More 2LoT inanity at Uncommon Descent

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Springtime is approaching. The 2LoT truthers are flocking at Uncommon Descent, hoping to find mates so that they can pass their second law inanity on to the next generation. Until yesterday, I was observing their bizarre mating rituals up close. Now I have been banned (again) from the nesting site, for pointing out a particularly ugly and infertile egg laid by kairosfocus.

Many others have been banned from the site as well, but we can still observe the spectacle through our high-powered binoculars. At this distance, our laughter will not disturb the awkward courtship rituals, as the participants preen and flaunt their ignorance in front of potential mates.

Hence this thread. Feel free to post your observations regarding the current 2LoT goings-on at UD and the perennial misuse of the 2LoT by IDers in general.

231 thoughts on “More 2LoT inanity at Uncommon Descent”

  1. I’ll start with some remarkable displays of dishonesty by Eric Anderson and HeKS.

    Eric writes:

    Myth #1: Abiogenesis skeptics believe that, in the history of life on Earth, there has actually been a violation of the 2nd Law.

    Those who entertain this myth tend to heap copious amounts of ridicule on abiogenesis skeptics, noting how incredibly foolish the skeptics are to think the 2nd Law could be violated. After all, everyone knows this is not possible, so clearly the skeptics have no idea what they are talking about and can be ignored. This might sound good on the surface, but it arises from a complete misunderstanding of the skeptics’ argument. Don’t fall prey to this myth. Don’t claim that abiogenesis skeptics think the 2nd Law has been violated. Don’t lead others astray by insinuating as much.

    This is ridiculous, of course. As Eric is fully aware, ID’s Big Tent is full of people who think that the 2LoT has been violated, including people who post regularly at UD.

    Critics (including me) have supplied Eric with quotes that conclusively disprove his statement, but he won’t budge.

    I’ll reproduce some of the quotes below, including a striking example of dishonesty by HeKS, who tries to spin a clear-cut statement by Granville Sewell into its exact opposite.

  5. Three Granville Sewell quotes:

    Quote #1:

    The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way. Various reasons why the development of civilization does not violate the second law have been given, but all of them can equally well be used to argue that the second tornado did not violate it either.

    Quote #2 (courtesy of rhampton7):

    So let me ask you, Scordova: if you saw a video of a tornado running backward, turning rubble into houses and cars, would you consider that violated the second law? Obviously it would not violate the early formulations you quote, but most physics textbooks agree that a tornado running backward, if it really happened, would violate the second law, in its more general form. And if that would violate the second law, why does the rearrangement of atoms into brains, computers, nuclear power plants and libraries not violate it?

    Quote #3::

    So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and super computers running partial differential equation solving software, represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law — or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law — than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Here is a thought experiment for you: try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet.

    [Emphasis added in all three quotes.]

    HeKS helpfully steps in to tell us that Granville doesn’t really mean what he wrote:

    And yet the entire backdrop of Granville’s ENV article clearly shows that the statement you’ve bolded should be understand like this:

    try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet [if it happened purely as the result of unguided natural forces as the materialists believe]

    That is not only wrong, as anyone can see by following the link for Quote 3, but it doesn’t even make sense. A second law violation is a second law violation, regardless of whether intelligence is involved.

    Thus, even if HeKS’s strained and dishonest exegesis were correct, Sewell would still be insisting that the second law was violated.

    As I said in that thread:

    LOL.

    Why are so many IDers shocked to find second law crackpots in their midst? It’s not exactly a secret.

  8. Diogenes comments on HeKS’s contortions:

    Oops! Keith S points out the contradiction! Not allowed to do that. So HeKS tries to rewrite Sewell and put words in his mouth:

    And yet the entire backdrop of Granville’s ENV article clearly shows that the statement you’ve bolded should be understand like this:

    try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet [if it happened purely as the result of unguided natural forces as the materialists believe]

    Note the ridiculous grammar– HeKS wants Sewell to write in subjunctive tense, “if it were that way”, but too bad for HeKS, Sewell wrote in past perfect, “what has happened on our planet”, leading to HeKS’ grammatically twisted bastard sentence.

