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Does evolution create order?

שו”תCategory: faithDoes evolution create order?
asked 8 years ago

The Davidson Institute claims not.
Evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics.
This argument combines a failure to understand the evolutionary mechanism with a violation of a fundamental premise of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy (a kind of measure of disorder – also not very accurate ) in an isolated system will always increase over time. Some people argue that since the process of evolution creates order, it essentially contradicts the second law of thermodynamics.
As a first step, it is worth discussing whether evolution does indeed create order. This is a philosophical debate that can be quite easily explained why it does not.
(There is a continuation that is irrelevant to the question: But this argument can be refuted much more sharply and decisively: the second law of thermodynamics deals with the total amount of entropy, so there may be islands of order in an ocean of chaos as long as the total entropy continues to increase over time.)


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מיכי Staff answered 8 years ago
This is the accepted explanation of atheists, and it may also be scientifically correct (it is a hypothetical hypothesis that, as far as I know, no one knows how to substantiate with actual calculations). The question is what its theological-philosophical implications are. The second law is based on a simple probabilistic consideration: a complex thing does not come into being by itself. Now go out and think about whether the spontaneous formation of life, even at the expense of increasing disorder elsewhere, is reasonable in your opinion. Calculations of fairly simple barriers show that the chance of spontaneous formation of life, given the length of time and the number of possible attempts, is negligible. In my book, I cited such a calculation by de Rob (=Nobel Prize winner in Biology). All of this is a consideration within the laws. But beyond that, as I also explained in the article, the more accurate physico-theological view is based on an argument outside the laws: within the laws (=the natural laws of our world) accidental creation may be possible, but the important question is who is responsible for these laws in the world. Think about a collection of television parts (screws, wires, etc.) lying around in a room. After ten billion years, you return to the room and see a working television. Would you accept that this was spontaneous formation? And if someone came to you now and told you that there were laws in this room that assemble televisions from their parts, would that solve the problem? You would immediately ask who enacted these laws. Moreover, even within the laws, would you accept that it happened by chance, since a greater mess was created around it so that overall order in the room was maintained. Is that reasonable to you?

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ר' replied 8 years ago

Sorry, Rabbi, but I meant this sentence: “As a first step, it is appropriate to discuss whether evolution does indeed create order. This is a philosophical discussion that can be quite easily explained *why it doesn't*”.
That is why I put the second argument (to which you referred) in parentheses.

מיכי Staff replied 8 years ago

I answered that too. It certainly creates order. Life is a creature with very low entropy. The argument is that the surrounding disorder offsets it, and that's what I answered.

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