Striktlymi and Davidylan once directly and indirectly pointed to me that not all atheist/agnostics are intelligent and that not all are scientific. Striktlymi went on to say that many people become atheists for many different reasons other than science/PHILOSOPHY, the view which I contended. Well, after my encounter with atheists/agnostics here, I am helpless and am sorry but you are right afterall.

Some atheists/agnostics are just tired of life, some just want freedom from moral laws and scruple among many other insane reasons.

This does not immediately suggest that Theists are more intelligent as sagacity is not one of the properties of being a Theists in the first place. It just shows that "pls people, do not take atheism/agnosticism to be synonymous with intelligence/KNOWLEDGE always, you will be disappointed".

Am an atheist and was disappointed at the level of comprehension of so called atheists/agnostics of their environment, so I thought I should apologize to Striky and Davidylan for my misconstruction.

Go have some shots of ogogoro and sleep. . .

Haba ooman, this 'plenty' post? Don't tell me you allowed the 'exchanges' in Muskeeto's 'suicide' thread get to you?

striktlymi: Haba ooman, this 'plenty' post? Don't tell me you allowed the 'exchanges' in Muskeeto's 'suicide' thread get to you?

'Things' really get to me. I spend valuable time on nairaland, i cant afford some pig-ignorants to toy with laws of nature.

mazaje: Go have some shots of ogogoro and sleep. . .

Is that the irresponsible life you lead as an atheist?

ooman: Striktlymi and Davidylan once directly and indirectly pointed to me that not all atheist/agnostics are intelligent and that not all are scientific. Striktlymi went on to say that many people become atheists for many different reasons other than science/PHILOSOPHY, the view which I contended. Well, after my encounter with atheists/agnostics here, I am helpless and am sorry but you are right afterall.

Some atheists/agnostics are just tired of life, some just want freedom from moral laws and scruple among many other insane reasons.

This does not immediately suggest that Theists are more intelligent as sagacity is not one of the properties of being a Theists in the first place. It just shows that "pls people, do not take atheism/agnosticism to be synonymous with intelligence/KNOWLEDGE always, you will be disappointed".

Am an atheist and was disappointed at the level of comprehension of so called atheists/agnostics of their environment, so I thought I should apologize to Striky and Davidylan for my misconstruction.

The reason why people reject the notion of a deity/deities is very broad. It is similar to why so many intelligent people are still religious. It does not necessarily relate to intellect alone but alot of other factors.

Atheist:-D:


The reason why people reject the notion of a deity/deities is very broad. It is similar to why so many intelligent people are still religious. It does not necessarily relate to intellect alone but alot of other factors.

That is now obvious.

ooman:

'Things' really get to me. I spend valuable time on nairaland, i cant afford some pig-ignorants to toy with laws of nature.

C'mon ooman, you should know how it is done na! Some persons say things in order to get under another's skin...It's important to continue giving facts (not personal interpretations and conclusions).

Even when the individual does not admit to the facts at least those who read through with an unbiased mind will know who posts from emotions as against one who posts from fact and reason.

striktlymi:

C'mon ooman, you should know how it is done na! Some persons say things in order to get under another's skin...It's important to continue giving facts (not personal interpretations and conclusions).

Even when the individual does not admit to the facts at least those who read through with an unbiased mind will know who posts from emotions as against one who posts from fact and reason.

Most times, I am more concerned about my immediate discussant.

ooman:

Most times, I am more concerned about my immediate discussant.

Nah, you shouldn't be...the last person you want to have on your mind when debating is your opponent...there are bigger things to think about.

If sincerely, you debate cause of what you believe in and if what you hold to be true is objective then, guy, it is advisable to focus more on your thought process...

Not everyone will accept our view point...it's just a fact of life.

striktlymi:

Nah, you shouldn't be...the last person you want to have on your mind when debating is your opponent...there are bigger things to think about.

If sincerely, you debate cause of what you believe in and if what you hold to be true is objective then, guy, it is advisable to focus more on your thought process...

Not everyone will accept our view point...it's just a fact of life.

I'll take that under advisement!

Ooman.....Ooman....Ooman......


How many times did I call you?