  10. This is a great opportunity for ID proponents.

    If I understand their argument, they are claiming that 2LoT shows that life could not have formed without the intervention of an intelligent designer.

    The same reasoning ought to show that tornados cannot form without the intervention of an intelligent designer. So the ID proponents should go looking for the intelligent designer of tornados. If they can find such a designer they will have actual evidence.

    I won’t hold my breath while waiting.

  11. Diogenes’ comment is funny and worth quoting in full:

    Lemme get this straight. Granville Sewell, copying generation after generation of creationists, says that evolution violates SLOT. Sewell says: violation violation violation violation violation VIOLATION VIOLATION. Many other creationists before him said the same thing.

    Uncommon Descent commenters say: violation violation violation violation violation VIOLATION VIOLATION. For example, not mentioned above were the recent comments by “Box” at KF’s thread, which KF closed in a panic:

    I gather that the second law – as a statistical law – cannot be overcome under materialism. However there is a spiritual realm which organizes matter – thereby overcoming the 2nd law. I hold that this is just what we see around us; as Granville Sewell and others pointed out many times.

    Your insistence that the second law cannot be overcome is simply founded in your assumption of materialism.

    Box says, to paraphrase: only an atheist would say SLOT wasn’t violated! No IDologue disagreed with Box when he wrote this, though some evolutionists did. Again: Uncommon Descent commenters say violation violation violation violation violation VIOLATION VIOLATION.

    Here’s another example: “physicist” Rob Sheldon, so often cited as an authority at UD, saying life violates 2LOT:

    This is simply “Maximum Entropy Production Principle” or MEPP theory that was developed in the 80?s and 90?s. It appears–though of course I haven’t got the peer-reviewed paper to check–that this MIT assistant prof needs tenure…the American approach to universities… produces the best self-promotion.

    The problem, as physicists will only tell you behind a closed and locked door, is that life violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you throw some water and amino acids and sugar on the stove and simmer it for a few days, you might get great soup, but you surely will not get a single ounce of help writing your next research grant…

    But put in one bacterium, and that great soup turns into an acidic, cloudy mess. It no longer is in its maximum entropy state, but highly organized…

    It so totally violates the 2nd law, how do physicists explain it?

    Uh, excuse me Sheldon, physicists DO NOT SAY THAT LIFE VIOLATES 2LOT, not “behind a closed and locked door” nor anywhere else; and they do not explain life violating 2LOT because they know it doesn’t. Nor does evolution.

    But Eric Anderson scolds us:

    Myth #1: [IDcreationists] believe that, in the history of life on Earth, there has actually been a violation of the 2nd Law.

    Those who entertain this myth tend to heap copious amounts of ridicule on [IDcreationists], noting how incredibly foolish the skeptics are to think the 2nd Law could be violated… it arises from a complete misunderstanding of the skeptics’ argument. Don’t fall prey to this myth. Don’t claim that abiogenesis skeptics think the 2nd Law has been violated.

    Oh. So sorry! Here when UDites said violation violation, citing Sewell as their authority, I interpreted it to mean violation. How rude of me! I was “leading others astray by insinuating as much.”

    Now, literally two posts after Eric Anderson scolded us for ever saying that IDcreationists think that 2LOT is violated, we have Granville Sewell writing:

    The development of civilization on this planet, and the tornado that turned rubble into houses and cars, each seems to violate the more general statements of the second law, in a spectacular way. Various reasons why the development of civilization does not violate the second law have been given, but all of them can equally well be used to argue that the second tornado did not violate it either.

    Where is Barry Arrington when you need him to start banning people for violating the Law of Non-Contradiction? If Arrington were consistent in his habit of banning people for disagreeing with the LNC, you would all be out on your ass.

