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.


Taken from the Talk.Origins: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ

For those of you interested in the physics behind this question:

Consider that the Earth remains, overall, at an approximately constant mass, heat capacity and temperature. Hence, the energy input from the Sun must equal the energy that the Earth radiates in the form of blackbody radiation. Consider also that the Sun's energy comes primarily in the form of visible radiation (about 6,000 K), while the Earth's blackbody radiation is in the infrared (around 300 K). Since visible light is more energetic than infrared by about a factor of 20, we need to export many, many more photons than we get from the Sun in order to avoid burning up. But, in blackbody radiation, the entropy per photon is 3.60 k (this is indepentent of temperature, for reasons beyond the scope of this writeup - if you really want to know, msg me and i'll node the full explanation).

So, in essence, what this means is that we are exporting 20 times the entropy that we are importing from the Sun, and hence, that entropy on Earth is not required to increase with time.

Hooray for non-isolated systems!

And if you're not interested in the physics, and would like a concise lay person's explanation of what the Second Law of Thermodynamics is saying, try this on for size:

"Order" cannot increase, unless energy is spent to accomplish it.

(By analogy, your house cannot become clean, unless somebody does the work.)

The creationist fallacy is to ignore everything after the "unless" in this statement.

As long as there is a source of energy to draw from, any amount of order can be created, even spontaneously. On the surface of the Earth, we have two major energy sources available to us: the sun, and the thermal energy in the core. Without either of these, life surely could not arise here.

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