Does DNA evidence support or detract from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

Question

Dr. Bob -- thank you for the candor.

Ironically, you backed into proving my point, while trying to say my question was off.

Our gene pool is deteriorating. Entropy is observable in DNA.

Any more help with this?

Secretsauce -- Why is there "Junk DNA"? The idea expressed in the Bible is that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics only came into effect after the first Man disobeyed the Creator.

This is the "Sin" that we committed against creation, and that plagues us to this day. Our earth is getting old and worn out. People are becoming weaker. Organisms are breaking down slowly. The Sun is shrinking.

Johnmcn49 -- Look who is talking. Have you read some of these ridiculous posts? "Look, order, symmetry, design, it proves that Chaos produced it!"

These are incredibly unscientific answers. Entropy is working overtime on you.

Standing Firm -- Quite a few people on here must not understand basic scientific principals then. For someone so "Open minded" you seem pretty sure of yourself.

Is a question fruitless if it gets people to think, instead of remaining in their blindness and ignorance?

Answer 1

The behavior of DNA suggests that the laws of thermodynamics are not all-encompassing and due for an overhaul, or at least shows that they only apply to non-living systems...I am not a Theist, but the idea that all systems tend to become less organized over time seems a bit ludicrous in the light of genetic and technological advancement.

Living systems do indeed seem to contradict the second law.

And while our gene pool and culture may now be degrading, our technology is still becoming more organized and complex...

Answer 2

DNA evidence has nothing to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The system in which DNA operates (the orgamism) is not a closed system. The 2nd law of thermodynamics only states that entropy will not decrease in a closed system. The cell, the organism, heck, even the biosphere are not considered closed systems. They are always requiring energy input.

Not that it matters anyway...order and disorder do not always necessarily correspond with increases and decreases of entropy.

EDIT: >>"The idea expressed in the Bible is that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics only came into effect after the first Man disobeyed the Creator. "

Which passage is this from? I've read the Bible a couple of times, and I don't remember it talking about the second law of thermodynamics...

EDIT: >>"People are becoming weaker. Organisms are breaking down slowly."

Where is your evidence for this?

EDIT: >>"The Sun is shrinking."

So...what's the point? If your going to say that the sun shrinking is evidence that Earth is less than 5 billion years old, you would be very naive. Just because it is shrinking now is not evidence that it has been shrinking forever. And there is a great deal more evidence that is showing the sun expanding.

Answer 3

Every reaction involving DNA supports the 2nd law, as do all chemical reactions. Remember that the relevant quantity for reactions under constant pressure (which is a very good approximation for living things) is the Gibbs free energy, not the entropy. The reason is that the enthalpy change of a system corresponds to an entropy change in the environment.

The upshot is that when there is an addition of energy into a system, it is possible for the entropy of that system to decrease even though the Gibbs free energy also decreases.

Answer 4

I'm afraid that Dr. Bob is quite mistaken.

"Living systems do indeed seem to contradict the second law."

In a word, nonsense.

A living system does not contradict the second law any more than a refrigerator violates the second law by making icecubes.
How does a refrigerator do it? By expenditure energy.
How does a living system develop from zygote to adult? By expenditure of energy.
How does a species evolve more complex features? By expenditure of energy.

The 2nd Law simply does not apply whenever you can identify an external source of energy. The production of that energy invariably *increases* entropy someplace else in the universe, so a local *decrease* in entropy is absolutely possible ... as long as the *net* entropy of the system (the local system + the external energy source) increases, there is no violation of the 2nd Law.

But back to the original question:

> "Our gene pool is deteriorating. Entropy is observable in DNA."

While I would disagree with the first statement (you need some foundation to say that our gene pool is "deteriorating" ... whatever that means) I would probably agree with the second statement. Our DNA is full of "junk DNA", which we could imagine a form of accumulation of entropy (if you consider the collective genome of a species over time as a thermodynamic system). We could, through extraordinary expenditure of energy "clean up" the DNA ... remove the junk. In a sense, the mental energy we humans expend understanding and mapping genomes is part of that energy expenditure. But there is no natural process in nature for doing this cleanup ... although there is error checking, there is no process that I know of for cleaning up errors, or deleting obsolete genes, that have passed through this error checking because they were harmless errors. That's why we show signs of these obsolete genes in our own development (like gill slits, webbed fingers, and tails during phases of embryonic development ... features temporarily expressed, and then deleted).

If anything, the very presence of entropy in our DNA (junk DNA, and undeleted obsolete features) is absolutely evidence in favor of evolution. An "Intelligent Designer" has no reason to introduce entropy into a design ... entropy is a tell-tale sign of trial-and-error ... each error can leave entropy. The fact that the genomes contains so much accumulated junk (so much accumulated entropy) ... and the fact that the genomes of different organisms share much of the *same* junk DNA ... is evidence that this genome has existed and has been accumulating changes (and entropy) for very long process of trial-and-error over a very very very long time!

{edit}

You missed the point completely about junk DNA. If junk DNA didn't start accumulating until after the fall of Adam, why would chimps and humans have accumulated many of the *same* chunks of junk DNA? And why would we have more junk DNA in common with chimps than with gorillas? Or why would goats and camels share chunks of DNA that horses don't have. And so on. These patterns of shared DNA (both junk DNA and genetic DNA) trace out patterns of shared ancestry throughout the animal kingdom ... in fact throughout all life forms on the planet ... to the point where a piece of DNA can be shown to have entered before or after a split in the phylogenetic tree. Neither Intelligent Design nor the Fall-of-Adam Theory of Thermodynamics, explains any of this. Evolution explains *all* of it ... explains it perfectly.

Answer 5

Most people who ask this type of question do not understand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics or they would not ask such a senseless question. I will lump you and your question into that group.

There is not time nor space here to explain the Laws of Thermodynamics to you so that you could understand it. It deals with a closed system (like your mind).

In their vain search for their own importance, some people forget the scriptures such as in the first chapter of First Timothy: "For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions."

Answer 6

I don't see a direct connection between the two. The second law deals with entropy and warrants shifts toward equilibrium states in closed systems. I don't know of an obvious specific example that allows DNA evidence to affect the validity of the second law positively or negatively.

Answer 7

Neither.

The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

- Rudolf Clausius

In a general sense, the second law says that temperature differences between systems in contact with each other tend to even out and that work can be obtained from these non-equilibrium differences, but that loss of heat occurs, in the form of entropy, when work is done

Answer 8

Only as free radicals are concerned (among other environmental agents). Those rogue molecules seem to break down the cell, even reaching the DNA. If a block of ice that is melting is treated with cold tempuratures, it will cease melting and will freeze again. If the free radicals can be off-set (anti-oxidants), then the entrophy of the DNA and thus the body can averted.

Answer 9

The human gene pool is not "degrading." Like any other species, it reveals forensic evidence for the evolutionary process. The nucleobase errors which produced the gene mutations for microcephalin and ASPM within the last 40,000 years have added significantly to human intellectual growth.

Answer 10

I take it that you are referring to this: