted, I usually leave comments off when I post on this topic, for exactly the reason you stated, they usually generate more heat than light. In fact, which I noticed your post this morning, I have to admit I thought, oh God, here we go again, but I was pleasantly surprised by the 100+ comments, for the first time in 13 years, I felt they generated more light than heat!
I want to add one further comment myself. Some people argue that the second law only applies to heat/work, that is, they accept only the first (and oldest) of the three statements of the second law, and not the more general second and third statements, as quoted from Ford’s Classical and Modern Physics text, and in this manner they can avoid the whole issue of evolution and the second law. In fact, this point of view seems to have become much more popular now that the silliness of the widely used “compensation” counterargument has become clear. Well, it is very hard to argue that the second law applies to my scenario “A” (diffusion of heat) and not to my scenario “B” (diffusion of other things), since the same equations govern both, and it is almost universally agreed that the second law at least applies to diffusion in general.
But certainly there are many scientists who don’t think the second law should be generalized to less quantifiable things like tornados and evolution (my scenarios C and D), though many, if not most, general physics books do accept the more general statements, thermodynamics texts not so much. But the main point of my article and video is that whatever law it is that prevents tornados from constructing houses and cars out of rubble—whether this is really the second law, or a generalization of the second law which should have another name—it is most certainly the same law that says natural forces cannot reorganize atoms into computers and airplanes, with or without the input of solar energy. There is only one important difference between scenarios C and D, with regard to the application of the second law: there is a widely-believed theory as to how evolution could construct humans out of dust. But if you can come up with a theory as to how tornados can construct houses and cars out of rubble, and get it widely accepted in the scientific world, then even that difference disappears.
Comments are on, though I can’t promise I will participate. I have been making these same arguments for 13 years now, and I’m a little tired.