Where would you rate yourself on Dawkins' spectrum of theistic probability?

[NUance]

I don't think you understand how entropy works, NUance

 

Disorder increases in a self contained system, absent outside influences. I could leave 1,000 stacks of bricks in the desert, each stack 100 bricks high. If I came back a century later I’d expect some of the stacks to have fallen down, increasing the entropy of the small system in my example (that is, decreasing the orderliness). I wouldn’t expect the bricks to fall into place to build a small castle. Granted I’m not a mechanical engineer or chemical engineer, disciplines you’d expect to understand the concept of entropy. But even if I’ve slightly stretched the concept of entropy in my post above (I don’t think I have), I suspect you’re bright enough to understand what I’m getting at.

[tschu]

I think you understand it, you're just not understanding it well enough to apply it.

 

Stars and galaxies form because they are part of a larger system...gravity catalyzes their formation which results in a decrease in disorder for the star itself...but thermodynamically speaking it gives off a ton of energy through radiation in its formation, and the total result is an entropy increase of the system (universe) as a whole. Essentially entropy can be lowered in a specific place provided there's something to catalyze this and provided it is counteracted by an even larger increase in entropy elsewhere in the system.

 

Life and evolution on earth don't violate anything at all because earth is not a closed system. Earth gets outside energy, constantly, in enormous amounts, from the sun. That energy allows entropy to decrease and allows life and all its complexity to thrive and lets us build civilizations.

 

So, in the end, nothing in the universe violates this principle that we know of - if it did, the second law of thermodynamics wouldn't exactly be a law anymore.

[NUance]

I think you understand it, you're just not understanding it well enough to apply it.

 

Stars and galaxies form because they are part of a larger system...gravity catalyzes their formation which results in a decrease in disorder for the star itself...but thermodynamically speaking it gives off a ton of energy through radiation in its formation, and the total result is an entropy increase of the system (universe) as a whole. Essentially entropy can be lowered in a specific place provided there's something to catalyze this and provided it is counteracted by an even larger increase in entropy elsewhere in the system.

 

Life and evolution on earth don't violate anything at all because earth is not a closed system. Earth gets outside energy, constantly, in enormous amounts, from the sun. That energy allows entropy to decrease and allows life and all its complexity to thrive and lets us build civilizations.

 

So, in the end, nothing in the universe violates this principle that we know of - if it did, the second law of thermodynamics wouldn't exactly be a law anymore.

 

So the bricks in my example could indeed fall into place to create a castle. Okay then.

 

 

edit:

 

Life and evolution on earth don't violate anything at all because earth is not a closed system. Earth gets outside energy, constantly, in enormous amounts, from the sun. That energy allows entropy to decrease and allows life and all its complexity to thrive and lets us build civilizations.

 

 

And I think you'd look at the earth and the sun (or perhaps our galaxy) as a closed system. Not just the earth.

[AR Husker Fan]

The only thing is that jump is full circle to "Because I don't know the answer, the only answer must be God" Any of our modern tech would be looked at exactly the same way by people in the past. And the danger with that line of thinking is it tends to stop people from looking for answers.

Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.