Why science can’t study the supernatural – A physicist’s view

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 7, 2012

Mind, Physics}

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boo — Oh please, let us guess just this once: You were going to say ... Boo! Right?

Why can’t the paranormal and spiritual realms be subject to scientific analysis? The materialist says “Because they don’t exist.” and therefore all signals are spurious and a waste of resources.

The intelligent design theorist says “coherence is not just a sign of extra dimensions, but a sign of front-loaded purpose”. Therefore the paranormal might not be “spooky action-at-a-distance” but a design feature of simultaneous causation. If A is correlated to B, it may be that A doesn’t cause B, or B cause A, but previous design C causes both A and B such that they are correlated.

Lipstick and breast cancer are correlated, but neither causes the other.

But if we look at the meta-studies, if we ask, what is the benefit of studying the paranormal versus ignoring it? We find the curious phenomenon that the Enlightenment advanced precisely where it ignored the paranormal. Thus it would seem that studying the paranormal wasn’t merely a distraction, but a degradation of science.

Stanley Jaki argues in “The Savior of Science” and several of his other books, that bad metaphysics, such as looking for paranormal effects, waylaid the nascent scientific progress of the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Caliphate and even the Jewish Kabbala. Only the severe discipline of the Enlightenment materialism could negotiate the shoals of bad metaphysics.

I’ve come to a similar answer, though phrased a little differently. Inasmuch as the paranormal and spiritism are “personal”, possessing the characteristics of contingent personality, then it is dangerous to study them as a machine. This is like BF Skinner studying humans as if they were a computer program.

Economists can tell you the danger of doing this. Not only does this give the wrong answer, but it even gives the wrong questions. What makes people people, and what makes the divine divine is precisely the personal, and therefore science does a disservice to theology when it reduces the personal to machinery. But worse, it invites the ghost into the machine.

More precisely, the Bible condemns even the exploration of the occult, because of its parasitic relationship to persons.

We all understand computer viruses. And thanks to global warmists, we are beginning to understand the power of positive feedback and what money does to our science models. But we have yet to understand what psychology does to common sense, or what evolutionary biology does to our sanity.

Inasmuch as the paranormal is personal, it is forbidden for the same reason that the occult is forbidden–it infects our mind.