Were you buttuhurt in that Muskeeto's thread that you had to come up with this? Is it because we didnt accept your pseudoscience?


You have sunk really low....to even agree with Davidylan on atheists is the lowest of lows.


You have been found guilty of crimes of atheist blasphemy and treason

By the powers granted to me by the Grand Wizards and Scientists of athiesm, I hereby sentence you to 1 week banishment from the religion section.

Insolent fool

MacDaddy01: Ooman.....Ooman....Ooman......


How many times did I call you?


Were you buttuhurt in that Muskeeto's thread that you had to come up with this? Is it because we didnt accept your pseudoscience?


You have sunk really low....to even agree with Davidylan on atheists is the lowest of lows.


You have been found guilty of crimes of atheist blasphemy and treason

By the powers granted to me by the Grand Wizards and Scientists of athiesm, I hereby sentence you to 1 week banishment from the religion section.

Insolent fool

Sacré bleu!!!! you forgot the almighty FSM!! Sacrilege!!!

Area_boy:

Sacré bleu!!!! you forgot the almighty FSM!! Sacrilege!!!

Lol.....I didnt forget! The grand wizards and scientists of atheism are all under the mercy of the FSM

Ramen

MacDaddy01: Ooman.....Ooman....Ooman......


How many times did I call you?


Were you buttuhurt in that Muskeeto's thread that you had to come up with this? Is it because we didnt accept your pseudoscience?


You have sunk really low....to even agree with Davidylan on atheists is the lowest of lows.


You have been found guilty of crimes of atheist blasphemy and treason

By the powers granted to me by the Grand Wizards and Scientists of athiesm, I hereby sentence you to 1 week banishment from the religion section.

Insolent fool

Do you notice that another atheist, Atheist-D agreed that not all atheists are knowledgeable?? You all should go back to school!! I will not lie because you claim atheism which you lack knowledge about.

ooman:

Do you notice that another atheist, Atheist-D agreed that not all atheists are knowledgeable?? You all should go back to school!! I will not lie because you claim atheism which you lack knowledge about.

lmao.....not all athiests are knowledgeable but the atheists here on Nairaland are quite knowledgeable. You didnt discover anything. O made this thread because we didnt accept your pseudoscience in Muskeeto's thread.


Stop embarrassing yourself.

Even Striklymi that you agreed with is moving away from you.

MacDaddy01:


lmao.....not all athiests are knowledgeable but the atheists here on Nairaland are quite knowledgeable. You didnt discover anything. O made this thread because we didnt accept your pseudoscience in Muskeeto's thread.


Stop embarrassing yourself.

Even Striklymi that you agreed with is moving away from you.

What I share, which you call pseudoscience and failed to understand is the SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. It is everything that evolution stands for. It is also the most hardly understood law of thermodynamics which is why am not so surprised it eluded all of you.

Pls go back to school, you reek of illiteracy!

MacDaddy01:


Even Striklymi that you agreed with is moving away from you.

Striktlymi is a catholic xtian, am an atheist, he cannot possibly agree with me. What sort of an unthinking, irrational atheist are you?

what thread is this that everyone is getting so worked up about?

ooman:

What I share, which you call pseudoscience and failed to understand is the SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS. It is everything that evolution stands for. It is also the most hardly understood law of thermodynamics which is why am not so surprised it eluded all of you.

Pls go back to school, you reek of illiteracy!

lol.......What a dumbazz you follow the creationists in linking thermodynamics with evolution. FAIL! EPIC FAIL

"Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics."

This shows more a misconception about thermodynamics than about evolution. The second law of thermodynamics says, "No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25] Now you may be scratching your head wondering what this has to do with evolution. The confusion arises when the 2nd law is phrased in another equivalent way, "The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease." Entropy is an indication of unusable energy and often (but not always!) corresponds to intuitive notions of disorder or randomness. Creationists thus misinterpret the 2nd law to say that things invariably progress from order to disorder.

