The Second Law of Thermodynamics Does Not Prohibit Evolution

I agree that the origin of life is relevant to evolution. Therefore, for the Second Law to allow for evolution, it must allow for the origin of evolution. Any theory of evolution that does not account for the origin of life is sorely incomplete. However, my opponent relies on a misunderstanding of the Second Law. “The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum. This statement is the best-known phrasing of the second law. Because of the looseness of its language, e. g. universe, as well as lack of specific conditions, e. g. open, closed, or isolated, many people take this simple statement to mean that the second law of thermodynamics applies virtually to every subject imaginable. This, of course, is not true; this statement is only a simplified version of a more extended and precise description. ” In other words, the change in entropy in time is only necessarily greater than or equal to zero in cases where the system is isolated. [1] For an open system, dS/dT=Qdot/T+Sdot+Sidot, where the dot represents a time derivative. S is the entropy of the system, Qdot is the heat flow into the system, T is the temperature at the point where the heat enters the system, Sdot is the entropy accompanying a flow of matter into the system, and Sidot is the sum of the rate of entropy production by all processes inside the system. (and is always greater than or equal to zero). I mentioned in the last round that sunlight contains energy, some of which is dissipated to the Earth, and the rest is reflected back into space, having less energy, and therefore more entropy than what it had originally. In the equation, there are two Qdot terms – one represents the flow of heat to the Earth, and the other represents the flow of heat from the Earth. From the Earth's perpsective, the former would be positive, and the latter would be negative. The inverse dependence on temperature implies the latter is greater than the former, since the temperature of the Sun is much greater than that of the Earth. This creates a large negative value in the term for dS/dT. Sdot is negligable, since the Earth receives little matter from the Sun. This means that Sidot is greater than dS/dT. dS/dT can be less than zero. Long story short, this means that the change in entropy in time can be negative for an open system. The Second Law needs to be restated for non-isolated systems. [1][2] As this point and the points I made in round 2 hopefully made clear, it is more than possible for an open system to experience a decrease in entropy. The crystallization example is idealized to an isolated system. If the material is being crystallized in an open environment, the net entropy of the system can still decrease. There is a real theory that shows how chemical compounds led to life. It is called abiogenesis. I won't go into as much detail as I'd like, but I'll describe the famous Miller-Urey experiment that showed that water, methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, and carbon monoxide (among other chemicals, all present on Earth since its formation), when interacting with energy in the form of lightning (also often found on the early Earth), which came from the sun, produced amino acids, the basic building blocks of life. "Essential to the spontaneous origin of life was the availability of organic molecules as building blocks. The famous prebiotic soup’ experiment by Stanley Miller had shown that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, arose among other small organic molecules spontaneously by reacting a mixture of methane, hydrogen, ammonia and water in a spark discharge apparatus. These conditions were assumed to simulate those on the primitive Earth. Already in 1922 Oparin had proposed that the early Earth had such a reducing atmosphere. .. It was suggested that only in a reducing atmosphere like this, synthesis of organic molecules – also sugars and organic bases, building blocks of nucleotides – would have been possible in large amounts. "(Note that when the author uses the term "spontaneously", he refers to the reaction of molecules into compounds; it's not like the compounds suddenly came into existence. ) The Second Law does not prevent abiogenesis from occurring. [3]This is the process of abiogenesis in a nutshell[5]: The claim that evolution and abiogenesis cannot account for information is misguided as well. “Nothing needs to assemble itself. Evolution and abiogenesis do not exclude outside influences; on the contrary, such outside influences are essential. In abiogenesis, it is observed that complex organic molecules easily form spontaneously due to little more than basic chemistry and energy from the sun or from the earth's interior. In evolution, information from the environment is communicated to genomes indirectly via natural selection against varieties that do not do well in that environment. ” In other words, reassembling chemicals creates new information in the form of a redistribution of currently existing information. [4] Conclusion The Second Law, in the form that says, “Entropy must always increase, and tends towards a maximum” only applies to isolated systems. For an open system, it is allowing for the entropy to decrease, and the Second Law needs to be restated. In this form, it places no restrictions on the origin of life from chemical compounds because the early Earth was an open system, receiving energy from the sun. Similarly, it does not prohibit the creation of new information from the redistribution of already existing information. Sources[1]: . http://en.wikipedia.org...[2]: . http://www.tim-thompson.com...[3]: . http://www.talkorigins.org...[4]: . http://www.talkorigins.org...[5]: . http://christopherjrex.hubpages.com...