How do Catholics respond to the law of entropy?

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I have a book for my Chemistry class which explains the concept of the “law of entropy”. I haven’t looked deeply into it (or the pages after, like Free Energy and Redox), but I’ve taken a glance. Essentially, entropy is a measure of disorder within a system. The book describes it’s fundamental idea as “the concept of entropy is that nature tends to move from order to disorder in isolated systems. For example, gas molecules spread out over time to fill a space, increasing their entropy over time”.

I’ve heard it said that the underlying principle of entropy is that in randomness, lies stability (the more random something is, the more stable it becomes).

Catholics often use the Teleological argument to assert that God exists. The teleological theory basically says that everything seems too perfect for it to have come out randomly, and there must have been a Creator behind it all, that being God. But if Chemistry says that in randomness lies stability, how then can the Teleological theory assert the existence of God, or God creating the universe/world, if everything is seemingly stable? Is there something I’m missing?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
I have a book for my Chemistry class which explains the concept of the “law of entropy”. I haven’t looked deeply into it (or the pages after, like Free Energy and Redox), but I’ve taken a glance. Essentially, entropy is a measure of disorder within a system. The book describes it’s fundamental idea as “the concept of entropy is that nature tends to move from order to disorder in isolated systems. For example, gas molecules spread out over time to fill a space, increasing their entropy over time”.

I’ve heard it said that the underlying principle of entropy is that in randomness, lies stability (the more random something is, the more stable it becomes).

Catholics often use the Teleological argument to assert that God exists. The teleological theory basically says that everything seems to perfect for it to have come out randomly, and there must have been a Creator behind it all, that being God. But if Chemistry says that in randomness lies stability, how then can the Teleological theory assert the existence of God, or God creating the universe/world, if everything is seemingly stable? Is there something I’m missing?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
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Entropy occurs within a framework of order and regularity. Your objection would only be valid if there were chaos - or the amount of randomness exceeded the amount of order!
 
Ah entropy was the bane of my high-school existence. I can’t calculate entropy or enthalpy or Gibb’s free energy to save my life. Anyway I digress.

As the previous poster has said, entropy functions within an order and within an isolated system. There are rules in entropy, it functions in a highly specific way. That’s why you can calculate it mathematically. It’s not just a random process. Chemistry is like that: there are rules that govern the way molecules behave.

I think you’ve taken a leap somewhere. Maybe look into it a bit more deeply and don’t just take the words of others as your understanding. To be honest, when I took Chemistry I can honestly say I saw God in the world.
 
PerfectTiming said:
Ah entropy was the bane of my high-school existence. I can’t calculate entropy or enthalpy or Gibb’s free energy to save my life. Anyway I digress.

As the previous poster has said, entropy functions within an order and within an isolated system. There are rules in entropy, it functions in a highly specific way. That’s why you can calculate it mathematically. It’s not just a random process. Chemistry is like that: there are rules that govern the way molecules behave.

I think you’ve taken a leap somewhere. Maybe look into it a bit more deeply and don’t just take the words of others as your understanding. To be honest, when I took Chemistry I can honestly say I saw God in the world.
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Oh, you did Chemistry A-Level :p?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
 
PerfectTiming said:
I think you’ve taken a leap somewhere. Maybe look into it a bit more deeply and don’t just take the words of others as your understanding. To be honest, when I took Chemistry I can honestly say I saw God in the world.
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Indeed:

“What then is that precious something contained in our food which keeps us from death? That is easily answered. Every process, event, happening - call it what you will; in a word, everything that is going on in Nature means an increase of the entropy of the part of the world where it is going on. Thus a living organism continually increases its entropy - or, as you may say, produces positive entropy - and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e. alive, by continually drawing from its environment negative entropy - which is something very positive as we shall immediately see. What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.”

//http://dieoff.org/page150.htm

The apparent conflict between life and entropy is yet more evidence for Design…
 
Entropy is usually [or should be] reserved for third year college thermodynamics. And it’s difficult enough for students in a rigorous science program.

High school chemistry should be reserved for the basics … the behavior of each element in the periodic table and your basic chemical reactions. boring.

But what you were getting is confused philosophy instead of chemistry.

Demand a tuition refund.

Here.

Read this.

It’s very good.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
 
PerfectTiming said:
As the previous poster has said, entropy functions within an order and within an isolated system. There are rules in entropy, it functions in a highly specific way. That’s why you can calculate it mathematically. It’s not just a random process. Chemistry is like that: there are rules that govern the way molecules behave.
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Random processes are perfectly calculable in statistical terms. Entropy is one such statistical property.

If I roll a dice once I cannot know the outcome. If I roll the dice six million times I know that I will get each value appearing close to one million times. I can also calculate probabilities for different values around one million: expected standard deviations and so forth. Randomness can lead to perfectly calculable results.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Random processes are perfectly calculable in statistical terms. Entropy is one such statistical property.

If I roll a dice once I cannot know the outcome. If I roll the dice six million times I know that I will get each value appearing close to one million times. I can also calculate probabilities for different values around one million: expected standard deviations and so forth. Randomness can lead to perfectly calculable results.

rossum
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Precisely! Randomness occurs within an intelligible framework of order.
 
rossum said:
Random processes are perfectly calculable in statistical terms. Entropy is one such statistical property.

If I roll a dice once I cannot know the outcome. If I roll the dice six million times I know that I will get each value appearing close to one million times. I can also calculate probabilities for different values around one million: expected standard deviations and so forth. Randomness can lead to perfectly calculable results.

rossum
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Not always.

That’s why they always hedge the statistical prediction with “limits”. +/- … that sort of thing.

And then you find out that the table is not on the level.

Or the die was not perfect.

The idea of the calculability of chaos appeals to some people. Which is why the great minds said it was in the area of turbulence.

They knew their limitations.

But today, we know better.

Until we learn, that they were right and we were wrong.
 
Did you ever wonder why some wag said that a butterfly’s wing flapping in Iowa could trigger a typhoon in Japan …
Code: 
 ... but not in Canada.
Because it is beyond highly theoretical.

Remember Wilson’s Theorem: “I don’t think so, Tim.”
 
The physics of butterfly wing aerodynamics and effects only applies for people who don’t actually know anything about aerodynamics.

Or butterfly wings.

[Musta been one heckofa butterfly that triggered Katrina!]

These people will believe anything.

Particularly if there is any alcohol involved.

Or cannabis.
 
If nature tends to move from order to disorder, how did it get ordered in the first place?
 
Monte_RCMS said:
The physics of butterfly wing aerodynamics and effects only applies for people who don’t actually know anything about aerodynamics.

Or butterfly wings.

[Musta been one heckofa butterfly that triggered Katrina!]

These people will believe anything.

Particularly if there is any alcohol involved.

Or cannabis.
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The real question is what causes the laws of aerodynamics to exist…
 
tonyrey said:
I’m delighted you’ve stopped protesting! 🙂
I apologise for elaborating on your question… :o
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wrong answer

you need to form a protest group, print up some picket signs, and stage a protest.
 
Some of you have inserted “Chaos Theory” or “Complexity Science” into the discussion. Interestingly, certain systems seem to “self-organize.” So, what might appear random has elements of repetition and organization–such as irregular coastlines as one zooms in and out, There are some interesting theological implications here. When I first began to consider this theory, I thought there were violatons of the thermodynamic “law” of entropy.
 
AugustV said:
Some of you have inserted “Chaos Theory” or “Complexity Science” into the discussion. Interestingly, certain systems seem to “self-organize.” So, what might appear random has elements of repetition and organization–such as irregular coastlines as one zooms in and out, There are some interesting theological implications here. When I first began to consider this theory, I thought there were violatons of the thermodynamic “law” of entropy.
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after about six months, that’s what my stack of mail looks like

especially the zooming part
 
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