Talk Origin Misinforms Readers About Evolution Concerning Themodynamics - Part I

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Frank Steiger has published two essays in the Talk Origin archive, in which he does a respectable job of iterating the common evolutionist answer to this problem, But while the answer he presents may be adequate to convince many willing belieavers in evolutionism, careful examination proves it to be nothing less than the same inadequate work-around commonly served up as an answer to second law objections. Steiger also wrongly attributes false and misleading claims to his creationist counterparts, which, if taken at face value, would lend to Steiger much more relative credibility than he otherwise deserves. Add this tohis failure to meet the second law's challenge to evolutionism, and Steiger's work is reduced in simple terms to the same old song and dance with a few pot shots thrown in for effect. Not far into the more lengthy of his two Talk Origins essays ("The Second Law of Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probablility" )he makes the grossly erroneous generalization: Steiger: "In fact, there are many exaples in nature where order does arise spontaneously from disorder:Sonwflakes with their six-sided crystalline symmetry are formed spontaneously from randomly moving water vapor molecules. Salts with presise planes of crystalline symmetry form spontaneously when water evaporates from a solution. Seeds sprout into flowering plants and eggs developinto chicks." The 'orderr' found in a snowflake or acrystal has nothing todo withincreased information, organizations orcomplexity, or available energy (i.e reduced entropy). The formation of molecules or atoms into geometric patterns such as snowflakes or crystals reflects movement towards equilibrium - a lower energy level, and a more stablearrangement of the molecules or atoms into simple, uniform, repeating structures with minimal complexity, and no function. These are not examples of matter forming itself into more organized or more complex structures or systems (as postulated in evolutionist theory) even though they may certainly reflect "order" in the form of simple patterns. Steiger fails to recognize the profound difference between these examples of low-energy molecular crystals and the high-energy growth process of living organisms (seeds sprouting into flowering plants and eggs developing into chicks)His equating these two very different phenomena reveals a serious misunderstanding of thermodynamics (as well as molecular biology) on his part, and he perpetuates this error in the balance of both essays. Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine has no problem defining the difference: "The point is that in a non-isolated[open] system there exists a possiblily for formation of ordered,low-entropy stuctures at sufficiently low temperatures. This ordering principle is responsible for the appearance of ordered structures such as crystals as well as for the phenomena of phase transitions. Unfortunately, this principle cannot explain the formation of biological structures." [I. Prigogine, G. Nicolis and A. Babloyants, Physics Today 25(11): 23 (1972)]