Does increasing entropy support the biblical account?

From a blog post I've referred to n prior posts, titled Entropy, Evolution or De-Evolution.

The post ends with the following statement:

De-evolution is the rule. It also confirms the Biblical account. God had made everything “very good” and without death. We have been degrading and dying ever since.

I'd like to pick apart some of these claims.

First De-evolution is the rule.: The author of the blog post equates mutations (or any DNA change) with degradation of genomes. HOwever, this is incorrect. Mutations can be beneficial, neutral or deleterious to the organism, and the beneficial or deleterious effects can differ in degree. Straight out of tha get, we can safely say that this claim is false.

Secondly It also confirms the Biblical account: This statement is based on the previous one, and as the previous was false, we can say that this conclusion isn't supported. I would think that to confirm the "Biblical Account", there'd need to be evidence for more "perfect" genomes in the past, which is not supported by the evidence.

And then God had made everything “very good” and without death.: This statement is making a huge claim - that "death", in this case meaning not just the death of organisms, but also entropy, weren't present. This claim entails that cell replication was perfect in the past, that the gene crossover of sexual reproduction occured without error. Not only is there no evidence for this happening, there is simply no way that these processes could occur without error. Then we can look at the additional claim that entropy didn't exist, or wasnt increasing. This would mean that essentially every physical process in our bodies would not have worked, since they rely upon processes that generate entropy. Most every physical process everywhere would fail to function. The Sun would not have shone, the water cycle couldn't have functioned, even rivers would not have flowed. This is a truly spectacularly unrealistic claim.

If we look at what we know of the universe, we know that absolute entropy has been increasing since the big bang event. Perhaps the author means that the quantum singularity that we understand to have given birth to our universe was "very good". However there is a problem even here. The author equates an increase in entropy with a fall from a state of being "very good", so we should expect the entropy in the very early universe to be low, and that is indeed the case, at least in absolute terms. If we look at the ratio of absolute to maximal entropy things look very different. The very early universe was in a state of maximal entropy. It was in complete disorder (if we equate entropy with disorder, as the author of the blogpost appears to). So this "very good" state was also completely disordered, and so presumably, "very bad", or at least "maximally fallen". Those are mutually exclusive states, and so this claim must also be deemed false.

Finally We have been degrading and dying ever since.: As I demonstrated above, the universe was never in a state that the blogpost author would call "very good", and there has never been a time in the history of life on this planet, nor in the history of our universe right back to the very early universe where our current theories break down, where entropy was not increaing.

The conclusion that the author comes to is absolutely and demonstrably false. The biblical account, at least as they understand it is not only not supported by the second law of thermodynamics, but is completely undermined by it.

Information in the Genome

Many times I read that there is no evidence that evolutionary mechanisms have added information to a genome. Recently this claim was reproduced on a blog post titled Entropy, Evolution or De-Evolution.

The entire post is filled with misunderstandings and misrepresentations. I wanted to focu on one of the claims reproduced there. The claim is attributed to Bruce Malone, though no further information is given concerning it. Malone apparently has a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering, though no relevant expertise regarding evolutionary biology.

The quote is as follows:

No experiment has ever shown how useful functioning information can be added to the DNA molecule by random changes.

I have tried to track down the souirce of the quote so I can see it in context, but have not found it as yet.

Here, Bruce Malone claims that DNA changes don't result in any additional "useful functional information". No definition of what this might be is given. In the absence of any definition, we can look to the field of Information Theory.

As I understand it, by any measure of information as understood within Information Theory, taking 2 identical strands of DNA, and then changing one of them results in an increase in information. It doesn't matter if this is a change of a single base pair, and it doesn't matter if this change would result in a beneficial, detrimental or neutral result in the organism.

How about "complex specified complexity" or "specified complexity", a term coined by Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski. He defines it as a property of organisms that cannot have arisen through natural processes, and that must have arisen through the actions of an intelligent agent. However, it's been shown that evolutionary mechanisms can produce "information" in this sense, and that repeated application of these mechanisms can produce sufficient information to cross Dembski's claimed "Universal Probability Bound". Dembski's ideas have been found to be without merit. As a brief example, researchers in the field of Artificial Life, where computer simulations are used to study evolutionary mechanisms, all ostrs of novelties and increased complexity are observed which should be impossible were Dembski's claims correct.

