Evolution in schools; legal trap (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 09, 2012, 11:23 (4528 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: I'm piggybacking on dhw here to also bring about a solid point from Giorbran:
Our concept of "order" and "disorder" as David is using it is completely wrong. There are two kids of order [ugh, naughty ones and well-behaved ones? Sorry!]: grouping, and symmetry. Entropy is the transformation of one kind of order to another. [...]
Chaos--what we "perceive" as disorder is the process we observe as one state shifts to another. This is what chaos theory describes.
So it is incorrect to state "order comes from disorder." There is ONLY order. Disorder in the sense we use it in common parlance, is a lie. -ROMANSH: I'd be careful here Matt, I don't think currently entropy is thought of as order (or decrease in order)...-I think I was the one who used "order" and David used "organization", but both of us were certainly thinking of a very particular kind of order, relating to the evolution of the universe and ultimately ourselves. The term "entropy" did not enter into our discussion, which concerns David's intelligent, conscious First Cause. In this context it makes little difference whether you argue that the universe is a new order emerging from old orders or order emerging from disorder. The question is whether our universe and our intelligence (i.e. this particular order) could have arisen by chance or not.
 
Having said that, I thoroughly endorse Romansh's more cautious approach. "Completely wrong", "a lie"...I don't know who you think lays down the law as to the correct or incorrect use of these terms, but common parlance is good enough for me. If some scientists are now saying that entropy is not disorder, that does not mean we can't use disorder in the conventional way. A jigsaw puzzle is initially a set of pieces scattered in disorderly fashion, and the object of the game is to put them in a certain order. You can take that as an analogy for the work of David's UI, who put all the pieces in an order enabling life. Atheists on the other hand believe that the disorderly pieces put themselves in this particular order by chance. You can insist if you like that there is no such thing as disorder, and the jigsaw pieces were already in order, but that will lead to confusion and not to understanding. Language is simply a tool for communication, and "common parlance" is an essential part of the process. Without the "common" element, you can't communicate.
 
MATT: I admit to not being a stellar communicator.-Ecce signum. But you do a great job keeping us all on our toes!