Given:
All scientific laws and theories must be compatible. Two scientific theories that are incompatible mean that one is incorrect.
This article compares these theories:
- The theory of evolution and
- The first law of thermodynamics
Definitions:
The theory of evolution is not just about biological evolution. It is about cosmic, chemical, stellar, organic, vertical, and horizontal evolutions. See Summary of the Theory of Evolution here.
The First law of Thermodynamics is an adaptation of the law of conservation of energy.
This law states that the change in the internal energy of a closed system is equal to the amount of heat supplied to the system minus the amount of work done by the system on its surroundings.
In simpler terms, energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be moved around and converted from one form to another.
The heat engine is the most common and practical application of this law. Heat engines are things such as car engines, air conditioner, heat pumps, and any other mechanical system that has energy and work moving back and forth.
Discussion:
Understand that “thermo” means heat and “dynamic” means flow, a little thermodynamic theory if you please. A thermodynamic system can be classified as being either 1) open, 2) closed, or 3) isolated.
- Open system – Open thermodynamic systems exchange energy and matter with surroundings. Example: My wife boils her cooking wine down to syrup and this is called reduction. The reduction process is trying to get rid of matter which goes into the surroundings.
- Closed system – Closed thermodynamic systems exchanges energy but not matter with surroundings. Example: Your air conditioner is a system that does not want to lose matter (Freon).
- Isolated system – Isolated thermodynamic systems do not exchange energy or matter with surrounds. Example: My Yeti mug is about as close to an isolated system as one can get. The ice and beverage that I “loaded” in it remain the same for a long time. However, my Yeti still loses energy to the surroundings, so there is no pure isolated system because the 2nd law of thermodynamics (Entropy) is alive and well in our universe (click here).
In thermodynamics there are two types of energy; heat and work. Heat is the spontaneous flow of energy which we feel on sunny days usually due to temperature difference. Work is any other flow of energy in and out of a system that is non-spontaneous. Work usually has an agent that does the work such as a piston in an engine or your body lifting weights.
In summary, a thermodynamic system has energy regardless of open, closed or isolated. That system’s internal energy goes up if work or heat is added to the system. That systems internal energy goes down if work or heart is taken out of the system.
With the above thermodynamic theory out of the way, heat and work are different forms of “moving energy”. Thermodynamics is the science that helps engineers calculate heat and work.
You can see our sun with concentrated heat energy of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface and you can see Uranus with a very chilly minus 371 degrees Fahrenheit. The sun has heat energy; Uranus has very little heat energy (-460 F is absolute zero)
Question:
The universe is a closed system; a collection of matter and energy that does not have interaction with anything outside itself. While this statement is debatable at a philosophical level (click here to read one article in Quora) we know of nothing outside our universe adding or subtracting energy.
The question that Darwin did not ask and maybe did not think of, is now present as evolutionist push Darwin’s theory of evolution to its beginning. Setting aside the question posed by the Law of Conservation of Energy; how did the universe, with all of its matter and energy, begin? This law challenges evolutionary scientists by asking:
“Given a uniform explosion or expansion from one point at a given temperature, how heat energy accumulated in some regions and not in other regions?”
This is a very interesting question because to do work, heat energy has to transfer from a hot source to a cooler source. And visa versa. To transfer heat from one location to another something or someone has to do work. Imagine the amount of electricity a power plant could generate transferring heat from our sun (hot) to Uranus (cold).
Assuming a neutral energy universe beginning, who, what or how did the heat energy get moved from Uranus and concentrated in the sun? (Yes, I know there is a cosmological, stellar, and chemical evolution answer to this that we address in the Summary of the Theory of Evolution here.)
Conflict:
Evolutionary scientist claims that the universe had a beginning which seems to be a very reasonable conclusion from the evidence. That “beginning” event “loaded” different heat energy locations (hot sun and cold Uranus).
Given that two non-compatible scientific theories can both be correct, how does this prove that the theory of evolution is a failed theory and should be discarded? Science has a conflict:
- The First Law of Thermodynamics and the Theory of Evolution are in direct conflict.
Conclusion:
The First Law of Thermodynamics remains. Is Evolution a Theory? The Theory of Evolution is rejected as it is scientifically, logically and rationally incompatible.
Harry’s Engineering Logic Check:
Ask yourself how did our nearly unimaginable and massive energized universe get its energy separated into such hot and cold regions? Or does magic still happen?