Entropy: The thermodynamic concept that states that atoms are, in general, more comfortable in low-energy states, and thus the universe is tending to disorder. So if the universe tends to a disorder, then it is logical to assume that large and incredibly complex molecules could never have been made without outside assistance. DNA is, of course, the most obvious example. Therefore, it stands to reason that because these molecules do exist, they could not have existed for millions of years, for over a period of millions of years things would tend to become less ordered.
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Disorder and entropy are not the same thing! How many times do we have to say this?
Protein formation, for example, favours entropy. Yet the protein itself is less entropic than the individual amino acids floating around.
This post seems to be falling into the same fallacy that the FSTDT post of the year for 2005 fell into, which is claiming that large and complex things can't form without outside energy while forgetting about the giant source of energy that has been floating 93 million miles away from us for the past few billion years.
The reference to the tendency for energy loss means in a closed system, which Earth is not; energy transfer to Earth happens all the time. The sun is gradually working its way toward atomic death, but in the meantime, the energy it radiates gives Earth a constant INPUT of energy to drive our weather, chemical, and biological systems.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when you try to learn just enough to find a loophole to prove a nonscientific agenda without learning enough for actual understanding.
~Daivd D.G.
What is it with these damn people and their screen names? Toilet Trained at Gunpoint! ??? Is he saying he'd rather shit his pants than go to the toilet? And how old was he that he had to be trained at gunpoint? No wonder he can't grasp concepts as entropy, disorder, or anything else scientific. But then I have to think: Can someone with that stupid of a name be for real?
"Entropy: The thermodynamic concept that states that atoms are, in general, more comfortable in low-energy states, and thus the universe is tending to disorder."
And you fail in the first sentence - entropy is a variable, not a statement.
The formation of polymers is favoured because it's exothermic, so it transfers heat to its surroundings and (because dQ = T dS, where Q is heat, T is temperature and S is entropy) raises the entropy by more than the formation of the polymer decreases the entropy of the reactants. The concept of free energy allows us to put it more succinctly by saying that the free energy of a system will tend to decrease, which leads to the simple identification of entropy as the unavailability of a system's energy to do work. It's not a perfect definition (the only *perfect* definition of entropy is the aforementioned differential equation)
The disorder business comes from people who don't understand statistical mechanics trying to talk about it. Entropy is correlated with the number of accessible microstates because if you get a whole load of identical closed systems more of them will be in states with a larger number of accessible microstates simply because each microstate is equally likely; and as the entropy of the system tends to a maximum more of our set of identical systems will be at a higher entropy. The entropy is therefore correlated with the number of accessible microstates (it's this relation that gives us the Boltzmann constant, more familiar from any number of derived results). Now a state with more accessible microstates (and higher entropy) can be seen as more disordered, but there isn't a direct 1:1 relationship between states of high entropy and those we would qualitatively describe as "disordered".
tl;dr: Entropy is a variable, not a principle, and the identification of it with the intuitive notion of something being "disordered" is imperfect at best.
Well, yes, it's "logical" as long as you completely misunderstand the science and explain it incorrectly to people who are no wiser than you are. Tip: don't get your talking points from "The Child's ABC Guide to Thermodynamics for Fun and Profit: Amaze Your Friends!"
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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