Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Clearing up some misconceptions

I was cruising around the blogosphere earlier today and stumbled across a proponent of Intelligent Design. During the course of his attack on evolution, he averred that the Second Law of Thermodynamics was proof positive that the theory of evolution was false. So what is the second law? I sure as hell didn't know. I'm a Classics major and a law student, not a physicist!!! So I did what any freethinking person would do; I went looking for the answer to my question. This is what I found. The article actually addresses five misconceptions about what evolution does and does not say. One of those five things is that the Second Law is inconsistent with evolution. Long story short, it's not. If you want the whole defense, you should read the article. In pursuit of my goal to keep my posts shot, I will leave you with the Second Law. Think about it for a bit and then read the Talk.Origins article.

"No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body."

It is sometimes phrased like this:
"The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease."

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