Evolution Incorrectly Known as Darwinism Still Alive and Kicking

Since Charles Darwin published the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection in the 1850s, people of a religious bent everywhere have been trying to prove him wrong. Unfortunately, the people who do this make many scientific errors in order to justify their beliefs including misapplying the theories or ignoring the facts. A recent article on the front page of Associated content called The Death of Darwinism contains at least one common example of misusing the second law of thermodynamics.

Not only does the author apply the law incorrectly, he also misstates what the second law of thermodynamics is. For those who do not remember their high school physics, the second law of thermodynamics state that entropy generally increases. It does not have to do with the creation or preservation of energy as this author states. The second law actually states that energy systems have a tendency to increase their entropy. More simply, that in order to maintain order more energy has to be expended and converted into a unusable form: heat energy. Evolution does not violate this law, nor does it violate the first law the author quotes. Living system simply convert the energy from one form to another. The second law remains intact because living systems may temporarily increase internal order, but they need to convert the usable energy into an unusable form and contribute to the ultimate "heat death" of the universe this law predicts. It should be further noted is that entropy generally increases. The disorder in a system sometimes randomly generates order, although this is a much rarer event.

Many creationists when debating evolution will start their argument too early and start with the Big Bang. Whether or not they agree with the Big Bang, they need to understand something about it. The Big Bang Theory, predicted by Albert Einstein and which astronomer Edwin Hubble found proof of only tells us how the Universe began. It says nothing about the origin of life. Do not confuse the two theories. They are separate. The process that starts evolution comes along billions of years later and currently only concerns itself with life on this planet. The mere fact that we can see stars more than 6,000 years away from us confirms that the Earth is older than Creationists think, unless they believe, unlike Einstein that God does play dice with the universe.

The author of the above mentioned article also misapplies how mutations operate. Most mutations in fact cause absolutely no change to a living individual. The vast majority of genes in more complex species are inactive and not used. Of those that do, the vast majority will be harmful. Rarely does a beneficial gene change occur. Even so, it has to occur an animal that will reproduce. If it happens too late in the animals life, it will not benefit the species later on. A mutation is simply a copying error in the cloning process of DNA. It can be affected by certain types of radiation or it can just occur randomly. The DNA in most human goes through an average of three or four permanent changes per year.

Another creationist mistake when debating evolution is to misunderstand spontaneous generation. Cells arise only from living cells, true, but what about the first cell? From a scientific viewpoint, it had to be spontaneously generated. The mechanism by which this happened may have been divine or it may have been caused by aliens from outer space. Recent press release have scientist on record as saying "artificial life may be possible in a few years."

Calling it Darwinism or dismissing it simply because evolution disagrees with your religious view does not change the fact that creationism is simply not science. The fact that the theory has been modified over the years does not invalidate it, in fact, the tenets of Natural selection still remain and many religious scientist do not disagree with them. Below are the principles taken from the Biology Online website:

One of the prime motives for all species is to reproduce and survive, passing on the genetic information of the species from generation to generation. When species do this they tend to produce more offspring than the environment can support.

The lack of resources to nourish these individuals places pressure on the size of the species population, and the lack of resources
means increased competition and as a consequence, some organisms will not survive.

The organisms who die as a consequence of this competition were not totally random, Darwin found that those organisms more suited to their environment were
more likely to survive.

This resulted in the well known phrase survival of the fittest, where the organisms most suited to their environment had more chance of survival if the species falls upon hard times. (This phrase if often associated with Darwin, though on closer inspection Herbert Spencer puts the phrase in a more accurate historical context.)

Those organisms who are better suited to their environment exhibit desirable characteristics, which is a consequence of their genome being more suitable to begin with.
Note how new species arising are not actually part of the tenets, although that theory did come along later after his famous (or infamous) voyage on the HMS Beagle.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics#Second_law

http://www.edwinhubble.com/

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/mutationsanddisorders/genemutation

http://www.biology-online.org/2/10_natural_selection.htm