"A. A violent disorder is order and / B. A great disorder is an order. These / Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations)."

Life is a localized, low-entropy system far from equilibrium and if life can be said to have a purpose, then that purpose would be to deny entropy.

Very imprecise, and therefore deficient. Living things, by definition, reduce their entropy at the expense of their environment. Entropy still, and always, tends to a maximum. A living entity is thermodynamically a mechanism for achieving a localized reduction in entropy, at the cost of an even greater increase in entropy for the system overall. The second law still holds and always holds.

Actually, the second law guarantees no such thing.

Actually, it does.

You will notice the crucial qualification that the second law applies to isolated systems.

Meaningless. As you yourself point out, there is no such thing as a perfectly isolated system, and the second law guarantees that as well, as does Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You're suggesting the second law could break down when considering a non-isolated system, which cannot be true because there is no such thing, among other reasons. The second law is always valid. That's precisely what makes it a law. The only exception refers to the localized reduction in entropy achieved by living entities: the second law still holds in the context of the living entity and it's environment, which cannot be treated separately.

Were I to be in equilibrium with my surroundings, I'd be water, carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, and a handful of minerals flavored with salt.

Which in fact you are: an organized system containing water, carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, and a handful of minerals flavored with salt, itself a mineral. Think about it.

Equilibrium is a relative thing. Conditions are never permanent, and therefore equilibrium is also never permanent. Which in no way discredits the concept of equilibrium, or, for that matter, balance. The definition of equilibrium does not require equilibrium conditions to be permanent.

I counted two pieces of misinformation and two logical fallacies in your argument. Frankly, I don't need the exercise, and I'm uninterested in technical arguments which can only properly be made with mathematics.

Whether or not there is balance in nature, maximum biodiversity seems like a good thing for humanity to shoot for. My favorite book of the past several years, the very practical and enjoyable "Bringing Nature Home" by the ecologist Douglass Tallamy, offers a recipe for how we as individuals can help bring back biological diversity to U.S residential spaces. In in my view the book is on par with Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac in terms of it's potentially positive impacts on American wildlife conservation. Basically it amounts encouraging gardeners to plant certain native trees and shrubs to promote biological diversity in ever-expanding residential spaces, something many of us can do. I've been doing some things like that in my own yard, and can already see some positive results. For example, for the first time in the 10 years I have lived at my home, a female Ruby-throated hummingbird has come to frequent my yard during the nesting season. I have not located the nest, but apparently my yard is offering some choice hummer real estate.

I realize that species come and go, that our planet can support life whether we are here or not. Yet as individuals and societies we can make choices that either sustain or destroy species' populations. As a matter of human responsibility, we should choose to try our best to pass along lots of fruit on the biodiversity tree to future generations.

Salon--This is the kind of article I really like to see. It's much more along the lines of what I view as vital news and opinion that is not usually to be found in the mainstream media.

Global warming is a hoax. The evidence is coming out now, in torrents, that it is just a gimmick to tax people and make more money. The subtleties and complexities of trying to understand ecology, evolution, and life systems are indicative of the views and rhetoric on global warming. Most people who support and condone the global warming agenda talk nonsense, and do not understand evolution, biodiversity, geology, the Earth’s history. “Global warming” is a mythological universe unto itself.

These subtleties and complexities are also windows onto our own ignorance. You see how easily mysticism and spirituality creeps in. Our understanding of ecology and evolution is part of our understanding of nature, which is where philosophy and religion began – it is man’s quest to understand himself, the universe, and God. They are all tied together.

Man is removed from nature. This is the basis of our quest to find God. We are different, and we realized this eons ago, and we sought to understand what it means. Now, with our “advanced” technology, such as medicine, we have removed ourselves even more from Nature. You want balance in a population? Try starvation and disease. You want Man to be part of nature? Stop letting those with child appendicitis live to procreate. We are interfering with evolution, so we are by definition removing ourselves from the natural equation of balance/harmony/what-have-you.

On the contrary - if there were no Creator, then whence that which is acted upon by evolution?

Look at what you're doing here. You go as far as you can with evidence and reason and then conclude by saying "and then something magical happens".

It doesn't work. You're invalidating your otherwise valid inquiry and denying the possibility of additional inquiry for no good reason.

Invoking supernatural causes does little more than allow you to avoid admitting the limitations in your facts and your logic. Worse, you're relieving yourself of any responsibility to try to overcome your limitations. You would be far better off saying that you simply do not know, avoid the fig leaf, and keep looking.

Resort to deities is dishonest and unnecessary. And more than a little foolish.

This is absolutely false. I am not denying anyone, myself included, from the possibility of additional inquiry. Inquiry into what?(1)

I am not avoiding admitting the limitations of my facts and my logic. Science proceeds from the assumption that there are things we do not know.

I am not relieving myself of the responsibility to try to overcome my limitations.

You are projecting things on me which are not there. See my footnote above – (1) – To what am I inquiring, when I inquire?

Has science stopped with the Big Bang? Do you have an answer, or did something magical just happen? Because science has not yet answered the question “what came before?” does not mean science is invoking the supernatural. Similarly, because I attribute all existence to a Creator, does not mean that I do not wish to explore and learn of His creation.

Your views on religion’s views of science seem to be a parroting of the Zionist media. There is no logical contradiction between science and religion. There is no paradox to believe in a Creator and to embrace science as an exploration of His creation.

The world is alive, but you think it dead. The current Liberal/Humanist agenda wants a dead world. I think it was said best here. This is dialogue from the movie Little Big Man, where Grandfather, a Cheyenne chief, is telling about the White Man. “Human Beings” is what the Cheyenne called themselves in the movie.

Little Big Man: Hello, Grandfather.

Grandfather: Greetings, my son. Do you want to eat?

Little Big Man: Grandfather? What happened to your neck?

Grandfather: It's a wound. It cut the tunnel through which light travels to the heart.

Little Big Man: You're... You mean you're blind?

Grandfather: Oh, no. My eyes still see. But my heart no longer receives it.

Little Big Man: How did it happen?

Grandfather: White men.

Little Big Man: - Where's Buffalo Wallow Woman?

Grandfather: Rubbed out. And White Elk Woman, too, and Dirt On The Nose, and High Wolf…and many others.

Little Big Man: - And Burns Red?

Grandfather: Yes.

Little Big Man: Burns Red In The Sun?

Grandfather: Rubbed out.His wife, his children. And many more.

Little Big Man: Do you hate them? Do you hate the white men now?

Grandfather: Do you see this fine thing? (Holds up a scalp) Do you admire the humanity of it? Because the Human Beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals, but also water, earth, stone…and also the things from them, like that hair. The man from whom this hair came, he's bald on the other side, because I now own his scalp. That is the way things are! But the white men, they believe everything is dead. Stone, Earth, animals, and people, even their own people! If things keep trying to live, white men will rub them out. That is the difference.

And that is how I feel about the Liberal/Secular/Humanist agenda. They live in a dead world. They want a dead world. And they are replacing God with Gaia, a new paganism. They still don’t get it. They do asinine things, like try to make boats out of plastic bottles; they do stupid things, like manufacture and mass-market green-dyed magazines and trinkets, creating entire new worlds of useless crap to be sold and marketed and thrown in the trash; they say stupid things, like “We will destroy all life on Earth,” or “We will destroy the planet.” They are blind, because they live in a dead world.