However, they neglect the fact that life is not a closed system. The sun provides more than enough energy to drive things. If a mature tomato plant can have more usable energy than the seed it grew from, why should anyone expect that the next generation of tomatoes can't have more usable energy still? Creationists sometimes try to get around this by claiming that the information carried by living things lets them create order. However, not only is life irrelevant to the 2nd law, but order from disorder is common in nonliving systems, too. Snowflakes, sand dunes, tornadoes, stalactites, graded river beds, and lightning are just a few examples of order coming from disorder in nature; none require an intelligent program to achieve that order. In any nontrivial system with lots of energy flowing through it, you are almost certain to find order arising somewhere in the system. If order from disorder is supposed to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, why is it ubiquitous in nature?

The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws.

MacDaddy01:


lol.......What a dumbazz you follow the creationists in linking thermodynamics with evolution. FAIL! EPIC FAIL

Do you know that the entropy of a closed system cannot also increase.

Who says that living systems are closed systems, do you know what a closed system means? Living systems are never closed system hence their death releases their conserved energy.

ooman:

Do you know that the entropy of a closed system cannot also increase.

Who says that living systems are closed systems, do you know what a closed system means? Living systems are never closed system hence their death releases their conserved energy.

Life is irrelevant to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.


#Another Ooman pseudoscientific claim debunked

ooman:

Do you know that the entropy of a closed system cannot also increase.

Who says that living systems are closed systems, do you know what a closed system means? Living systems are never closed system hence their death releases their conserved energy.

Can u please state the law of thermodynamics that involves Entropy the way it is generally accepted.

.

MacDaddy01:


lol.......What a dumbazz you follow the creationists in linking thermodynamics with evolution. FAIL! EPIC FAIL

Once again evolution means order from disorder and this is EXACTLY WHAT THE 2ND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS IS ABOUT. Therefore, the law is all about evolution of matter from chaos-the big b.ang.

Area_boy:

Can u please state the law of thermodynamics that involves Entropy the way it is generally accepted.

For a system to reduce/conserve its entropy, it has to increase the entropy of the universe.

When a system dies, it releases it entropy, increasing the entropy of the universe.

There are many ways the 2nd law can be stated, it depends on the understanding and the context.

MacDaddy01:



Life is irrelevant to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.


#Another Ooman pseudoscientific claim debunked

Life is perfectly relevant to the second law, it is infact what it defines.

Maybe you need to update your knowledge and stop quoting a 1984 science.

Funny thread.. Some atheists need Jesus..,

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge; take it to the Lord in prayer.

Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield thee;
thou wilt find a solace there.

MacDaddy01:



[size=20pt]Life is irrelevant to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. [/size]


#Another Ooman pseudoscientific claim debunked

You have failed on this, " FAIL! EPIC FAIL"

SEE THIS

SOURCE: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics


Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics.
—Seth Lloyd

It also is a corruption to believe life is always "more ordered" than inanimate objects. [size=25pt]In fact, life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics in strict energetic sense.[/size] The energy of the sun is converted into chemical potential energy, which is converted to mechanical work or heat (the Earth is not an isolated system.) In each case, the energy transfer is inefficient, and some energy is dissipated as heat to the environment, leading to a dispersion of energy. (In the same way, "ordered" snowflakes can form when the weather becomes cold but the entropy of the universe still increases.)

[size=24pt]NOW LOGICBOY, YOU ARE NEVER IN MY LEAGUE. YOU DARE NOT CHALLENGE ME OR CALL MY SCIENCE PSEUDOSCIENCE. THERE MUST BE BOUNDARIES.[/size]

Even more sources

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f00/energydiagram.gif

[size=20pt]The Essential Link Between Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics[/size]: The overall direction of change in the universe is from less probable (more organized) states to more probable (less organized) states. Life does not "oppose" this but rather makes use of it. The "downhill" movement can be used to raise things "uphill" (just as water flowing downhill through a water wheel can be used to raise a weight). There is, however, always a net loss of organization in the process.

For life on earth, the dissipation of energy from the sun is the downhill movement. Photosynthesis creates "uphill" molecules which in turn can be used in cellular respiration to create additional "uphill" molecules from which, in turn, all of the "uphill" organization of life and culture derive.

