Schrodinger’s Paradox, Intelligent Design and the Origin of Life
🗓️ Start: 11 June 2025 10:30 am
⏳ End: 11 June 2025 12:00 pm
In 1943, the great Erwin Schrodinger gave a lecture in Dublin (where he’d fled from Nazi Germany), entitled ‘What is Life?’, in which he approached the question from a physicist’s standpoint. At today’s meeting, Claudio Elgueta (Abingdon u3a), will revisit that famous occasion, beginning with the paradox arising from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, specifically, how is it that life creates order in the world, when disorder – or entropy, as it’s known – should (if the Law is correct) be the result of every physical interaction in nature? Next he’ll explain various theories of the origins of life, divided into two main groups: panspermia (i.e. extraterrestrial) and endospermia (i.e. emerging from within). He’ll then expose the pseudo-scientific character of the theory of Intelligent Design, founded as it is on the flawed concept of ‘irreducible complexity’, and still popular in the US despite a humiliating defeat in the courts in 2005. Finally, he’ll explain Richard Dawkins’ concept of ‘Mount Improbable’ which – although we still can’t be sure exactly where life originally began – nevertheless provides a robust, evidence-based scientific explanation of how complex life evolved naturally from simple molecules.
https://u3acommunities.org/event/schrodingers-paradox-intelligent-design-and-the-origin-of-life/
