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by Steve Risner

After a short break, we need to dive into this list of complaints or, shall we call them rebuttals, that a theistic evolutionist has given in response to an aggravating meme he found on Facebook. First, he said several things that were just outlandish like “How do we approach the apostasy of anti-evolutionary folks with love?” or “Should we even share science or the Bible with young-earthists…” You can read about those statements and others here, here, and here.

The meme stated that the theory of evolution violated a list of things, the first of which was entropy. Entropy is a fancy word in physics that describes, in simpler terms, a measurement of disorderliness and, more specifically, the trend for this disorderliness to increase over time. More technically, it represents the unavailability of a system’s energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. The amount of useful energy for work tends to decrease over time, which means entropy will tend to increase.

This is an interesting idea, and it’s one of the most universally accepted and known laws of the universe. In short, everything tends to run down. We can see this in the world around us pretty easily. However, this law primarily revolves around work and energy available for work. But organization is also at the heart of this physical law. Natural processes tend to not make things significantly more organized and certainly not more complex.

Before anyone gets all upset about that statement, I need to clarify something. When creationists point out that universal common descent and abiogenesis violate the laws of thermodynamics, we are not suggesting that extremely tiny increases in organization cannot occur. When water vapor condenses as it cools, it becomes liquid water. This is more organized. When liquid water becomes ice because it cools, this is also a slight increase in the substance’s organization. But there are two important things to note: 1) these involve less energy—each time the water cooled it became a little more organized and energy was lost to the environment, and 2) the level of organization cannot be compared to the organization found in living things. There is no comparison. The intelligence of a flea and Albert Einstein would be more closely related than the differences in organization between ice and DNA, for example.

This is what our beloved theistic evolutionist has to say about the “lies” regarding evolution and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (that says systems tend towards disorder over time):

“Entropy refers to the 2nd law of thermodynamics which states that in an isolated (closed) system that entropy can only increase. In layman’s terms it might be translated to say that, unless there is an outside source of energy, overall disorder must increase. The earth is not a closed system. Energy is directly available from the sun. Order can and does increase, as disorder of the sun increases. You’ll note that this principle is so well established and provides such a clear source of increasing order for evolutionary purposes on planet earth that even the major anti-evolutionary organizations warn against using the argument that evolution violates the law of entropy. It’s just too easy to point out that the argument is a falsehood.”

There are so many things off in this series of statements that I’m not sure where to begin. So we’ll start from the top.

He says “…in an isolated system” which is fine but he also, in parentheses, says “closed.” These are not the same thing. There are isolated systems, closed systems, and open systems. So, he needs to pick which system he wants to talk about. An isolated system exchanges neither matter nor energy with its surroundings. A closed system exchanges energy but not matter with its surroundings. An open system exchanges both matter and energy with its surroundings. The earth is an open system, which means it can receive energy and matter from an outside source.

He goes on to suggest that adding energy from outside will cause entropy to decrease (it will cause disorder to decrease). This is far from the way it works. This is especially the case if the energy put into the system is not directed. The sun will cause breakdown. That’s a fact. Lay an ice cube on the ground in summer; it will melt and eventually evaporate. This is an increase in disorder. The sun will bleach paint and rot wood. Fire destroys. Lightening destroys. All of these sources of energy, which are non-directed, will cause more disorder to occur. I’m not sure why he would say such a thing. Adding undirected energy to the system will cause the increase in entropy to increase more quickly.

Then he says this: “Order can and does increase, as disorder of the sun increases.” This statement makes it seem like he’s saying the earth is an isolated system, which we have already determined is incorrect. But saying that “order does increase” without explaining himself is a waste of everyone’s time. Tell me what you mean. Show me examples of order increasing because the sun is bathing us in radiation. There are some very specific examples of lifeforms utilizing the sun’s energy to make energy for themselves. These are inefficient mechanisms that waste a great deal of energy, but perhaps this is what he’s talking about. Maybe not. You see, without an explanation, no one can know what he’s talking about. But living things can direct energy to perform meaningful work and, in essence, to build complex things like proteins and DNA. That’s not natural processes working on these chemicals. It’s a living thing forcing these chemicals to do what they naturally would not.