What about "functional information", as proposed by Stephen Meyer. Meyer defines this as the production of linear sequence-specific arrangements of characters. He states that it is our uniform experience that this sort of information only arises with the actions of an intelligent agent. There's no doubt that we, as the main intelligent agents we are aware of, can create this sort of information. However, Meyer's leap from this to the conclusion that an intelligent agent is necessary for these sorts of strings of symbols (as we could view DNA) is not valid. In fact, as was mentioned above when discussing Dembski's "specificed complexity", evolutionary mechanisms can and have generated this information.

So that would mean that Malone must be using "useful functional information" to refer to something else. Whatever it is, I can guess that it's either a useless concept, or the claim that evolutionary mechanisms cannot account for it is false.

The myth of Christian persecution & discrimination in the USA

Reading through blogs and articles from Right Wing Christians, the claim of increasing discrimination an persecution of Christians seems to be a common theme. Claims of rampant "secularism" eroding the rights of Christians to practice their beliefs, or voice their opinions.

As a secular athiest on more on the Liberal/Left side of the political spectrum, I have to say that I really don't see merit to the claims being made.

A recent example is a Bakery in Colorado which refused to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding on the basis of the proprieters religious beliefs. The propieter is arguing that baking a cake is a form of expression, essentially speech, and therefore being compelled to bake a cake for an event that goes against their (sinerely held) religious beliefs is a violation of their first amendment rights. The state of Colorado is arguing that refusing to bake the cake is in violation of the public accomodation laws, under which facilities which are open to the public may not discriminate on the basis of race/color, sex/gender, ancestry or national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

The bakery is obviously a public facility, and it seems obvious that religious belief here is being used to avoid anti-discrimination laws. I don't see that the proprieter would get much traction if they were arguing for the right to discriminate against one of the other classes of people protected under the public accommodations law. If we substitute african americans, or an interacial couple, or women, or unmarried couples for same-sex couple, it sems obvious that the bakery has no right to refuse service in this case.
It seems to me that the bakery is arguing for the right for anyone to discriminate against anyone else, for (almost) any reason, as long as its because of "sincerely held religious beliefs". Does anyone actually want that? I doubt it.

Misunderstanding thermodynamics

A recent blog post claims that thermodynamics supports the conclusion that God exists. Unfortunately, the author misunderstands thermodynamics, implying that things like evolutionary biology aren't compatible with the second law of thermodynamics, and that the universe began in "perfection" and has been going downhill ever since.

The authors confusion and misunderstandings are understandable given a source he cites titles De-Evolution. This article makes the following claim:

This idea is completely contradicted by the Second Law, which stipulates that all real “systems and processes” including all biological and physical processes, naturally diminish to lower levels of organization and complexity—regardless of whether the system is open or closed.11 According to Dr. R. B. Lindsay, Ph.D. in physics, the Second Law reveals that the “natural tendency of complex, ordered arrangements and systems is to become simpler and more disorderly with time.”12 In summary, there is an irreversible downward trend at work throughout the universe.

The above quote, reproduced in the blog post which inspired me to write this, makes a hash of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy. It fails to take into account the obvious fact that while entropy tends to increase over time in a closed system, there is no reason why parts of that system cannot see increases in order/complexity, and decreases in entropy. After all, the entropy of a system can be reduced from outside of it by the introduction of energy. For evolutionary biology, this energy is predominantly from the sun.

The author of the blog post make a claim that the universe began in perfection (or near perfection) and has degraded ince then:

Therefore, the findings of entropy align with the biblical account that God had created the universe and described it as “very good,” and it has been going downhill since.

This statement also misunderstands science. The universe, at the moment of the big bang event, was in a state of maximal entropy. So, in contrast to starting in a state that was "very good", the universe started out in a state the author might characterize as "very bad".