Thoughts? – UD News

Comments

A couple of evo fallacies: 1- Having enough energy available to do the work does not mean the available energy can do the work required 2- The sun provides energy but that does not mean that energy can produce a living organismJoe_{February 9, 2012
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Joe: Please go easy on tone. Dr Liddle has a point.
I respectfully disagree as it is obvious that Dr Liddle is nothing but a strawman erectorJoe_{February 9, 2012
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Bruce,
However, if the order produced by the mental activity of human beings exceeds the order in the consumed food, then the Second Law is violated.
So if I drink a well-shaken, disordered glucose drink, and then assemble a model battleship, I have violated the 2nd Law? I think you are missing the point about energy and order. The energy in glucose is contained in its carbon bonds. This was locked in in the first instance by a photosynthetic complex trapping the energy in a photon of sunlight and utilising it to energise an electron. The electron can only go down a thermodynamic gradient from that point, unless energy is put in to raise it again. Descending the thermodynamic gradient allows the energy to be utilised, via a series of intermediates, to convert CO2 and water into complex carbohydrate. Turning complex carbohydrate back into CO2 and water releases that stored energy. At all points, the energy of the initially excited electron flows 'downhill', thermodynamically. When CO2 and water are released by our respiration, and we do work using that energy, it has returned to the bottom of the thermodynamic slope. We need a further input of energy to push electrons back up the slope and combine that CO2 and water again. It is closely akin to a 'real' gradient system - eg hydroelectric generation, which uses gravitation instead of the serial electronegativity gradient of the biological systems, and warmth to raise the water uphill instead of photon energy. We can use free energy to decrease entropy - to make a model battleship, walk uphill, or whatever else takes our fancy. But the amount of order in the food is really immaterial. And - I may have misread - it is not the warmth of sunlight that permits biology to decrease entropy locally, but the quantum energy of photons. At any moment, the amount of photon energy striking the earth may be minor. But because Life traps photons sequentially, and locks that energy in carbon compounds, vast amounts of energy can be intercepted, and vast amounts of material can be ordered, with no thermodynamic violation. Your car runs on the fossil light of an ancient sun, trapped in a disordered molecular soup.Chas D_{February 9, 2012
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It is not interesting when people say absurd things. Any textbook on thermodynamics will tell you that the 2nd law is of statistical nature. Shall I have to explain more or is this enough?
Well, you don't have to explain it, I am well aware of it, but it seems to me irrelevant to my point.
ID says that based on empirical observation control does not emerge spontaneously. So any system in order to be controlled needs purposeful and structured external intervention. What’s more, formalisms such as prescriptive information or algorithms or cybernetic control, from empirical observation, strongly point to choice contingency, and consequently to intelligence simply because nature is inert to choice. That I find very interesting. That is also very appealing and very simple, which are aesthetic indications of the gist of ID being perfectly scientifically legitimate and true.
Well, I don't think that makes sense. I don't even know what you mean, and I think that there are fallacies lurking in your terms. What, for instance, do you mean, precisely, by "choice contingency"? And "prescriptive information"? And "cybernetic control"? And "spontaneously"? And please don't brush me off, by either recoiling at my ignorance, or, alternatively, the accusation that I am nitpicking, because it seems to me your argument hangs on those concepts,and I want to know exactly what you mean by the terms. Because using at least some meanings those terms, your that claim that control systems cannot arise spontaneously is simply not supported.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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Dr Liddle, the known physicist count for this thread includes Drs Sheldon and Selensky. You could count me in at one step lower in the academic rankings. All of us are arguing the design side of this matter. What is that telling you? Can you answer tot he issues I have summarised, for instance? And of co8urse ES is precisely correct to highlight the issue of statistics at the foundation of the 2nd law. Notice, Dr Sewell's point in the end is a statistical, probabilistic one. KFkairosfocus_{February 9, 2012
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First of all, regarding the “appeal to authority”, both you, Elizabeth, and you, Champignon took my quote out of context. I did not say you should believe him because he has expertise. I said, “If you’re going to claim that he doesn’t understand the Second Law, you’d better make damn sure you thoroughly understand his reasoning.”
Fair enough. Although I'd still say that given that his conclusion flies in the face of modern physics, coupled with the fact that he is not himself a physicist, would at the minimum, give me low priors regarding the validity of his conclusion. If is correct, that means that the whole of physics since Newton is wrong.
I then proceeded to summarize it. My point was that Champignon’s critique did not address his argument.