    Oops! Keith S points out the contradiction! Not allowed to do that. So HeKS tries to rewrite Sewell and put words in his mouth:

    And yet the entire backdrop of Granville’s ENV article clearly shows that the statement you’ve bolded should be understand like this:

    try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet [if it happened purely as the result of unguided natural forces as the materialists believe]

    Note the ridiculous grammar– HeKS wants Sewell to write in subjunctive tense, “if it were that way”, but too bad for HeKS, Sewell wrote in past perfect, “what has happened on our planet”, leading to HeKS’ grammatically twisted bastard sentence.

    Oh no, if you think Sewell said that, you don’t understand anything he’s writing. Sewell said “violation” over and over, and he says you can only have a decrease in entropy if “something comes in from outside”, meaning God’s finger from another universe. But Sewell clearly said, and believes, violation, as do countless other creationists.

    Now an UDite shows up to rebut Keith S:

    Keith,

    what part of what HeKS wrote do you not understand?

    That’s exactly the problem. The problem is that we DO understand what HeKS wrote so we know he’s full of it. The problem with us is that we DO understand what IDcreationists are writing, and it’s so $%^&ing horrifying I wanna go to Tijuana and get a motel room lobotomy to wipe from my brain my understanding of what you creationists write.

    Note that the person who wrote the above comment was, of all people, Box, whom I just quoted above saying that SLOT was violated. Now Box has forgotten what he just believed and, stupidly aping HeKS, he now thinks he thinks that SLOT is not violated, and no doubt he also thinks that no one ever, ever thought the thing he just wrote at UD a couple days ago.

  12. Christ. Even the resident “physicist” at UD is a crackpot who thinks that life violates the 2LoT.

  14. Recent headline at UD: Deepak Chopra again on why he thinks Darwin wrong

    Not that people here didn’t know that, I’m just making the point that their physics knowledge is about what you’d expect from a blog that thinks that what Chopra says about science actually matters.

    Glen Davidson

  15. I’m not surprised that IDers are now enamored of 2LoT arguments. It seems to me that in the 80s and 90s people like Dawkins did a very good job of explaining why the 2LoT isn’t violated by evolution so creationists and IDers moved on to other arguments. But we’ve come full circle now- regressed in a way- and we’re back to those long demolished ideas. Even the IDers who wont utter the phrase ‘2LoT’ still appeal to the idea. The backbone of Meyer’s latest book and the thing he brings up in every interview or talk is that our ‘uniform and repeated experience’ tells us that computers and computer code ( or DNA of course) don’t arise spontaneously.. they need a designer etc etc etc. What’s this but an informal description of the 2LoT??

  16. I think you misunderstand them. What they are saying is not that evolution violates SLOT, but that it violates alt-SLOT.

  17. keiths: Christ. Even the resident “physicist” at UD is a crackpot who thinks that life violates the 2LoT.

    For the last few minutes I’ve been considering a question: Does thinking that evolution violates the 2LoT demonstrate the same lack of understanding of thermodynamics as the belief in perpetual motion machines?

  18. petrushka:
    I think you misunderstand them. What they are saying is not that evolution violates SLOT, but that it violates alt-SLOT.

    “alt-2LoT” ?

  19. Goes with alt-CSI from another thread. Are you confused by the thought that it should make sense? By putting alt in front of an excessively materialistic and mathy concept, we can make a concept that more accurately conforms to spiritual reality.

  20. RodW,

    For the last few minutes I’ve been considering a question: Does thinking that evolution violates the 2LoT demonstrate the same lack of understanding of thermodynamics as the belief in perpetual motion machines?

    I don’t think so. The first error is to believe that the possible is impossible, while the second error is the reverse.

  21. I suppose one approach to arguments that the 2LoT makes evolution impossible is to start from the fact that life is a series of chemical reactions. If we are talking about the actual 2LoT, not the nonexistent CLoT, there comes the issue: exactly which of these chemical reactions violates the 2LoT ?

    If none of them do, how can the 2LoT be violated? I suppose that one approach is to say that it is physics, not chemistry, that has the particular violation of the 2LoT. Then one can ask where exactly that is.

  22. Wow, just wow.
    I had not noticed that “In the beginning…” thread at UD. That’s the pure, uncut junk right there.

    BTW, I think Joe F wins the internet for coining “CLoT”. May I use it?

  23. FIASC/O is derived fro CLot.

    I used to ask exactly what part of differential reproductive success violates any law of physics or chemistry.

    I think I’ve said for some time that Behe/KF have the only coherent argument against evolution. In a nutshell, it is:

    If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

    The IDists who are not fully brain dead concentrate on this. I think even Dembski has realized that a functional space that is connectable by small steps invalidates the probability argument.

  24. On Eric’s 2LoT thread, the UDers are now arguing over whether souls are immortal.

    Well, let’s apply the second law:

    The entropy of a dead soul is less than the entropy of a live one (that’s how it works in the spiritual realm). Soul death therefore involves a local decrease in entropy. The UD geniuses tell us that the compensation argument is bogus, which means that local decreases in entropy are impossible. As a local decrease in entropy, soul death is impossible. Therefore souls are immortal. QED.

  28. KF finally admits that the compensation argument is valid:

    Where of course required energy converters and effectors to carry out the constructive work will exhaust degraded, waste energy (and often, materials), leading to genuine, relevant compensation as e.g. waste heat is exhausted at ambient temperature. So, RELEVANT compensation is consistent with 2LOT.

    Diogenes:

    I interpret your words as meaning that evolution of increased complexity does NOT violate SLOT, because you invoke the compensation argument: local decreases in entropy are compensated by “waste heat” radiated out of the system.

    If this is true, please tell Granville Sewell he is wrong and that compensation is a valid argument.

    And Eric Anderson.

  30. DNA_Jock:

    …

    BTW, I think Joe F wins the internet for coining “CLoT”. May I use it?

    I think it originated a few threads ago, either here or at Sandwalk (or maybe PT). I am not sure it originated from me — all the critics-of-creationism there were agreeing with each other that the creationists were using some other “law”, not the actual 2LoT. Hence people started calling that mysterious other law the Creationist Law of Thermodynamics. Not sure that anyone owns the term or the acronym.

    The “T” is a bit of misnomer since once one is talking about “order” or “organization” the “dynamics” is not about anything thermal.

  31. Joe,

    The “T” is a bit of misnomer since once one is talking about “order” or “organization” the “dynamics” is not about anything thermal.

    It’s par for the ID/creationist course, following in the tradition of the Law of Conservation of Information, which isn’t a law, isn’t about information, and doesn’t involve a conserved quantity.

  32. Box:

    As long as natural forces (such as tornados) turn a spaceship, or a TV set, or a computer into piles of rubble but not vice-versa my general understanding of the 2nd law won’t change.

    And as long as it doesn’t, we will continue to laugh at you and Granville Sewell.

  34. keiths:
    Joe,

    It’s par for the ID/creationist course, following in the tradition of the Law of Conservation of Information, which isn’t a law, isn’t about information, and doesn’t involve a conserved quantity.

    … similar to what Voltaire said of the “Holy Roman Empire”.

  35. Joe Felsenstein,

    “The “T” is a bit of misnomer since once one is talking about “order” or “organization” the “dynamics” is not about anything thermal.”

    In that case maybe it should be CLoD: Creationist Law of Disorder, or Degradation, or Disorganization, or Dog (they get pretty much everything backward), or Duh.

  36. All these acronyms remind me of TMIB. This was a checkbook entry, used back in the dark ages when people recorded their checks by hand. Every month when you got a statement, you tried to reconcile it with your manual calculations. When there was a discrepancy cy, you could redo your arithmetic, or you could just enter an adjustment, To Make It Balance.

