Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Evolution and Entropy

During the past year I drove some 20,000 miles, mostly on rural roads which criss-crossed the continental United States. I listened to talk radio and took in the scenery as I drove. What I saw confirmed my belief that all life has been created and maintained by God and that God had a hand in all evolutionary advancements of life on Earth.

I saw cities and small towns in various states of decay and renewal. I saw roads in various states of decay and renewal. I saw farm houses, barns and grain silos in various states of decay and renewal. I saw railroad tracks in various states of decay and renewal. I saw telephone poles and power-lines in various states of decay and renewal. I saw fences in various states of decay and renewal. I saw bridges in various states of decay and renewal. I saw junkyards full of wrecked cars. I saw pastures with abandoned farm implements strewn about.

North Dakota was the most obvious place where I saw mother nature reclaiming all that man has built upon the land. I went to a web-site that I heard on a local radio program in ND about the numerous "ghost towns" in ND. http://www.ghostsofnorthdakota.com/ There I saw pictures and videos of various ghost towns that were in various states of decay. These pictures and videos were much like the sights that I had been seeing myself as I drove across the Midwest.

I was impressed of how the Earth had begun to reclaim everything that man had built upon it. I realized that all things that are built by man require maintenance. Without maintenance, the forces of nature will destroy and eventually remove all traces of anything that man has built. It occurred to me that it required intelligence with a purpose to build roads, buildings, bridges, fences, RR tracks, telephone poles, power lines, cars and tractors. It also occurred to me that all of these man-made structures and machinery required constant maintenance in order to keep them functioning. I saw that after they were abandoned and maintenance was no longer performed, it didn't take long for them to fall into a state of disrepair and eventually they would be reclaimed by nature, without a trace.

I saw various abandoned barns and farmhouses with their roofs caved in and their walls falling down. Some had decayed to the point that they were not much more than a pile of rubble with trees, shrubbery and grasses growing over them. Others seemed to be mostly complete structures with some broken windows and missing doors. Others were in an "in-between state" with the roof caving in, in the middle, and the walls leaning to one side.

I saw roads that were replaced by the road I was driving on. These abandoned roadways were also in various states of decay. Some were barely recognizable clearings through rocky areas. Other abandoned roadways had their concrete foundation broken into pieces and sticking up at different angles like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that didn't quite fit right. There were trees, bushes and weeds growing in the crevices between the broken pieces.

I saw abandoned railroad tracks that were buckled, broken and sticking-up in the air. There were telephone poles along these abandoned tracks that used to carry wires for signaling and switching devices. The poles were crooked, broken or laying on the ground. The wires were broken in places and drooping down to the ground in others.

I saw rotted and crumbling wooden silos, that were once used for storing grain.

I saw thousands of decaying automobile carcases in junkyards.

I saw old, rusted , decayed, obsolete tractors, combines and farm implements from days-gone-by, abandoned in cow pastures.

This experience proved the second law of thermodynamics which states that everything, in a closed system without outside influences, will decay from a state of order into a state of chaos and randomness. The measure this randomness is called entropy.

I realized that the only thing keeping structures, roads and machines operational, was the human influence of maintenance and repair. When the repair and maintenance ceased, even the strongest bridges, fences, roads and buildings would crumble to the ground in a short period of time.

It occurred to me that all these things have one thing in common. They required a purposeful and intelligent power to be brought into existence. And they continue to require a deliberate and intelligent power to remain functional. If they are neglected they will fall into disrepair, decay and eventually all traces of their existence will be gone.

It required a deliberate and intelligent power to create those houses, barns, roads, RR tracks, power lines, bridges, cars and farm implements. Their very existence is proof that order can be produced from chaos when an intelligent and deliberate power guides the process that created them. Man is that power. The moment that they are neglected by Man, they fall into disrepair, ruin, and eventually disappear entirely.

The contrast between the well maintained roads, bridges, barns, houses, RR tracks power lines, cars and farm implements, and those in various states of decay, proves that an intelligent and deliberate power is required to maintain these things and foster their usefulness and existence.

I reflected on the improvements made to the modern farm implements, which were giants compared to the relics of their ancestors. The modern RR tracks no longer had poles and signal wires alongside of them. They now used wireless communications to control lights and switches. The modern bridges required much less mass to carry heavier loads than the old fashioned bridges did. The car I was driving was air conditioned, had air-bags for safety, had stereo sound for entertainment and I was comfortably driving at 75 MPH on smooth and banked highways. The rotted wooden grain silos had been replaced by massive galvanized steel silos that stored 50 times the volume of grain as their predecessors did.

It seemed like the relics of the past were replaced with more "evolved" and better adapted specimens.