Well, it does address your version of it. It may not address an argument that you did not present. I have not read his book,but I have read his paper:A second look at the second law, in which he himself writes, in conclusion:
Of course, one can still argue that the spectacular increase in order seen on Earth does not violate the second law because what has happened here is not really extremely improbable. Not many people are willing to make this argument, however; in fact, the claim that the second law does not apply to open systems was invented in an attempt to avoid having to make this argument.
His first sentence is,of course, correct. However, his second sense is doubly wrong. It is precisely the argument of evolutionary biologists that what has happened on earth is "not really extremely improbable", so his statement that "not many people are willing to make this argument" betrays complete ignorance of evolutionary theory. And the idea that "the claim that the second law does not apply to open systems was invented in an attempt to avoid having to make this argument" is simply false. The claim is made because it is demonstrably true. So while his math may be just fine. It's the wrong math.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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"So essentially, ID amounts to the proposition that the 2nd Law had to be violated (by an intelligent agent that didn’t need to eat) for life to exist. Interesting.
It is not interesting when people say absurd things. Any textbook on thermodynamics will tell you that the 2nd law is of statistical nature. Shall I have to explain more or is this enough? ID says that based on empirical observation control does not emerge spontaneously. So any system in order to be controlled needs purposeful and structured external intervention. What's more, formalisms such as prescriptive information or algorithms or cybernetic control, from empirical observation, strongly point to choice contingency, and consequently to intelligence simply because nature is inert to choice. That I find very interesting. That is also very appealing and very simple, which are aesthetic indications of the gist of ID being perfectly scientifically legitimate and true.Eugene S_{February 9, 2012
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To R Sheldon Just who is engaging in laughable ad hominems? You accuse me of suffering from paranoid schizophrenia after all. Lame more than anything else really. Just who is engaging in the burning of straw men here? I would have to say that's projection on your part. You simply don't get what I'm getting at. I can't write a huge article here, this is just commentary to a blog posting, so I only make brief allusions to a few things which quite clearly pass over your head. Heck a whole book wouldn't disabuse you of your rather uh charming notions anyway. You then cite Stanley Jaki! as some kind of refutation of points I was alluding to. Sheldon, citing a Catholic priest (yes I know he was also a scientist) on the 'occult' and science, that's not going to convince anybody who isn't in your camp to start with. I am actually familiar (just a little) with Jaki (his writings on the Fatima visions notably and no I am not a Catholic). Actually the Fatima miracle (so-called) touches on what we are arguing about. Jaki filtered it all through his Catholicism, what he wrote on Fatima is certainly interesting and well-researched, yet ultimately lacks objectivity. You continue to assert that the "Bible gives us instructions on the occult", making it clear your POV is driven by orthodox organized religion, not science. As far as "voices in the head" are concerned, clearly your opinion here is staunchly and narrowly religious, and not anything but. And no I don't care for the scientific materialism that explains it all away neither, but you go to the other extreme. You clearly are not familiar with the literature on abnormal psychology any more than you are familiar with the literature on parapsychology (not that you think it matters at all). I do not care too much for the extent to which psychology has been handicapped by materialism, yet it's not all psychobabble you know. Heard of Multiple Personality Disorder? Are those real people too? (well they are to the person suffering from MPD of course). Truth is they are neither 'real people' as distinct from the sufferer any more than they are 'things'. Sheldon's false duality (his black and white thinking) on 'voices in the head' is so ridiculously simplistic and sloppy, it's not even at the undergrad level.zephyr_{February 9, 2012
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Dr Sheldon, it is sad that you have to in effect link your resume to speak. KFkairosfocus_{February 9, 2012
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OOPS BD, Missed the proper reply point, sorry, go here above. These threaded discussions can get ticklish to follow and disentangle when they get long. KFkairosfocus_{February 9, 2012