    Creationist math exists for the sole purpose of making evolution not possible. TMINP.

  37. Keith, as usual you seem unable to understand what you read. One need only read Sewell’s article to see that he was not trying to argue there that the second law has actually been violated on his own view of what has happened. Interpreting him as making that claim requires one to take the final sentence in complete isolation from the entire rest of the article so as to fail to notice that he’s asking the question within the context of the beliefs of the people he’s addressing. In other words, he’s saying to them: “Try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what [you think] has happened on our planet”

    Furthermore, you should try to realize that there’s a difference between A) claiming that, generally speaking, people who think that the second law is relevant to the conversation don’t actually think the second law has been broken, and B) claiming that nobody who thinks the second law is relevant thinks it has been broken. The former claim would be true, the latter would almost certainly be false.

    If Sewell thinks it has actually been broken, he doesn’t say so in the cited article. And Diogenes’ response to me is silly and obtuse, so I guess it’s no surprise that you’d blindly agreed with it. Diogenes pretends that I was trying to argue that Sewell’s sentence, as he wrote it, was actually incomplete. In reality, I was quite obviously merely adding onto the end of the sentence what is implied by the context of the entire rest of the article so that people like you would understand it in its intended context.

    Now, on the other hand, other quotes were presented from Rob Sheldon in support of the idea that he claimed the second law had been broken. I don’t know whether or not he truly does think that, but that is a possible interpretation of what he said, as far as I recall, and would not require someone to completely distort his obvious meaning. In other words, from what I recall, the quotes provided from Sheldon may be reasonably read to suggest that he’s claiming the second law has been broken, but, again as I recall, they don’t necessarily mean he thinks that.

    You see, unlike you, Keith, I at least try to read people (on both sides of the debate) charitably and discern what they actually mean in context and then respond in good faith. If I think my opponent may have a valid point in citing someone, I will acknowledge it (like with Sheldon). And if it seems to me that they are instead twisting the obvious context of someone’s words to make them seem like they are arguing something other than what they really are, I’ll point that out too (like with Sewell).

  39. Hi Richard,

    I have to respond to KF over there cause I’m not entirely sure that he gets the issue I was trying to discuss. And yes, it would be helpful to have some other people over here since I’m pressed for time while trying to carry on discussions on multiple subjects in different places (forums, email, real life) as well as take care of a mountain of tax stuff and deal with repairs from some leaking. I’ve noticed it gets rather difficult to carry on a discussion with 4 or 5 people alone (in just one of the discussions) if you want to provide any kind of actual substantive responses to anything. I’m a couple of pages into a response on the other thread we were on but I haven’t had a chance to finish it yet. I’d be happy get some other people to jump in and carry some of the weight so that I don’t have to put conversations on hold for months at a time.

  40. By the way, wasn’t there a post here about possible ways to build a program to test evolution? It seemed like that would be an interesting discussion but I can’t seem to find it.

  41. I’m sympathetic. When you’re the only dissenting voice it’s easy to get dogpiled, so kudos to you for being here. If ideas are good, they’ll survive a knock or two. We’re big on free speech so the UDers need only worry about the quality of everyone’s arguments. Happy recruiting!

  42. HeKS: he’s asking the question within the context of the beliefs of the people he’s addressing

    But surely the problem is that nobody actually holds those beliefs. So it’s a strawman.

    HeKS: In other words, he’s saying to them: “Try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what [you think] has happened on our planet”

    But [those people] don’t think that it’s a violation.

    So if Sewell does not think any laws have been violated, and [those people] don’t think so either (unless of course that can be substantiated) then what’s the actual issue?

  43. HeKS,

    You’re a hoot.

    HeKS:

    The quotes from Sheldon may be reasonably read to suggest that he’s claiming the second law has been broken, but, again as I recall, they don’t necessarily mean he thinks that.