I have previously written in my article "Proof That God Exists", that the theory that life started when a lightening bolt struck a "primordial soup" that contained the right ingredients for life, was absurd. My reasoning was that a single cell is so complex and has so many moving parts and functions, that it would be more likely for a jumbo-jet, fueled up and ready to go, to emerge from that primordial soup, rather than a living organism. That is all true, but what I realize now, is that evolution is impossible unless it is guided by a deliberate and intelligent power. It requires a deliberate and intelligent power to create order out of chaos and to maintain it. A living organism is the quintessential definition of order. Without an intelligent and purposeful hand to create and maintain life, life would devolve, not evolve.

I didn't give this experience much thought until today when I came upon this article that says Ben Stein was dis-invited to speak at a commencement ceremony at the University of Vermont. This was because of students that protested his appearance because of his beliefs in "intelligent design". Here's the link: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/news/sns-ap-people-ben-stein,0,2200002.story

This article about Ben Stein, prompted me to realize the obvious fallacy in Darwin's evolutionary theory. This fallacy is proven by the second law of thermodynamics. I googled "second law of thermodynamics" to find the exact wording of the law. I was surprised to find that the first article that I went to was about the exact same theory that I already had come up with regarding evolution and entropy. Here is the link to that article entitled: "The Second Law of Thermodynamics". This article also dispels common arguments against this theory.

The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy, stating that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium."

Entropy is defined as chaos, disorder, disorganization and randomness. Everything in the universe is becoming more disorganized, chaotic, disordered and random according to the second law of thermodynamics. Everything is decaying and returning to uselessness, randomness and disorder.The only exception that I can see, is when a purposeful and intelligent hand intervenes.

Manufactured things, such as houses, barns, roads, bridges, RR tracks, power lines, cars and farm implements are all examples of extremely ordered, organized things that are built and maintained by man for a specific purpose. The raw materials that were needed to build these things were deliberately removed from the "chaos" and "randomness" of nature and organized into useful objects for man's convenience, in a purposeful and intelligent manner. After Man has no more use for them and they become neglected, they begin to return back to the chaos and randomness of nature where they originally came from.

I realized that an intelligent and deliberate force, Man, was required to create order from chaos. I also noticed that the natural laws of the universe (the second law of thermodynamics) began to return these things to a state of chaos, randomness and disorder, the moment that they had become neglected by Man.

I marveled over these observations during my trip and sought out and examined all of these neglected relics of the past. I imagined what they looked like in their heyday and I understood that all things will eventually grow old, neglected and return to nature unless they are continually maintained.

It would be contrary to the second law of thermodynamics for complicated and ordered "living cell" to be created by chance from the chaos of the primordial soup, unless it was arranged by an intelligent, deliberate power (God) . But let us suppose for a moment that it did happen, and life was created by random chance. It would be contrary to the second law of thermodynamics for this simple living cell to evolve into a more organized, more complicated, more advanced creature, such as a multi-celled organism. Evolution would require the intervention of an intelligent, deliberate power. Only devolution (an increase in entropy) could occur naturally.

The human being is the most ordered and organized combination of natural elements on the face of the Earth. Our eyes are more complex than any man-made camera. Our nervous system is more complex and organized than the most advanced computer. Our balance and agility are unsurpassed by any mechanical device. Our individual thoughts, passions and emotions, appearance and aspirations are unique to each of the 6 billion humans that populate this planet, yet we are all made from the same basic blueprint. Human DNA is that blueprint, which represents the most ordered and organized wealth of information known to man.

It clearly violates the principles of the second law of thermodynamics for humans to have evolved from simpler, less organized life forms without the aid of an intelligent deliberate power. I call that power God. It also stands to reason that life will decay and eventually disappear entirely if neglected by God.

Evolutionists often dismiss the idea of intelligent design as religious zealotry. Universities are teaching Darwin's theory of evolution as it it were a proven fact. For those who agree with these two positions, I have two questions.

Question #1:
How did life start in the first place without outside help? Humans are not capable of producing even a simple one celled living thing from ingredients that have never lived. We have never witnessed the creation of life from ingredients that have never lived. Evolutionists have no reasonable answer to the question: How did life start in the first place, unless they rely on random chance.

Question #2:
If everything in the universe will eventually devolve, how can life evolve without outside help? Although mutations within a species have been observed, I do not believe that the evolution of a new species has ever been witnessed, although thousands of extinctions of species have been witnessed. We have seen the devolution of life, but we have never seen the evolution of life.

Creation, evolution and the size and scope of the universe are beyond current human understanding. We do not know for sure how life began or evolved. Darwin's theory is an opinion and belief based on observation. Evolution is theory, not a fact. I do not have any scientific answers. I too, only have observations, opinions and beliefs.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Gary, I enjoyed reading your last 2 articles. Thanks for continuing to enlighten us. You often talk about the Emperor's new clothes. Sonya just wrote a paper for her English class about the Simon & Garfunkel song, "The Sounds of Silence". It talks about a man who tries in vain to bring his message to all the people who have lost the ability to communicate & are obliviously praying to a "neon god". Check it out.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to see you got banned from Barbara Sher's site...I expected more from the people there..