If the universe started out in this state of maximal entropy, how is it that the universe has ordered structures in it now? Shouldn't it be that case that once a system hits maximal entropy, it will stay in that state (also called equilibrium)? No, not if the maximal entropy possible in that system is increased, which is exactly what has heppened with our universe. The expansion of the universe has increased the maximum potential entropy of our universe far more rapidly than the abolute entropy of our universe has increased. This has resulted in an "entropy differential" if you will, a gap between the current entropy and the maximum entropy possible in the universe, and it's this which has made it possible that structure has formed while the absolute entropy of the universe continues to increase. If creationists like the author of the inspirational blog post, and the author of the "De-Evolution" piece presented the science as it's actually understood by scientists instead of presenting misinformation and miunderstandings, I'm sure I would have far fewer complaints about their claims.

Do scientists and Philosophers convert based upon the arguments and evidence?

A recent blog post concerning Evidence that God Exists, the author quotes scientist Alan Sandage in support of the contention that the evidence of science supports the conclusion that God exists. The same author has on other occasions referred to Anthony Flew, whose (near) death bed conversion to Deism is also referenced in support of the same contention.

Are these examples of conversion to beliefs in a God (of a sort) examples of scientists and philosophers converting due to the evidence?

Trivially, the answer is yes. In both of these cases, the person in question cites some scientific evidence (in both cases it's the complexity of biochemistry/DNA).

If we look a little closer, and think about the way in which these examples are being used, which is that these people are experts and they ere convinced by the evidence, then we can see that these examples should be taken with a grain of salt.

Both of these people are experts in their respective fields, which are Cosmology in the case of Sandage, and various areas of Philosophy for Flew. Neither of these two men appear to have relevant expertise in the area of science they cite to support their conversion claims. This means that these are NOT examples of experts that were converted by the evidence. Their conversion stories should be given no greater weight than that of Joe Bloggs down the road who read a book on biology and came to the same conclusion.

The examples which should be produced are those where someone was convinced by the evidence in their field of expertise that a God or Gods exists. I can think of a single example of this - Edwards Feser - who states that he was convinced to convert to Catholicism by the Cosmological Argument (the Thomistic rather than Kalam variant).

In contrast to this, I suspect there are a vast number of people who were convinced to become Deists or Agnostics or Atheists while studying to become experts in their field, especially considering the inverse correlation between increased education and religious belief.

I would love to hear about more examples of experts who were convinced by the evidence in their field to become theistic.

Is God the only basis for objective morality?

Just a couple of quick references to critiques of Divine Command metaethics (DCM), which show that there can be other objective foundations for morality, and that basing morality upon God isn't successful.

In "In defense of non-natural, non-theistic moral realism", Erik Wielenberg argues that there are ethical brute facts which supervene on "states of affairs". Wielenberg notes that DCM proponents find these sorts of "freely floating" ethical facts to be weird, and then points out that these people are also committed to these "strange" ethical brute facts:

• P1) Part of the definition of God is the statement "God is Good"
• P3) "God exists" is a brute fact
• P4) From P2, "God is Good" is a brute fact
• P5) "God is Good" is an ethical statement
• C) from P4 & P5, "God is Good" is an ethical brute fact

In "A sematic attack on Divine Command Theory", Stephen Maitzen argues that Divine Command Metaethics is either vacuous, or false, starting from the uncontroversial DCM statement "For any agent x, x is morally good because, and only to the extent to which, x wills what God wills": true

P1) The statement "God is Good" is not religiously trivial P2) Every tautology (eg. "Good is Good", "God is God") is religiously trivial P3) If 2 statements have the same meaning, then one is a tautology only if both are P4) According to DCM, "X is Good" has the same meaning as "X wills what God wills" P5) From P4, the statement "God is Good" has the same meaning as "God wills what God wills" P6) "God wills what God wills" is a tautology P7) From P3, P4, P%, according to DCM "God is Good" is a tautology P8) From P2, P7, according to DCM, "God is Good" is religiously trivial P9) From P1, P8, DCM is incompatible with traditional theism P10) From P9, if traditional theism is true, DCM is false P11) If moral nihilism is false and DCM is true, then traditional theism is true P12) From P11, if traditional theism is false, then moral nihilism is true or DCM is false P13) From P12, if traditional theism is false, then DCM is true only if moral nihilism is true P14) Traditional theism is true, or traditional theism is false C) From P10, P13, P14, DCM is true only if moral nihilism is true

Read the papers themselves for more detailed arguments and justifications of the claims.