
Re: Where Did Humans Come From?
I was waiting for someone to use the 2nd law argument, one of my favourites.
And yeah I realise Synik has already answered these with very valid arguments I just feel cheated because he got there first so I'm doing it too, not trying to steal your thunder or anything haha.
If this argument were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.
The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.
More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.
Because as a species moves around the world, or even just a continent, it is presented with different surroundings.
Even when the surroundings are very slight, there are variations.
Also, there is "chance evolution" which means that if there are two exact same creatures and one colony splits off to live in isolation but doesn't move to where the environment is different at all, they may, over a long period of time of course, still evolve in different ways that may or may not be beneficial to their survival, it's just change but without purpose behind it.
Of course decay rates can change according to the chemical environment, but for one thing when we look back to a billion years ago Earth wasn't much different chemically to what it is now.
Secondly, the difference in a different chemical environment isn't so significant that it would cause our data to be irrelevant. Notice that we say something is "circa 1,000,000,000 years old" not "1,435,733,005.342" years old.