All of biological and human organization represents a state of improbability very much less than that of the concentration of energy in the sun, and one which would quickly dissipate if the sun ceased shining (or there was some disturbance in the chain of water wheels which link the sun to biological and cultural organization). [/quote]

another source: http://www.ldolphin.org/mystery/chapt7.html

][size=20pt:
Life and the Second Law of Thermodynamics[/size]: How does all of this relate to chemical evolution? Since the important macromolecules of living systems (DNA, protein, etc.) are more energy rich than their precursors (amino acids, heterocyclic bases, phosphates, and sugars), classical thermodynamics would predict that such macromolecules will not spontaneously form.

Roger Caillois has recently drawn this conclusion in saying, "Clausius and Darwin cannot both be right."3 This prediction of classical thermodynamics has, however, merely set the stage for refined efforts to understand life's origin. Harold Morowitz4 and others have suggested that the earth is not an isolated system, since it is open to energy flow from the sun. Nevertheless, one cannot simply dismiss the problem of the origin of organization and complexity in biological systems by a vague appeal to open-system non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The mechanisms responsible for the emergence and maintenance of coherent (organized) states must be defined. To clarify the role of mass and energy flow through a system as a possible solution to this problem, we will look in turn at the thermodynamics of (1) an isolated system, (2) a closed system, and (3) an open system. We will then discuss the application of open-system thermodynamics to living systems. In Chapter 8 we will apply the thermodynamic concepts presented in this chapter to the prebiotic synthesis of DNA and protein. In Chapter 9 this theoretical analysis will be used to interpret the various prebiotic synthesis experiments for DNA and protein, suggesting a physical basis for the uniform lack of success in synthesizing these crucial components for living cells.

from same source

[quote author=][size=20pt]Thermodynamics of Living Systems[/size]: Living systems are composed of complex molecular configurations whose total bonding energy is less negative than that of their chemical precursors (e.g., Morowitz's estimate of E = 0.27 ev/atom) and whose thermal and configurational entropies are also less than that of their chemical precursors. Thus, the Gibbs free energy of living systems (see equation 7-6) is quite high relative to the simple compounds from which they are formed. The formation and maintenance of living systems at energy levels well removed from equilibrium requires continuous work to be done on the system, even as maintenance of hot water in a water heater requires that continuous work be done on the system. Securing this continuous work requires energy and/or mass flow through the system, apart from which the system will return to an equilibrium condition (lowest Gibbs free energy, see equations 7-7 and 7- with the decomposition of complex molecules into simple ones, just as the hot water in our water heater returns to room temperature once the gas is shut off.

In living plants, the energy flow through the system is supplied principally by solar radiation. In fact, leaves provide relatively large surface areas per unit volume for most plants, allowing them to "capture" the necessary solar energy to maintain themselves far from equilibrium. This solar energy is converted into the necessary useful work (negative Se in equation 7-11) to maintain the plant in its complex, high-energy configuration by a complicated process called photosynthesis. Mass, such as water and carbon dioxide, also flows through plants, providing necessary raw materials, but not energy. In collecting and storing useful energy, plants serve the entire biological world.

For animals, energy flow through the system is provided by eating high energy biomass, either plant or animal. The breaking down of this energy-rich biomass, and the subsequent oxidation of part of it (e.g., carbohydrates), provides a continuous source of energy as well as raw materials. If plants are deprived of sunlight or animals of food, dissipation within the system will surely bring death. Maintenance of the complex, high-energy condition associated with life is not possible apart from a continuous source of energy. A source of energy alone is not sufficient, however, to explain the origin or maintenance of living systems. The additional crucial factor is a means of converting this energy into the necessary useful work to build and maintain complex living systems from the simple biomonomers that constitute their molecular building blocks.

An automobile with an internal combustion engine, transmission, and drive chain provides the necessary mechanism for converting the energy in gasoline into comfortable transportation. Without such an "energy converter," however, obtaining transportation from gasoline would be impossible. In a similar way, food would do little for a man whose stomach, intestines, liver, or pancreas were removed. Without these, he would surely die even though he continued to eat. Apart from a mechanism to couple the available energy to the necessary work, high-energy biomass is insufficient to sustain a living system far from equilibrium. In the case of living systems such a coupling mechanism channels the energy along specific chemical pathways to accomplish a very specific type of work. We therefore conclude that, given the availability of energy and an appropriate coupling mechanism, the maintenance of a living system far from equilibrium presents no thermodynamic problems.

