This is part of a discussion I had with an atheist, and I thought I would share it here. If I am wrong about anything, I would like to know. I don't want to be wrong!

"One of the oldest canards in the creationists' book is the claim that evolution must be false because it violates the second law of thermodynamics, or the principle that, as they put it, everything must go from order to disorder. One of the more persistent perpetrators of this kind of sloppy thinking is Henry Morris, and few creationists today seem able to get beyond this error."

Morris quote: "Remember this tendency from order to disorder applies to all real processes. Real processes include, of course, biological and geological processes, as well as chemical and physical processes. The interesting question is: "How does a real biological process, which goes from order to disorder, result in evolution. which goes from disorder to order?" Perhaps the evolutionist can ultimately find an answer to this question, but he at least should not ignore it, as most evolutionists do. Especially is such a question vital, when we are thinking of evolution as a growth process on the grand scale from atom to Adam and from particle to people. This represents in absolutely gigantic increase in order and complexity, and is clearly out of place altogether in the context of the Second Law."

Basically, this is their bottom line:

"To spell it out, there's about a trillion times more entropy flux available than is required for evolution."

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/entropy_and_evolution.php

Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy not available for work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when converting energy to work. During this work, entropy accumulates in the system, which then dissipates in the form of waste heat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

The precursor to the concept of entropy was disgregation, which “characterized the "transformations" of "working substances" (particles of a thermodynamic system) of an engine cycle, namely "mode of aggregation."” In this context, “the entropy of the system increases, whereas the entropy of the surroundings decreases.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgregation

A flesh body viewed as a small universe within this universe (surroundings), “with a system” (circulatory), we find that the system becomes the same temperature as the surroundings (body).

At that point, according to the concept of disgregation, it requires intervention from an external source to transform a closed system, like the circulatory system of human beings and other flesh, because “it is now unable to do useful work, as there is no longer a temperature gradient.”

“In thermodynamics, a closed system can exchange energy (as heat or work), but not matter, with its surroundings.”

However: "Statistical mechanics demonstrates that entropy is governed by probability, thus allowing for a decrease in disorder even in a closed system. Although this is possible, such an event has a small probability of occurring, making it unlikely. Even if such an event were to occur, it would result in a transient decrease that would affect only a limited number of particles in the system."

Entropy flux: In the study of transport phenomena (heat transfer, mass transfer and fluid dynamics), flux is defined as flow per unit area, where flow is the movement of some quantity per unit time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux

From the article:

“Styer also estimates the Earth's total entropy throughput per second, that is, the total flux involved from absorption of the sun's energy and re-radiation of heat out into space. It's a slightly bigger number…

To spell it out, there's about a trillion times more entropy flux available than is required for evolution. The degree by which earth's entropy is reduced by the action of evolutionary processes is miniscule relative to the amount that the entropy of the cosmic microwave background is increased.”

Do you know what else is a trillion times? That’s the stretching factor of the universe.

Here is a five minute video that will explain a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGH6ey6c2rQ

(There is a correction to be had in the formula of that video, as this has been considered for years now, with the correction noted on Gerald Schroeder’s site):

"CORRECTION TO THE CALCULATION OF THE AGE OF THE UNIVERSE

Following a talk I gave at AZUSA Pacific University, February 2011, a participant noted that when calculating the expansion ratio of space [that is, by what fraction space had stretched] from the era of nucleosynthesis to our current time, I had neglected to correct for the effect that the increase in the rate of universal expansion has on the current cosmic microwave radiation background. This increase introduces a non-linear effect. [That is, the rate of expansion is not constant, rather the rate is increasing.] The correction is in the order of 10%. Had the expansion been linear [and not super-linear resulting from the increased rate], the CMRB would be, not the currently observed 2.76 K, but 3.03 K. Introducing this correction into the exponential equation that details the duration of the six 24 hour days of Genesis Chapter One results in an age of the universe from our perspective of 14 billion years [14, 000,000,000 years]. From the Bible’s perspective of time for those six evocative days of Genesis, the number of our years held compressed within each of those six 24 hour days of Genesis, starting with Day One, would be, in billions of years, respectively, 7.1; 3.6; 1.8; 0.89; 0.45; 0.23.")

http://www.geraldschroeder.com/AgeUniverse.aspx

That would allow for the formula to be a little more accurate. The conversion will become .014, which allows for the inclusion of the seven days of the week (.014*7= .098, or 98% leaving only a 2% margin of error.)

14BB/1TT = .014

.014*7 = .098

98%

The other 2% of the Creation account is in Genesis 2.

Anyway, back to entropy flux. Have you ever read anything about the expansion of the universe and dark energy? The following is from a research paper published in July 2006:

"Entropy of Microwave Background Radiation in Observable Universe"

The summary:

“We show that the cosmological constant at late time places a bound on the entropy of microwave background radiation deposited in the future event horizon of a given observer, $Sleq S_{Lambda_0}^{3/4}$. This bound is independent of the energy scale of reheating and the FRW [Friedman-Robertson-Walker homogeneous-isotropic models] evolution after reheating. We also discuss why the entropy of microwave background in our observable universe has its present value.”

From the first page of the paper:

“…observations have indicated that the universe is accelerating, which suggests that the universe might be being dominated by a dark energy component…The simplest form of dark energy is a small and positive cosmological constant, which can fit data very nicely and is phenomenologically one of the most appealing choices so far.”

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/1971274_Entropy_of_Microwav...

We can know what that dark energy is.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. –Genesis 1.1-2

Earth may not be the center of the universe, but it sure is the center of existence. In my calculations:

1 trillion – 1 trillion = 0 “work” available for this evolution theory.

For now we see through a glass, darkly… -I Corinthians 13.12