Then he transitions from incorrect statements to the crazy statements in my opinion. He says, “…provides such a clear source of increasing order for evolutionary purposes…” Uhm, no. Evolution requires random chemicals in a warm pond or near a vent or some clay tablet to become the most sophisticated and organized information on the planet. Life is unfathomably complex. We cannot claim to know the half of it. To think that the sun would power such an unbelievable amount of organization is appalling, frankly. Many will try to say that the law doesn’t apply to our system because it’s open, but this is not true at all. Dr John Ross of Harvard University states:

… there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. … There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is hard and fast and applicable in this situation. Many evolutionists have tried to present evidence to the contrary, but they fail to provide real substance on the matter. One theistic evolutionist recently told me, after listing off his credentials to impress me, that this law applies to chemistry, not biology. My response to him was that biology is chemistry in their worldview, so it applies. And when we’re talking about organizing random molecules in a pool to become the first living thing (abiogenesis) we’re talking about going from chemicals in a soup to chemicals in a life form. Not a big jump in terms of definitions but an astronomical jump in terms of organization.

Dr. Jonathan Sarfati puts it this way:

“There are special cases where local order can increase at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. One case is crystallization... The other case is programmed machinery, that directs energy into maintaining and increasing complexity, at the expense of increased disorder elsewhere. Living things have such energy-converting machinery to make the complex structures of life.”

Here we see an important difference that often escapes the evolutionist. Life has specified information that can direct energy to do certain jobs. Many of these jobs can decrease the entropy (increase order) in a localized area. But random energy that is not directed will not cause these same processes to happen. If you apply fire to a piece of wood, it will burn it into ash. But if you use fire and direct it in a specialized pattern on to the wood, you can create a sign with your family’s name on it. See the difference? Undirected energy basically creates destruction while directed energy or energy used with intention can create order.

Undirected energy cannot create the specified information that is the genetic material in a living thing. It cannot generate the complex proteins that living things are made of. This makes the “open system” argument nothing more than a canard and wishful thinking on the part of the evolutionist. It simply doesn’t work for them at all, except for those with no idea about the topic. This is the difference between being ordered and being complex. An ice crystal is more ordered than liquid water, but it’s not complex at all. The complex specificity of numerous parts of living things makes this entire idea seem naïve at best.

The example of ice forming from water is not even related to the topic of origin of life and the complex formation of the chemicals and information storage systems necessary for biology to even exist, let alone diversify into specialized organisms that fill a niche in their environment. As water freezes, heat is released into the environment. This is natural and is how the ice can organize slightly into ice crystals from a liquid. Entropy (disorder) is increased in the surroundings to generate the slight amount of increased order in the ice. This cannot happen with amino acids and proteins. The same is true for nucleotides and DNA. When these smaller (yet complex) chemicals combine to create much larger, highly complex structures like proteins or nucleic acids (DNA) heat is actually taken from the environment. It costs energy, basically. Meaningful work must be performed while these structures are actually built; they don’t just form. Regardless of the temperature, amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and nucleotides (the building blocks of nucleic acids) will not spontaneously form these more complex and specified biological chemicals.

Evolutionists want to act like creationists who bring up the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics don’t know what they’re talking about or that they’re lying (which is what this particular theistic evolutionist wants us to believe). The reality is they are confused about a couple things: 1) the creationist argument is about chemistry and the origin of life far more than it is about diversification over time, and 2) the difference between something being organized and being highly complex is at the heart of the matter. They either don’t get that or don’t understand the 2nd Law themselves.

I haven’t even gotten into this very far at all and we’ve run out of time. We’ll, hopefully, finish up entropy next time and move on to the other “rebuttals” he attempts to apply to this meme. God bless and thank you for reading.

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