In mathematical formalism, these concepts may be summarized as follows:

(1) The second law of thermodynamics requires only that the entropy production due to irreversible processes within the system be greater than zero; i.e.,

Si > 0 (7-15)

(2) The maintenance of living systems requires that the energy flow through the system be of sufficient magnitude that the negative entropy production rate (i.e., useful work rate) that results be greater than the rate of dissipation that results from irreversible processes going on within the systems; i.e.,

| Se | > Si (7-16)

(3) The negative entropy generation must be coupled into the system in such a way that the resultant work done is directed toward restoration of the system from the disintegration that occurs naturally and is described by the second law of thermodynamics; i.e.,

- Se = Si (7-17)

where Se and Si refer not only to the magnitude of entropy change but also to the specific changes that occur in the system associated with this change in entropy. The coupling must produce not just any kind of ordering but the specific kind required by the system.

While the maintenance of living systems is easily rationalized in terms of thermodynamics, the origin of such living systems is quite another matter. Though the earth is open to energy flow from the sun, the means of converting this energy into the necessary work to build up living systems from simple precursors remains at present unspecified (see equation 7-17). The "evolution" from biomonomers of to fully functioning cells is the issue. Can one make the incredible jump in energy and organization from raw material and raw energy, apart from some means of directing the energy flow through the system? In Chapters 8 and 9 we will consider this question, limiting our discussion to two small but crucial steps in the proposed evolutionary scheme namely, the formation of protein and DNA from their precursors.

It is widely agreed that both protein and DNA are essential for living systems and indispensable components of every living cell today.11 Yet they are only produced by living cells. Both types of molecules are much more energy and information rich than the biomonomers from which they form.

more sources

still another source: http://www.icr.org/article/thermodynamics-origin-life-part-i/

[quote author=] [size=20pt]Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life (Part I) by Henry Morris, Ph.D[/size]: The evolutionary history of the world from the 'big b.ang' to the present universe is a series of gradual steps from the simple to the complicated, from the unordered to the organized, from the formless gas of elementary particles to the morphic atoms and molecules and further to the still more structured liquids and solids, and finally to the sophisticated living organisms. There is an obvious tendency of nature from disorder to order and organization. Is this tendency in contradiction to the famous second law of thermodynamics, which says that disorder must increase in nature? The law says that entropy, the measure of disorder, must grow in any natural system.1

The "obvious tendency of nature from disorder to order and organization" is, of course, only an assumption of evolutionists. The real tendency in the natural world, as expressed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is from order and organization to disorder. This very obvious problem is commonly bypassed by evolutionists with the naive statement that the earth is a system open to the energy of the sun and that this fact resolves the problem! Creationists in turn have reminded them that while an open system and available energy constitute necessary conditions before a growth in order (or information) can take place, they are not sufficient conditions. In addition, there must be a pre-coded program containing the necessary information to direct the growth of the system and one or more conversion mechanisms to convert the external energy into the highly specific work of internal growth. Since the vast system of the hypothetically evolving biosphere as a space-time continuum seems to lack both a program and mechanism, it is clearly precluded by the Second Law.2

It has been especially difficult to imagine ways to get life started in the first place. How can unordered non-living chemical elements be combined naturalistically into the extremely sophisticated ordered information in a replicating system? The common belief that this problem has been practically solved by modern biochemists is premature, to say the least. Freeman Dyson says:

We are still at the very beginning of the quest for understanding of the origin of life. We do not yet have even a rough picture of the nature of the obstacles that prebiotic evolution has had to overcome. We do not have a well-defined set of criteria by which to judge whether any given theory of the origin of life is adequate.3

The nature of the problem in trying to account for the origin of a replicating system has been well expressed by Angrist and Hepler:

Life, the temporary reversal of a universal trend toward maximum disorder, was brought about by the production of information mechanisms. In order for such mechanisms to first arise it was necessary to have matter capable of forming itself into a self-reproducing structure that could extract energy from the environment for its first self-assembly. Directions for the reproduction of plans, for the extraction of energy and chemicals from the environment, for the growth of sequence and the mechanism for translating instructions into growth all had to be simultaneously present at that moment. This combination of events has seemed an incredibly unlikely happenstance and often divine intervention is prescribed as the only way it could have come about.4

Small wonder! In the real world, every effect must have an adequate cause, but the usual laws of science do not seem to intimidate evolutionists. In the strange land of evolutionary credulity, wonderful things may happen — plans draw themselves, mechanisms design themselves, order generates itself from chaos, and life creates itself! Yet evolutionists call creationists unscientific because they postulate an adequate Cause (divine intervention) to account for the marvelous Effect called life.

In creation/evolution debates, creationists commonly place great emphasis on the Second Law of Thermodynamics as an overwhelming evidence against evolution. Although there have been approximately a hundred such debates held within the past four years, with leading evolutionist professors on major college and university campuses, the latter have never yet been able to come up with an answer of any consequence to this problem. Even more amazingly, most of them do not even seem to understand the problem, either dismissing it as irrelevant or else making some vacuous reference to ice crystals or open systems!

There are apparently only a few evolutionists who realize the magnitude of the problem and have been trying to find a solution. Some of these attempts have been discussed in previous Impact articles.5,6

By far the most important of these efforts, however, has been the suggestion of a Belgian scientist named Ilya Prigogine. Dr. Prigogine is a widely-known chemist and thermodynamicist, with faculty appointments both at the University Libre de Bruxelles and at the University of Texas at Austin. An indication of the strategic significance of Prigogine's ideas, is that they have recently won for him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Judging from the popular announcements, the main reason for this award was the ray of hope Prigogine has given evolutionists in their battle with entropy!

According to Newsweek, for example, the significance of Prigogine's work is as follows:

Scientists who have sought to explain the origin of life as the result of chemical interactions have been confounded by the second law of thermodynamics: energy tends to dissipate and organized systems drift inevitably toward entropy, or chaos.... Prigogine's insights will give biologists new grounds for learning how the first random molecules organized themselves into life forms.... Prigogine thinks the Nobel committee recognized that his work is building a bridge between the physical and human sciences.7

According to an interview in a professional chemical journal, Prigogine himself was "really surprised" at the decision of the Nobel committee. He also said: "The fact that the Nobel committee has chosen this one subject is a great encouragement."8

If, indeed, Prigogine had shown that the tremendous amount of information necessary for molecular self-replication can be produced naturalistically despite the entropy law, his achievement would be well worth the Nobel Prize. It would be all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Prigogine himself has "not actually worked in a chemistry lab for decades."9 At best, however, he has only offered a theoretical speculation, not an experimental demonstration. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the Nobel award in this case was due less to the scientific value of Prigogine's achievement than to the urgent need of the evolutionary establishment for some kind of answer, no matter how superficial, to the entropy problem.

Just how has Dr. Prigogine proposed to harmonize molecular evolution with the Second Law? Here it is, in his own words:

In all these phenomena, a new ordering mechanism…appears. For reasons to be explained later, we shall refer to this principle as order through fluctuations. The structures are created by the continuous flow of energy and matter from the outside world; their maintenance requires a critical distance from equilibrium, that is, a minimum level of dissipation. For all these reasons we have called them dissipative structures.10

These "dissipative structures" are supposed to exhibit a higher degree of structure, or order, than they possessed before being subjected to a large influx of outside energy, while at the same time their generation is accompanied by a large dissipation of energy in the form of heat. The main example cited by Prigogine is the formation of convection currents and vortices in a fluid subjected to a temperature gradient.

Under such conditions, vortices (or other fluctuations or instabilities) may be generated and maintained. These, supposedly, manifest higher "order" than the system possessed previously, even though such order has been produced at the cost of excessive over-all energy dissipation. This phenomenon has long been familiar to hydrodynamicists but Prigogine suggested that it may also apply in certain chemical and biological reactions which are proceeding under non-equilibrium conditions.

That such vortices or any other analogous "dissipative structures" could actually be called a device for naturalistic generation of higher order, and then that such a description could be awarded a Nobel Prize is almost unbelievable! This writer's own Ph.D. dissertation over a quarter of a century ago described in quantitative and analytical form the generation of turbulent vortices in fluid flow over rough surfaces.11 These, indeed, are dissipative structures, requiring the dissipation of much flow energy in the form of heat for their generation. Their own rotational energies in turn are soon dissipated by breaking up into smaller vortices, so that no permanent increase in order is produced, even if such vortices are assumed (very questionably) to possess a higher degree of order than the energy gradient which generated them. "Big whirls make little whirls that feed on their velocity; little whirls make tiny whirls, and so on to viscosity!"

In any case dissipative structures could hardly serve as a substrate for still higher order, since they themselves require an abnormally large input of energy just to maintain their own structures. Prigogine himself says that, as far as chemical or biological reactions are concerned, the generation of dissipative structures is apparently limited to "auto-catalytic" processes. But catalytic processes, like fluid vortices, do not generate higher order — they merely speed up reactions which themselves are already going downhill thermodynamically in the first place. And any imaginary "auto-catalytic" processes would certainly require already-living systems for their own generation, so they can hardly explain the generation of living systems!

Although Prigogine wistfully expresses the hope that his speculations may someday lead to an understanding of how life may have evolved from non-life, he is at least more cautious than those of his fellow evolutionists who are currently exhuberating over it. He warns:

It would be too simple to say that the concepts of life and dissipative structures are intermingled.... But it is not just one instability that makes it possible to cross the threshold between life and non-life; it is, rather, a succession of instabilities of which we are only now beginning to identify certain stages.12

In a later section, he again suggests caution:

But let us have no illusions. If today we look into the situation where the analogy with the life sciences is the most striking — even if we discovered within biological systems some operations distant from the state of equilibrium — our research would still leave us quite unable to grasp the extreme complexity of the simplest of organisms.13

One thing is clear. Whatever of scientific value may be deduced from Prigogine's analysis, he has not solved the problem of harmonizing entropy with evolution and he has certainly not shown that life can evolve from non-living chemicals. His dissipative structures do not constitute either the required program or the required mechanism to enable any kind of permanently increased order to be produced in an open system. However, he should perhaps be commended for trying. Maybe next he can work on a perpetual motion machine!

The problem of the origin of life can really only be resolved by recognition of the omnipotent Creator. The only alternative to belief in special creation is credulous faith in impotent Chance.

We are faced with the idea that genesis was a statistically unlikely event. We are also faced with the certainty that it occurred. Was there a temporary repeal of the second law that permitted a "fortuitous concourse of atoms"? If so, study of the Repealer and Genesis is a subject properly left to theologians. Or we may hold with the more traditional scientific attitude that the origin of life is beclouded merely because we don't know enough about the composition of the atmosphere and other conditions on the earth many eons ago.14

Yes, not knowing how life could be formed would indeed becloud the understanding of the origin of life! The problem is why this should be called the scientific attitude when all the scientific evidence continues to support special creation.

ooman: Striktlymi and Davidylan once directly and indirectly pointed to me that not all atheist/agnostics are intelligent and that not all are scientific. Striktlymi went on to say that many people become atheists for many different reasons other than science/PHILOSOPHY, the view which I contended. Well, after my encounter with atheists/agnostics here, I am helpless and am sorry but you are right afterall.

Some atheists/agnostics are just tired of life, some just want freedom from moral laws and scruple among many other insane reasons.

This does not immediately suggest that Theists are more intelligent as agacity is not one of the properties of being a Theists in the first place. It just shows that "pls people, do not take atheism/agnosticism to be synonymous with intelligence/KNOWLEDGE always, you will be disappointed".

Am an atheist and was disappointed at the level of comprehension of so called atheists/agnostics of their environment, so I thought I should apologize to Striky and Davidylan for my misconstruction.

Lol @ bold. My friend, Christianity tasks your very highest intellectual powers and even that is not enough.

Good thing you're recognizing though that atheism is not equal to intelligence. From my experience of you guys, I can say very certainly that it takes quite a bit of pigheadedness and willful stupidity to remain an atheist after one has heard the case for Christianity.