Debate: Entropy applies to humankind!?

A Feb 9th, 2009 science-vs-religion street debate, at Penn State University, on the question of entropy or the second law of thermodynamics applied to humankind, and, in particular, human origins, between college students and a random opinionated Christian philosopher.

The bearded man believes that humans were created 6,000-years ago by God (as do about 45% of Americans) but also believes that the "the law of entropy applies to mankind", albeit interpreted such that "entropy says that everything degrades". This is a common view for many Americans, especially being that just exactly how the second law applies to humans, to human evolution, and to human origins is a "taboo subject" not taught school, thus leaving the subject open target for street debate.

The crux of the issue is that the bearded man views entropy in terms of the isolated system view, wherein entropy, according to Boltzmann-Planck isolated ideal gas system model, tends towards disorder, or in the words of Helmholtz is a measure of disorder. There is some truth to this statement, which needs to be taken into account.

Correctly, how entropy is applied to human kind is through what is called the Lewis inequality for natural processes, which stated for a natural process to occur on the surface of the earth, such as one step in the evolution process, the system Gibbs free energy must decrease for this system change:

http://www.eoht.info/page/%CE%94G+%3C+0

the thermodynamic inequality that defines "natural" or thermodynamically possible processes for isothermal-isobaric reactions taking place freely on the surface of the earth. This forms the basis for the standard model of human existence:

http://www.eoht.info/page/Standard+model+of+human+existence

The standard model is based on (a) the Lewis inequality (dG less than 0), (b) thermodynamics coupling, i.e. that the quantity "Σ{dG less than 0} + Σ{dG greater than 0}" must be less than zero for the process as a whole to occur (be natural), (c) human interactions are quantified by the Goethe-Helmholtz equation A = -- dG, (d) that spin coupling movements of the universe are what drive the earth-bound reactions and processes.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Entropy
• entropy law
• law of entropy
• second law
• thermodynamics
• evolution
• Penn State
• debate
• entropy debate
• science vs religion
• god
• bible
• creationism

[HumanChemistry101]

To summarize: the guy is correct in his statement that “the law of entropy applies to mankind”. The student objects with the standard “the earth is not a closed system objection”. The reconciliation, between both sides, is that the evolution processes are isothermal-isobaric processes, quantified by Gibbs free energy, not solely by entropy, and thus human evolution is governed by the Lewis inequality for natural processes. See drop down menu for further clarification.

[chickenshieee]

They are both annoying... They overshadow the point of the debate by being silly walking around or yelling