Renata said:*cringe* Sorry, sanabas, but you need to do a little more reading yourself! The second law of thermodynamics is in fact universal. You're probably thinking of the distinction drawn between open and closed systems, but it doesn't work the way you say it does. What it boils down to in practice is that you can't ever get an increase in "organization" in a system unless you put more energy into it. With a closed system (no energy or mass in or out), increases in order are therefore prohibited. But the earth isn't a closed system; it gets energy from the sun. So the argument against increases in organization doesn't work. (In the universe as a whole (counting the earth *and* the sun), "organization" does have to decrease.)
The really pathetic thing about this stupid argument, though, is that you don't need to resort to thermodynamics to disprove it. Just look around. Increases in order are everywhere. Are creationists prepared to deny the condensation of water vapor to make more-organized liquid water? Deny the creation of snow from atmospheric water? Or of diamond from carbon under pressure?
It's all just smoke and mirrors.
(Increase in "order" or "organization" is a very bad approximation of the meaning of "decrease in entropy" in any case, but that's irrelevent to debunking the argument.)
OK, I shall wander off and do some more reading then, sounds like I may have put my foot firmly in my mouth.
Before I start my reading though, I have a couple of questions: I thought that the 2nd law didn't take into account gravitational effects. If it doesn't, that would make it an approximation, wouldn't it? Does it account for gravity?
As above, but this time for collisions of 3 molecules at once. I thought that makes things too complicated, 3-way collisions are rare enough to be ignored, and only looking at collisions between 2 is accurate enough. Is that not the case?