Evidence for God from Science

Stu wrote: No you misunderstand his argument and undermine his position through a quote-mine. The actual sentence unfolds like so:

Of course the whole idea of compensation, whether by distant or nearby events, makes no sense logically: an extremely improbable event is not rendered less improbable simply by the occurrence of ‘‘compensating’’ events elsewhere. According to this reasoning, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room are rusting into scrap metal—and the door is open. (Or the thermal entropy in the next room is increasing, though I am not sure how fast it has to increase to compensate computer construction!)

Provides a whole new perspective in context.

So in essence Sewell is not suggesting the principle is wrong, rather he is saying the principle has been incorrectly applied to evolution.

Let's backtrack a bit.

Please explain the first sentence you quoted above.
I parse it as: "the whole idea of compensation, whether by distant or nearby events, makes no sense logically". That is, the very idea of compensation, which is that an increase in entropy (or decrease in "order") in one place can make up for a decrease in entropy elsewhere (whether close by or far away) is invalid.
The second part of the sentence "an extremely improbable event is not rendered less improbable simply by the occurrence of ‘‘compensating’’ events elsewhere" merely restates the first part, in Dr Sewell's argument. [Of course, i think it is totally unrelated and misapplied.]

How else can this sentence be interpreted?


Two brief questions:

What happens to the entropy (or order) when a hot cup of coffee cools? Why?

How does one determine the entropy of a clean and messy rooms?