Why Is There More Than Mist?
This is for those people who believe that the second law of thermodynamics rules out the possibility of life and evolution. Let’s consider for a moment the implications of this naïve view of entropy, and see the most profound examples that show how wrongheaded it is.
Entropy
The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases. Entropy is a measure of disorder of things. Thus things always move from ordered to disordered. Always.
Ordered things are organized. They are bunched together in ways that are not that probably. Disorder is everything broken apart. Drop a glass and the pieces go flying: entropy has increased. The resulting spread of glass shards is obviously more disorganized than the original one-piece glass. It is a statistical measure: there are simply so many more ways for something to be broken, than for it to be not broken.
This argument is then used to defend the idea that the offspring of a living organism could never be organized to any greater degree than the parents. Evolution, which is widely recognized as generating more and more elaborately organized things over time seems to go against the idea of increasing entropy. “It can’t happen” says the naïve thermodynamicist.
The Universe
Imagine the big bang. The entire mass of the universe in a point too small to see. Very very hot. As it spreads rapidly, and the energy of the universe starts condensing into leptons which dominate the universe for about 9 seconds, and after that photons condense out of the energy of the universe.
This one perfect point source of energy spreads out in a spray of photons and other tiny particles in a way that would put any spray can to shame. The energy is literally too hot for there to be any nuclei, and every more so too hot for any atoms. For the next few thousand years it is a spray of subatomic particle. Eventually things cool enough for atoms to form.
Remember, entropy always increases. Imagine an aerosol spray of atoms streaming across the universe. The naïve view of entropy says that those atoms should continue to just spread out. From a mist of atoms, they would just spread out in space, and get thinner and thinner and thinner. Nothing but a fine dusting of atoms spread out.
But that is not what happens. Instead, something very surprising happens, the atoms start clumping together. The atoms (mostly hydrogen) start grouping together, and they form stars.
You may not think of stars as being particularly organized, but they are tightly compacted matter compared to the space around them. Instead of an evenly spread out mist, gravity has acted in a way to bring atoms together to a point of space which had nothing there before. The force of gravity lights the fire of fusion, and to then organize protons into helium, lithium, beryllium and heavier types of nuclei. All by itself.
The Mistake
The mistake of the naïve thermodynamicist is thinking that increasing of entropy means that everything will be spread out evenly. While it is absolutely true that entropy of the universe has always constantly increased, it did not do so evenly. Some parts of the universe get more organized, while other parts get a lot less organized.
Stars don’t just form once, but they explode, spread material across space, and that will eventually re-coalesce into a new star. The process happens over and over again. The element of iron and higher and only happen in the extreme violence of a nova or super nova explosion of a star. The fact that the Earth has plenty of iron tells us that all the atoms on Earth used to be deep within a star, long long ago. There is a cycle that causes stars to form, explode, and re-form again.
If the naïve interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics was true, then everything would decay. Stars would not form, but they would fall apart and evaporate and never form again. The universe would be a completely disorganized ball of very very thin mist.
Self-Organization
The true magic of the universe is that things don’t just decay. There are any number of processes that actually build up organization over time. Not only do stars form by themselves, but galaxies form. Solar systems form. Planets such as the Earth form.
The material of Earth was collected together by gravity, but realize that there was nothing “here” before all the material of the Earth simply got together. The atmosphere is lighter and stays on the outside edge, and then amazingly clouds, thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other weather automatically form all on their own. Water evaporates, precipitates, and rivers form all on their own.
Why then should we be surprised, that self-replicating molecules would form? Once there were primitive life forms, why would it be surprising that life would get more and more complex all on its own? Evolution is just one more example of self-organization that we see around us.
Does the second law of thermodynamics prevent any of this self-organization? Absolutely not. Understand that is most of these systems energy arrives in a lower entropy form, and flows through the system, generally emitting higher entropy radiation. The entropy inequality is satisfied, but still, things get organized all on their own in the middle of the flow of energy.
Final Thoughts
We live on the edge of chaos, in a very thin line between the solid rock below our feet, and the empty space above our heads. This is a very special place, bathed in (low entropy) energy from the sun, and proving the right conditions for evolution to run over and over and over, creating higher and higher organization over time, and radiating (higher entropy) energy back out to space. This may be non-intuitive, but it is reality. Self-organization is all around us, and any inability to see it, is due to a faulty intuition. Nobody ever promised you that the universe would be intuitive.
Questions and Answers
Order comes from God
That does not explain why the laws that allow those patterns exist at all. You assume order can come from mindless matter, yet you rely on those same laws to argue. So if not God, what actually produces the order and reason that make anything, including your ‘self-forming’ phenomena possible?
The "laws" you talk about are descriptive, not proscriptive. These laws (named at a time when people did not realize this) are simple observed patterns.
A simple example: all planets are spherical. You could view this as something that God declared to be true, and somehow the planets comply with this law so they don't go to jail. Reality is that no other shape works, and so we observe that all planets are spheres, but there is no demand from God to that effect.