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BD: I had forgotten that remark of Sewell's, but that is also quite on target. I think we need to understand three things: disorder, order, organisation. Entropy is in the end a metric of micro-scale disorder due to the number of possible configs of a complex entity consistent with its energy etc and a given macro-observable state. In the simple case Boltzmann's s = k log W tells us this, where W is the number of ways that a system may distribute mass and energy on micro level consistent with a given macro-level observable state. The natural tendency is for systems to move to states where that number of ways is higher and higher, for all sorts of reasons. The simplest case I can think of to illustrate how this works is to consider a marbles in a box exercise with an impulse of energy, and then see how the system evolves naturally in light of forces at work. This is of course a classic case and ends in a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. But the same basic ideas extend to quantum cases, though of course the resulting statistics will be different. I won't bother to clip my outline, qualitative discussion in App 1 my always linked through my handle, LH column, but any interested party can look it up. It should be intuitively obvious why we reliably end up with raw energy injections giving rise to higher entropy. What is more interesting, especially given the sort of line of reasoning Abel et al have been going down for several years in the literature, is the emerging understanding and broad acceptance of the entropy-information link that was first glimpsed when Shannon's average info per symbol metric took the same form as a form for entropy in stat mech. Let me clip Wiki as testifying against known interest:
At an everyday practical level the links between information entropy and thermodynamic entropy are not close. Physicists and chemists are apt to be more interested in changes in entropy as a system spontaneously evolves away from its initial conditions, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, rather than an unchanging probability distribution. And, as the numerical smallness of Boltzmann's constant kB indicates, the changes in S / kB for even minute amounts of substances in chemical and physical processes represent amounts of entropy which are so large as to be right off the scale compared to anything seen in data compression or signal processing. But, at a multidisciplinary level, connections can be made between thermodynamic and informational entropy, although it took many years in the development of the theories of statistical mechanics and information theory to make the relationship fully apparent. In fact, in the view of Jaynes (1957), thermodynamics should be seen as an application of Shannon's information theory: the thermodynamic entropy is interpreted as being an estimate of the amount of further Shannon information needed to define the detailed microscopic state of the system, that remains uncommunicated by a description solely in terms of the macroscopic variables of classical thermodynamics. For example, adding heat to a system increases its thermodynamic entropy because it increases the number of possible microscopic states that it could be in, thus making any complete state description longer. (See article: maximum entropy thermodynamics.[Also,another article remarks: >>in the words of G. N. Lewis writing about chemical entropy in 1930, "Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more" . . . in the discrete case using base two logarithms, the reduced Gibbs entropy is equal to the minimum number of yes/no questions that need to be answered in order to fully specify the microstate, given that we know the macrostate.>>]) Maxwell's demon can (hypothetically) reduce the thermodynamic entropy of a system by using information about the states of individual molecules; but, as Landauer (from 1961) and co-workers have shown, to function the demon himself must increase thermodynamic entropy in the process, by at least the amount of Shannon information he proposes to first acquire and store; and so the total entropy does not decrease (which resolves the paradox).
So, when we see a functionally constrained system, which is built up from many components in particular arrangements that are specific to observable function, then that system is necessarily in a highly constrained, low entropy state, relative to the sea of possibilities for the same components. Just observing the function, for one who knows the underpinnings, tells us MUCH about the underlying configuration. This implies a high information, low entropy state. And of course this can be given practical expression by taking a leaf from the sort of nodes and arcs and exploded view diagrams that are ever so common in engineering praxis: we have a specification on a chain of yes/no questions given suitable answers -- eight bits per ASCII character if we include the parity check bit that says, we can rely on that character with high confidence -- that can be converted into an information value and related to the entropy involved. (And BTW, this is pretty much the actual path way I came through to get to the concept of FSCO/I.) So, we can see why FSCO/I locks us down to a narrow zone T in a space of possibilities W, which makes a blind search on chance plus necessity in a warm little electrified pond or whatever, even with clay beds, a highly implausible account for the origin of the organised integrated systems of metabolising, vNSR replicating life in the cell. Volcanic vents, here or on Titan or the like make but little difference to the point. Notice, such are open systems, but the problem is that as energy is dumped in blindly, the strong trend would be towards maximum disorder, not order. Much less, aperiodic, organised functional structures. Worse yet, code based systems with algorithms and co-ordinated execution machines. We do know that intelligences can create FSCO/I, but that is not explained by for example the fact that embodied intelligences eat. That is just mass and energy flow through, with organised harvesting for utility. The issue is INFORMATION. Where does complex, functionally specific info come from? The organisation of physical components that expresses or embeds it? The consistent answer is: intelligence. And, we live in a contingent world exhibiting fine tuned functional organisation of its physics that makes