    Sheldon:

    So what is MEPP, and why the hoopla about life?

    The problem, as physicists will only tell you behind a closed and locked door, is that life violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you throw some water and amino acids and sugar on the stove and simmer it for a few days, you might get great soup, but you surely will not get a single ounce of help writing your next research grant. The reason is that the soup uses all that heat and water and convection to find the highest entropy possible at the given energy. In the reductionist “ideal gas” model, this is a Gaussian distribution of velocities known as a Maxwellian, and it is about as boring as it gets.

    But put in one bacterium, and that great soup turns into an acidic, cloudy mess. It no longer is in its maximum entropy state, but highly organized into these little micelles of neutral pH surrounded by low pH excretions and lots of polysaccharide goo. In the reductionist “non-ideal gas” model, this corresponds to non-Gaussian distribution of velocities with a “fat tail” of really energetic fellows who succeed at the expense of lots of lazy atoms populating the lower strata of physics society. One science historian referred to it as “the Matthew principle”, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

    It so totally violates the 2nd law, how do physicists explain it?

    Spin away, Tabletop.

  44. HeKS,

    I’ve already addressed your attempted Sewell rewrite:

    HeKS helpfully steps in to tell us that Granville doesn’t really mean what he wrote:

    And yet the entire backdrop of Granville’s ENV article clearly shows that the statement you’ve bolded should be understand like this:

    try to imagine a more spectacular violation than what has happened on our planet [if it happened purely as the result of unguided natural forces as the materialists believe]

    That is not only wrong, as anyone can see by following the link for Quote 3, but it doesn’t even make sense. A second law violation is a second law violation, regardless of whether intelligence is involved.

    Thus, even if HeKS’s strained and dishonest exegesis were correct, Sewell would still be insisting that the second law was violated.

    As I said in that thread:

    LOL.

    Why are so many IDers shocked to find second law crackpots in their midst? It’s not exactly a secret.

  45. This is bizarre.

    HeKS:

    And Diogenes’ response to me is silly and obtuse, so I guess it’s no surprise that you’d blindly agreed with it. Diogenes pretends that I was trying to argue that Sewell’s sentence, as he wrote it, was actually incomplete.

    No, he didn’t. Diogenes:

    Note the ridiculous grammar– HeKS wants Sewell to write in subjunctive tense, “if it were that way”, but too bad for HeKS, Sewell wrote in past perfect, “what has happened on our planet”, leading to HeKS’ grammatically twisted bastard sentence.

    HeKS,

    Did you actually think you’d get away with making stuff up about Diogenes when we can read his words for ourselves?

    Ditto for your spinning of Sewell and Sheldon.

  46. We could entertain a couple of alternatives:

    Sewell is senile and prattles on about stuff unrelated to evolution.
    Sewell thinks the Second Law is violated by evolution.

  47. From the ENV article:
    …represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law — or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law…

    So it’s either a violation of 2LOT or a violation of CLOT. Either way, it’s a violation of some law of nature without having to get one’s feet muddied in icky old math.

  48. While we are on the topic of exegesis, let’s have a pop quiz. Here’s a snippet from Sewell’s article at ENV:

    So, if we saw a video of a tornado, running backward, would we conclude that the second law was being violated by what was happening or not? According to many physics textbooks, such as the Ford text quoted in my video “Evolution is a Natural Process Running Backward” (above), the answer is yes. In any case, if we actually watched a video of a tornado, running backward, it would certainly not occur to us to make any of the above arguments to claim that what we were seeing did not technically violate the second law, as formulated in physics textbooks.

    Question: Did Ford say, “Evolution is a Natural Process Running Backward”?

  49. Extra credit: Has anyone having an IQ above room temperature and a passing knowledge of biology, ever said, “Evolution is a Natural Process Running Backward”?

  50. Double secret extra credit: does Sewell compare evolution to a tornado Running backwards?

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