The 2nd law is trivial. Entropy is just energy that has been converted into quantum bits. Its information.
Entropy is not what it once was. In fact entropy can be reversed. Life forms do it all the time. Its called growth, healing, self renewal.

I've noticed among religious apocalyptics a strong love for "law of entropy". Nobody thinks of the laws of thermodynamics as "Unbreakable Laws" anymore, except people still stuck in early 20th century science.
Especially with nanotechnology coming around corner and the very real ability to manipulate matter at the atomic level.

Somebody once said the problem with the evolution/creationist debate is its 17th century religion arguing against 19th century science. Most people on both sides have moved forward from those points of view and the arguments themselves are a source of wonder in most people. Arguing about the laws of thermodynamics is kind of like that.

We can reverse entropy in a system. Its been done. And this world is not decaying, if anything, if there's anything at all to Global Warming, this world is entering a higher energy state, a much higher order of organization. And this time its got sentient species living on it to help it along that higher order of complexity. Humans are a species that is potentially powerful enough to destroy planet destroying comets and meteors - we could very well be the ones that protect this planet in the future. But there are humans who are traitors to their own species.

The earth is not a closed system, it sits within the magnetic field of the sun and is every bit electrically connected to the Sun as the transformer feeding your house is connected to the local power utility. Comets glow because when the come into the solar system they cause the solar system to discharge itself along its trail. The Sun spits out a constant stream of hydrogen and helium ions with carry a net positive charge. And even without the Sun the zero point field is a teaming swarm of energy. We swim in energy.

Dennis Fletcher: reply

You’ve got a good intuition about this stuff, Bill. You’ll notice I side stepped the issue of what gravity is, gravitons, a warp in space-time etc. by asking about the EFFECTS of gravity.

Remember, Einstein never saw a warp in space-time and no one has ever seen a graviton. These are just ways of describing phenomenon we CAN see.

And the effects of gravity are instantaneous. If the sun blew up, we wouldn’t hurtle out of its orbit 9 minutes later. We’d start right away.

The effects of commingled subatomic particles coming out of the quantum haze are also instantaneous. They’ve measured the spin of a photon of light that was 15 or so kilometres from its partner created at the same time in the same way. As you know, measuring the spin of a photon brings it out of its quantum haze. At the exact second the particle being measured dropped out of its quantum haze, its partner did so too. Assuming there’s some sort of information passing between the two particles (and this assumption is NOT beyond question), that information travelled between the two particles at faster than the speed of light.

Eric Dollard has shown longitudinal electric waves travel faster than the speed of light by a factor of about 1.8 times.

Just some thoughts to chew on.

Wendell Krossa reply



I took a step back- think of the birth of the universe in chaos. And then the movement toward order, increasing order into galaxies, stars, planets and what not. And then on this Earth- the emergence and development of life, an increasing movement toward more order whether in more complex organisms or systems. Life or biological order took over this planet from its more chaotic beginnings. And then the third great trend of order- human society or civilization. Again, a movement toward more complex order. Increasing order. Less wild or primitive or impulsive behavior. More humane patterns.

The power of increasing order dominates the universe, life and society. Energy fuels all this and hence the entropy factor (increasing disorder). But the dumped heat (entropy) is virtuous, as Huber says, because it makes order possible. Waste in this sense is virtuous. But my conclusion is that this entropy element does not threaten the greater trend of order in the universe, life or society.

Peter Huber also says a variety of interesting things about energy and order in The Bottomless Well. That is also Huber’s point, that we use lower grade energy to achieve higher grade or purified forms of power and order and organization. This is what he means that waste of lower grade energy which is abundant, is virtuous. And yes, we swim in energy. As I read Rees and his pessimism over all this consumption and waste, I am left wondering, so what.

Huber in Hard Green says the same about consumption of energy and resources- it means nothing in the greater scheme of things (or something to this effect). Let me cover my arse in case Dennis comes after me.

I see it as a problem of trying to explain something perhaps not natural in natural terms alone. You keep running into these problems of needing to appropriate the god-like qualities you need so obviously and shift these onto so-called natural explanations. Same with natural selection explanations.

Bob Brinsmead reply

Someone said, Matter is weird stuff. It seems if our minds can only work in a literalist, logical way, we cannot fathom this weird stuff - it seems that the really great scientists are such because they are willing to flirt with mystery.

Wendell Kross reply:

This is interesting more for its insight into Davies’ thinking and reasoning. He reflects the greater ideological battles in the background of all this theorizing. And I applaud him in general for his basic drift to find explanations. As a strong naturalist he assumes everything can be explained naturally including so-called creation/Creator elements of reality. But in the end he really answers nothing more. His favored explanation is self-generation or self-creation. But he answers no hard questions of why or how all this self-generation started and what started it. Why not nothing? Why something? Look at his statements…”When the basic properties of the universe were being forged (by what?)…as the information content of the universe climbed, the laws focused and homed in (Oh, how and why?)… for the universe to engineer its own bio-friendliness…”. And so on. Then he says its all circular which explains nothing. He again falls back on his own self-created super-turtles. As Kellor said of biologists- they need the designer but don’t want to be seen with her in public. So the appropriate her features and incorporate them into various self-created hypotheses that appear to function just like designers. Trying to explain the unexplainable gets people into these things.

Also, his shifting the laws from outside to within or emerging with time and space is not new to him.