Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum The God Delusion: A Book Review

No. I was. Call me "Mr. Obvious." I just wanted to state it in my own words. Well, not exactly. This is pretty close to the words that I've read in other sources - Asimov, Feynman, Fermi, my old Thermo text (Sauer, I think).

LOL, I was all ready to fire back and defend my point; but then as I read more closely, I realized that your post backed up my point.

As the organized system (life) dies, it's own entropy increases and there is all that extra entropy left behind by its long life.
~Samwik

P.S. ~anyone see the show last night (or catch a repeat today)?
~S

"As the organized system (life) dies, it's own entropy increases and there is all that extra entropy left behind by its long life.
~Samwik"

That's probably true, but more to the point, the entire system of which we are a part (i.e. US plus the environment) is continually increasing in entropy, even though we ourselves might constitute a net decrease. That doesn't violate 2LOT because we are not isolated systems.

I'm not too sure about the bounds of the system; but I would think that summing birth and death, we'd be net entropy neutral. Doesn't the act of living, and of maintaining our temporary decrease in entropy (being alive), generate a huge increase in entropy.

Again, maybe we're saying the same thing here, just different emphasis or semantics or perspective. Any clarification?
Thanks again,
~Samwik
P.S. (I just figured out what 2LOT meant) ...and I'm certainly not trying to say we violate 2LOT in any way!
~~Sam

Keep in mind that entropy is about energy. The whole "entropy = disorder" thing is ridiculous. Well, it's not ridiculous when applied to energy, but it is when applied to the "order" of physical objects.

BTW, I have the Colbert Report on DVR. Sounds like it'll be fun.

Hiya soilguy,
re: "Keep in mind that entropy is about energy."
I am talking about energy, not buildings or computers. This whole entropy thing came about because I thought a favorite quote, "Life is nature's way of turning light into heat." refuted Colbert's thesis. Mainly I'm referring to Sun energy going to food/fuel, and on to heat.
Thanks,
~Samwik

"Life is nature's way of turning light into heat."
I don't know if that is right or wrong. I don't understand it.

However, I agree with "Doesn't the act of living, and of maintaining our temporary decrease in entropy (being alive), generate a huge increase in entropy. " It's a cogent summary of what I was saying.

Soilguy, your point is very well taken. Let's change the subject for a second. Let's talk about acceleration.

Thought experiment: ask a random lay person how to accelerate his car and he will give you a strange stare and if he bothers to answer such a stupid question at all with anything other than a glare and a snide remark, he will look at you as if you're retarded and say, "You step on the gas." If he is familiar with algebra, he might recognize that a deceleration is just a negative acceleration and that therefore one might also step on the brake. A smartass might give clever answers like smashing into a wall or shifting weight or the like. But an engineer will say, in addition to those other answers, that a person can turn the wheel, even if he maintains the same speed. This is because acceleration is not just a change in speed - it's a change in velocity, and being a vector, velocity has two components, a direction and a speed. So a change in direction even at a constant speed, is an acceleration.

Now back to the point. What does "order" mean? It means different things to a waitress, a lawyer, an artist, and a thermodynamicist. Take two identical bags of electron-marbles and with the marbles in one of the bags arrange them into a picture of the mona lisa and in the other glob them together into a mass. Which has greater order? The artist and the thermodynamicist may not give the same answers.

As with so many other things, creationists conflate scientific and lay definitions of the term "order" with respect to 2LOT. (Not that any of you are making that mistake.)

Cool!

Nice one TFF.

It might very well be that religious groups have better survival rates. That doesn't mean that there is a god. Secondly, is that true? Sure, sure, the Jews are the only somewhat-example of that thesis. But other than that group?

And two, I really find it highly doubtful that some cavemen went like: "Look over there, those cobbers do the mumbo jumbo and they have more mammoth skins and two cavewomen for every man! Let's go and do this believing thing too!"
This begs the question how them cobbers overthere came to their religion.
Also, what you say might have caused the spreading of religion but not the origin.

Religion leads to better organisation of your culture, better structure, unification etc. It has an unquestionable civilizing effect. Doesn't mean anything in the god exists or not debate.

BrianPatrix wrote:

"That doesn't mean that there is a god."

My point exactly. My argument was "Religion leads to better organisation of your culture, better structure, unification etc." I believe religion does go back to "caveman" days, possibly even Neanderthals. Australian Aborigines have religion and they've been fairly isolated from developments elsewhere for possibly 60,000 years. Any knowledgeable shaman who could unite several families would mean those families would be better able to survive times of environmental stress. They could share resources. The idea of a single God (and usually his wife) certainly seems to have originated in Mesopotamia, or Al Jazeera. It was a political development.

I don't think for a moment that any group of cavemen said, "Look over there, those cobbers do the mumbo jumbo and they have more mammoth skins and two cavewomen for every man! Let's go and do this believing thing too!" However I do suspect that the development of some basic religion is responsible for the narrowed mitochondrial DNA diversity of modern humans. The more recent narrowed diversity of Y-chromosome lines is probably more related to conquest. But that's another subject.

In the whole god discussion, www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com is an interesting website.

Hey. That's a good find. But what about the opening line:

"Is God real, or is he imaginary? It is one of the most important questions in America today".

If that's so the rest of the world really does have something to worry about.

Why does ANYONE think that this is one of the most important questions today? I mean think about that statement- one of the most important questions? If you think god's real then he/she is real--if you don't he/she isn't. That's it!

So now can we do something about the unimportant things-- like ensuring sick people have medical care when they need it, trying to help people in poverty deal with their daily lives, find a way to fix Climate Change, stop war today, stop those foolish people from dropping iron filings into the ocean off the Galapagos.....etc etc.

You are so right terry!

Thanks Ellis.

Dear Ellis, if only it were so.... Religion is VERY real in a financial sense. Basically if you believe, or rather if you publicly say that you believe in Christ etc. then you get more money from Bush then when you don't say it.
US christianity religion kills ... Aid-programs in Africa stopped getting US-money for refusing to stop practising abortion.
It's all so unchristian to attach conditions to helping. And it might be blashphemic: It doesn't say in the bible: Thou shalt not abort. Or even: a microscopic blob of 500 cells, which is not viable on it's own, is life.