It is certainly possible that there are "brute facts" about the world. Why is gravity weak compared to electric force. I am perfectly willing to say that a God merely specified those.
But still, from the chaotic swirling of matter comes stars that form all by themselves. Order actually does form all on its own.
You can, if you wish, declare that God made a universe that puts itself into order. I am not going to argue against that, but that is different than saying the God manually puts everything in order. Snowflakes put themselves into order all by themselves, and the order simply emerges from the process that grows the snowflake. Order comes automatically from chaos. All the time.
What about Capital Punishment, Warfare, Abortion?
The same test can be applied to all of these: does the tribe that says these are acceptable survive better than one that prohibits them.
Such a test in real life may take centuries.
We can not isolate one moral rule from the others so it might be impossible to tell which rule caused a particular tribe to fail.
So we have to treat the morals all together. A tribe holds a set of morals to be true, and then that tribe either survives or it doesn't. Other tribe how different combinations, and again it is survival that says whether they are right.
So it is HARD to determine what is and is not objectively moral, but that does not mean that objective morality does not exist. Cultures are selected to survive based on whether their morals are 'true".
Occasionally societies appear with bad morals, like the Nazis, but they died out because their morals were bad. So did the communists. The fact that they died out is evidence (maybe proof) that their morals were "wrong".
A moral rule can be wrong. With subjective morality, no moral rule can ever be wrong: what you think is right is right. But morality is objective because tribes and cultures survive or die based on their moral rules.
Here is the deal: I am saying that there is fundamentally an objective aspect to what is and is not moral, and that is determined ultimately by survivability. But it may take thousands of generations to actually determine whether a particular action is good or bad.
I am saying that there exists a moral evaluation for all actions in the context of those actions, but I am not saying we definitely KNOW what that is. I know that is disappointing. We have to discover morality in the same way we discover scientific facts about the world.
The fact that I cannot tell you whether capital punishment is moral or not does not say that it is morally ambivalent. None of us are omniscient.
Subjective morality means that whatever Bob says is moral, is actually moral (for him). That is: morality is defined by the claimant, and can never be wrong. Because it is entirely subjective.
But if you think that Bob can be wrong, then it means that you recognize there is an objective morality to compare Bob subjective claim. If Bob says murder is "good" we can say he is wrong, but we can only do so BECAUSE morals are not subjective.
Must come from a Lawgiver
Objective morality requires rules coming from outside self. That’s the definition. That means it must come from an external lawgiver.
I agree it has to come from outside humanity.
There are several ways that these rules could come outside of humanity without being a lawgiver. For example, the rule "don't jump off a high cliff" does not need to be stated by a lawgiver, but in fact it is a guideline that humans know instinctively (fear of heights) because those that didn't know this died long ago.
Natural selection can select for tribes and cultures with the right morality, because the ones with poor morality die out.
Of course, I gave you an easy one, but consider "don't marry your close family member". Same thing happens the tribe dies out. Or "don't kill other members of the tribe" because the same thing: the tribe dies out if you don't have this moral. Or "don't steal someone else's property" because the same thing: the tribe dies out if you don't have this moral.
No lawgiver needed.
Is it really about survivability?
You're placing too much emphasis on the survivability of a Society as evidence of Objective Morality.
Yes, that is precisely what I am doing. The only purpose of morality is as it relates to the survivability of the tribe or culture holding those morals. Morality is how we get along together. Don't murder. Don't steal. Don't sleep with a family member. Don't lie. Don't cheat on your spouse. Don't harm others unnecessarily. Don't be lazy. These are all rules that enhance the tribal fitness.
Only atheists can be moral
It’s worth pointing out that people who think their moral claims are objective are dangerous people. Those kinds of people fly planes into buildings and picket abortion clinics. They act with the delusion of divine authority. They think the creator of the universe agrees with their moral beliefs. Only atheists can be moral in this sense, because only atheists know that their moral convictions are their own, formed by only two factors, DNA and environment. Only atheists know that people with different moral opinions have those opinions as a result of the same factors from their own circumstances. Only atheists can therefore be truly tolerant of those with different views. Only atheists are capable of rational forgiveness and reasoned, genuine embrace of diversity.
That is a good point.
You are saying that only a moral skeptic can actually take responsibility for their morals.
People who believe that morals are specified in detail by an external agent, revealed by a prophet, and then written reliably in a book are dangerous for a number of reasons. They accept the morals as delivered to them, and act upon them, without questioning, without thinking. Merely the accepting what others say to do as being inherently moral allow those others to manipulate the believer to do unspeakably evil things. People who accept (external) moral guidance as absolute, have absolutely no chance to resist manipulation.
We are all somewhere between these extremes. Nobody can do the moral calculus on every situation -- it is too complex. So we all take moral advice from others, and we all have probably been fooled at one time. But the more skeptical you are about the advice, the better chance you will do the right thing.