Argument from the second law of thermodynamics
Creationists often claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics (sometimes abbreviated 2LoT) precludes evolution (and/or the Big Bang). Often this is explained by saying that the second law says that everything tends toward disorder; since living beings (or the universe) is highly ordered, they could not have formed spontaneously.
From Thermodynamics vs. Evolutionism at trueorigin.org:
- "The second law presents an insurmountable problem to the concept of a natural, mechanistic process: (1) by which the physical universe could have formed spontaneously from nothing, and (2) by which biological life could have arisen and diversified (also spontaneously) from a non-living, inanimate world. (Both postulates form essential planks in the platform of evolutionary theory in general.)"
A.C. McIntosh, Information And Entropy – Top-down Or Bottom-up Development In Living Systems?, International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, Vol. 4, Issue 4:
- "Consequently, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics show that entropy reduction which can occur naturally in non-isolated systems is not a sufficient argument to explain the origin of either biological machinery or genetic information that is inextricably intertwined with it."
Entropy is not the same as disorder
The second law of thermodynamics does not say that everything tends toward disorder, but rather that entropy increases. While there are similarities between the scientific notion of entropy and the intuitive notion of disorder, there are differences as well. Thus, this argument represents a form of equivocation on the meaning of the word "disorder".