such C-chemistry cell based life possible. That strongly points to transcendent intelligence as the author of such a cosmos, even through a multiverse speculation. Which BTW is a main area of Dr Sheldon's online writings. Science -- per argument -- may not be well suited to studying the "supernatural," whatever that means, but it is definitely well suited to the empirically based study of signs of intelligent action, acting by art that gives rise to functionally specific, complex organisation and information. Which seems to be what all too many are ever so desperate to see that we do not recognise. That's why I take the whole natural vs supernatural talking point as a grand strawman exercise. Ever since Plato in The Laws Bk X, the real issue on the table has been to discern cause on blind chance plus necessity on the one hand, or art on the other. That's why Lewontin, NCSE, NAS and NSTA are all in my IOSE rogues gallery, here on. It is high time that the strawman was retired. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{February 9, 2012
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KF,
Joe: Please go easy on tone. Dr Liddle has a point. KF
Says the hypocrite who just minutes ago accused Dr Liddle and others of being "morally abnormal, or even warped, even monstrous."champignon_{February 9, 2012
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Joe: Please go easy on tone. Dr Liddle has a point. KFkairosfocus_{February 9, 2012
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Well, my goodness. I go away for 24 hours and find that I've generated quite a discussion. Let me try to get caught up. First of all, regarding the "appeal to authority", both you, Elizabeth, and you, Champignon took my quote out of context. I did not say you should believe him because he has expertise. I said, "If you’re going to claim that he doesn’t understand the Second Law, you’d better make damn sure you thoroughly understand his reasoning." I then proceeded to summarize it. My point was that Champignon's critique did not address his argument. Secondly, my last post included a summary of Sewell's argument, not the details. He gives the argument in detail in Chapter 5 of his collection of essays titled, In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design. It spans 28 pages in the book. If you really are interested, you should read it carefully and then, if you disagree, find the flaw in his argument. Attacking my summary is not really relevant. Thirdly, I would say that all the arguments I have seen above are basically a restatement of the party line regarding why life and human technology do not violate the Second Law. Sewell is well aware of all those arguments, and it is precisely those arguments that he refutes. Simply restating them, as you all have done, does not address his reasoning. Some other points: Eigenstate:
You’re right the amount of energy from the sun introduced to the earth system does not even come close the amount of entropy decrease achieved by biological life on earth, but it goes the other way. The energy taken in by the earth from the absolutely dwarfs the available energy gains made by biological life. The biosphere doesn’t harness even a tiny fraction of what’s available. The earth receives about 1.8 x 1017 Joules/s of energy (see here, for example). ...The earth receives orders of magnitudes more energy every second from the sun than it can use, than can be converted into energy available for work (negative entropy). Not even close.
You are confusing energy with order. Order is the opposite of entropy. When entropy is maximum (eg., at thermodynamic equilibrium), order is 0. But this by no means implies that energy is 0. The energy of sunlight striking the earth does introduce thermodynamic disequilibrium, as evidenced by the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles, but it does not account for the distance away from equilibrium, the amount of order, found in the totality of living things plus human technology. Again, see Sewell's essay for a thorough explanation. Elizabeth:
Bruce, intelligence simply doesn’t violate the second law, for the simple reason that we need to eat in order to be able to think.
You are also confusing energy with order. You are also assuming that creativity is a function of brain activity, which has not been established. The brain uses the energy from food to operate. However, if the order produced by the mental activity of human beings exceeds the order in the consumed food, then the Second Law is violated. Champignon:
Energy and entropy are not subjective quantities. They’re measurable, and I can assure you that no one has found a single macroscopic violation of the second law by any system, living or not (microscopic violations have been seen, but only over short time scales — the second law is a statistical law).
The reason no one has found a single violation in spite of the fact that the earth itself is one massive violation of the Second Law is because they are simply unwilling to see it. "There are none so blind as those who will not see." I'll end with another quote from Sewell which also summarizes his argument:
In Appendix D of The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations...I take a closer look at the equations for entropy change, which apply not only to thermal entropy but also to the entropy associated with anything else that diffuses, and show that they do not simply say that order cannot increase in a closed system, they also say that in an open system, order cannot increase faster than it is imported through the boundary. According to these equations, the thermal order in an open system can decrease in two different ways---it can be converted to disorder, or it can be exported through the boundary. It can increase in only one way: by importation through the boundary... The "compensation" argument was produced by people who generalized the model equation for closed systems, but forgot to generalize the equation for open systems. Both equations are only valid for our simple models, where it is assumed that only heat conduction or diffusion is going on; naturally in more complex situations, the laws of probability do not make such simple predictions. Nevertheless, in [Sewell 2001] I generalized the equation for open systems to the following tautology, which is valid in all situations: "If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable." The fact that order is disappearing in the next room does not make it any easier for computers to appear in our room---unless this order is disappearing into our room, and then only if it is a type of order that makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable, for example, computers. Importing thermal order [eg., sunlight (my addition)] will make the temperatjure distribution less random, and importing carbon order will make the carbon distribution less random, but neither makes the formation of computers more probable. [Emphasis in the original.]
Bruce David_{February 8, 2012
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I don't think meteorologist could "verify the miracle," as such. What he could say is this: "Based on all my training, experience, and scientific knowledge about weather dynamics, I don't think natural causes can explain this event. The issue on the table, however, is whether or not the meteorologist, as a scientist can, in the name of science, address this event which, as I described it, would clearly be a supernatural event. I am sympathetic with Mr. Shelton's problem with science studying "preternatural" events for the reasons that he stated, but I find no problem with using science to determine if a given event was truly miraculous, a standard which surpasses the preternatural or "paranormal." Preternatural does not = supernatural.StephenB_{February 8, 2012
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I don't understand your response, are you objecting? What does the raising of arms have to do with the meteorologist affirming the parting was a natural phenomena? The meteorologist has made no claim for or against God responding to Moses, or of ability of Moses summon God or nature. The meteorologist merely claims that the water was pushed by the wind. Now Moses would make such a claim, but how would science verify it? I don't think it (or the meteorologist) can relying only on empirical evidence.rhampton7_{February 8, 2012
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Now suppose the parting was a natural phenomena whose timing was chosen by God…… If Moses came back to part the waters of the Red Sea, would you have have any problem with a resident meterologist on the scene affirming that the event likely occured as a result of natural causes?
If the meteorologist could explain how nature could push two walls of water in the opposite direction and coordinate that effort with Moses' act of raising his arms, I would have no problem with it. For my part, I can’t imagine any such explanation. Can you?StephenB_{February 8, 2012
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Rham, great point, that argument is commonly advanced by Frank Tipler.junkdnaforlife_{February 8, 2012
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I would not have a problem with a supernatural designation in your hypothetical scenario. Now suppose the parting was a natural phenomena whose timing was chosen by God.
Based on currently available data, the north end of the Ballah Lakes appears to be the most likely location for the sea crossing. In this model an east wind did not produce a land bridge since the orientation of the Ballah Lakes is northeast-southwest. With a northeast wind of 62 miles per hour a dry crossing place appears for 2.8 hours. If the wind speed is increased to 75 miles per hour, the crossing time is increased to 8.4 hours. In both cases there would be no water on the north side of the crossing place and only shallow water on the south side. While these computer simulations are interesting, none of them produce a result consistent with the biblical description of “a wall of water on their right and on their left.” In the end we must conclude that what took place when the Israelites left Egypt was a miraculous act of God which cannot be duplicated by a natural phenomenon. http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/09/24/an-appraisal-of-the-2010-drews-and-han-wind-setdown-models-of-the-exodus-14-sea-crossing.aspx http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012481 (accessed September 21).
While science could not confirm that the timing was supernatural/miraculous, it could reasonably classify the event as natural or "normal." if Moses came back to part the waters of the Red Sea, would you have have any problem with a resident meterologist on the scene affirming that the event likely occured as a result of natural causes?rhampton7_{February 8, 2012
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I would think that civility rules would pertain to continuous strawmen. Ya see it is obvious that people who continually erect strawmen, as you do, are just on an uncivil agenda of provocation.Joe_{February 8, 2012
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Yes, I know that's what you meant, Joe. But aren't there civility rules on this site? I thought I'd give you an out.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 8, 2012
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@champignon#8.1.1.1.11,
The second law governs the behavior of open systems and isolated systems alike. To see this, just take an isolated system and write down the second law inequality that describes it. Now divide the isolated system into two open subsytems. You can derive the inequalities for the subsytems from the inequality for the original isolated system — you just have to account for any entropy transfers across their shared boundary.
Yes, sure. The fascination with the isolated system is ONLY tied the ratcheting of entropy, it's inexorable increase. That is the factor that creationists identify as being violated by local (non-system wide) decreases in entropy. The mistake is apparently the idea that since the Second Law says that entropy as an OVERALL MEASURE will only increase (for an isolated system), that entropy cannot be lowered anywhere as a part of it. Or to put it in an analogical frame that has worked elsewhere, if we suppose there is a "Second Law of Hedge Funds" that says that for any given fund, over time, the fund's overall value will decrease in value, that does NOT mean that for any given hedge fund, some of its trades are not profitable, even wildly profitable. The law, as such, only governs the overall "net" effect. Creationists commonly suppose that no local decreases in entropy can occur anywhere, thinking this is what the SLoT dictates, rather than "losses and gains" across the system, which when averaged out, always result in an increasing amount of entropy in the system. That's not news to you. But the "ratchet" is the key in creationist circles. If we just concern ourselves with open system like the earth, there's no basis for creationist objection on violation-of-SLoT grounds. There isn't any even putative violation, then, from a creationist objection standpoint, for an open system, unless one is able to "de-open" the system by measuring any transfers in and out, what you called "account[ing] for any entropy transfers across their shared boundary". If we could measure all the energy contributed to the earth by the sun, and do all the math for "earth + sun", then the entropy of "earth+sun" increases; between the two, netted out, less energy is available for work as time goes by, in accordance with SLoT's principles. TL;DR: on an open system, there's nothing to discuss on this in terms of evolution or biology violating SLoT.eigenstate_{February 8, 2012
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People's personal opinions are theirs and have no reflection on ID. ID is about the design, period. And nice to see you are stuck in propaganda-land- geez darwin came right out and used the word "Creator", which means the theor of evolution is a creation theory- according to evo "logic".Joe_{February 8, 2012
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Come off it, Joe! Are you trying to tell me that many people posting here at UD, such as kairosfocus, BA77, Dembski himself, are not absolutely certain that their intelligent designer is the Christian god? Cdesign proponentsists, the lot of 'em! I'm not saying, mind you, that some don't take the dispassionate view of the designer's identity. But the overwhelming majority have that certaintyBydand_{February 8, 2012
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ID is about the DESIGN- always has been. One ignorant person trying to support another, although humorus, doesn't work.Joe_{February 8, 2012
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ID not about the designer? The increasing levels of religious fervour on some threads at UD tell a different story, old bean! And can you imagine what would happen to a poster here who used your insulting language to, for example, Denyse O'Leary?Bydand_{February 8, 2012
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Eigenstate, The second law governs the behavior of open systems and isolated systems alike. To see this, just take an isolated system and write down the second law inequality that describes it. Now divide the isolated system into two open subsytems. You can derive the inequalities for the subsytems from the inequality for the original isolated system -- you just have to account for any entropy transfers across their shared boundary. Another way of putting it is that the second law inequalities are general and apply to open and isolated systems alike. It's just that in the case of the isolated system, the term representing the entropy transferred across the system boundary is zero, while for open systems it is nonzero.champignon_{February 8, 2012
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Wrong again Bydand and obvioulsy you have issues following along. Ya see Elizabeth has been told many, many times that ID is not about the designer and yet she stills spews nonsense pertaining to ID and the designer. And yes it is sad that her behaviour goes on and on. But it is even worse for someone to try to stand up for her...Joe_{February 8, 2012
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No, I mean that you are so thick that you don't have a clue. And obvioulsy you swallow up evo arguments and leave no trace of their existence.Joe_{February 8, 2012
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This wasn't addressed to me, Robert, but I find the comment rather curious: "For if we use the tools of science to investigate the tools of science, we end up with circular arguments, “circles of death”, self-fulfilling prophecies." Are you suggesting there is no merit to the field of 'science studies' (aka 'science of science')? Would you not agree that some fields *can* be reflexive, while others at the same time strive to be positivistic? - GregoryGregory_{February 8, 2012
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