One of the things that all naturalistic processes have in common is they all result in an increase in entropy. For instance...evolution cannot happen unless total entropy increases.

That does not appear to be the case with the origin of the universe. In fact there is a very good reason to suspect that the creation of the universe involved moving from a state of higher entropy to a state of lower entropy.

So I ask you if the creation of the universe appears to be so different from observable naturalistic processes....is it correct to call it one?

This is a fairly obscure application of entropy. However, two things jump out at me. One is that the concept of entropy may not be applicable to the concept of the origin of the universe (another obscure concept). The other is that your first sentence only holds true for a closed system. The Earth does not increase in entropy, for instance, because it is not a closed system. It has a renewable source of energy: the Sun. It may well be possible that the origin of the universe itself was not a closed system.

I think there are very few people in the world, let alone this forum, that should be considering the origin of the universe.

Your assumption is pretty hand-wavy. We understand quite well how entropy works. Absent any information to the contrary, entropy is likely to be greater in the past than it is in the present. Graphically it looks like this:



Now there is a very good reason why observation does not match prediction, but that explaination ceases to be effective at a point near the big bang.

Again another hand wavy assumption.

Let me ask you this...suppose your sitting at the card table and the dealer opens a pack of obviously used cards. He spreads them out on the table face up. You noticed that the cards are perfectly ordered by rank and suit. Do you think they came out of the shuffleing machine that way or did some intelligence put order into what was formerly disorder?

Malcolm...participating in this forum....that is discussing creation et al....requires a little bit of sack.

What's the reason?

This may not hold 'before' the origin of the universe. And you are the one making an assumption, not I. I am merely suggesting possibilities. You do this a lot in your threads and it always makes you look silly.

I assume intelligence, why do you ask?

Another way of looking at the (thermodynamic) entropy of a system is as the lack of available information about its configuration. From this perspective also, the entropy of isolated systems is never observed to spontaneously decrease. Assuming a naturalistic origin for the closed system defined as the sum of all matter and energy forces us to make an exception to this otherwise universal rule.

The reason why more entropy is predicted in the past is that there are more ways something can be disordered than ordered. The pages of a book only have one order which is correct but there are many ways the pages could be ordered which would be incorrect. Thats the mathmatical explaination.

The past that we can observe has less entropy simply because the universe started out with very little entropy and we've been going thru a process of increasing entropy ever since. Think about it like this. Suppose Its 10:30 pm and your sitting in a bar and you have a glass in front of you which contains half melted ice cubes. Now our mathmatical models of entropy would predict that at 10:15pm those ice cubes were even more melted. The reason they arn't is the fact that at 10:00pm those ice cubes were fully formed(i.e. not melted at all) when the came out of the freezer. We know for a fact that at 10:00pm those ice cubes where in more ordered state.

Now we can say that about the universe, that its is fact that as we go back in time its in a more ordered/less entropy state. Our observations tell us that. However once we near the time of the big bang, we no longer have observation. All that we have is prediction...and if we rely upon the predicitions logic and reason give us, the conclusion is the creation of the universe involved moving from higher entropy to lower entropy.

Why then do you assume that the low state of entropy that existed at the begginning of the universe is the result of happenstance instead of intellect?

My physics was elementary, but it stretched to thermodynamics.

I think the prediction is that there is a beginning of the universe and that at time=0 it had the least amount of entropy. Not sure how this implies that in order to "get there" it used to be lower?

EDIT: To perhaps be clear. Your opening sentence: "The reason why more entropy is predicted in the past..." is all well and good, but the universe's creation wasn't in 'the past' - there wasn't any time when there wasn't any universe.

Bunny is clearly asking for a description of this prediction you mention in your last sentence.

I make no such assumption. I know nothing of the entropy state of the universe at its 'origin.' I do know something about how cards are usually spaded, though. See the difference?

Edit: I do make an assumption that this 'origin' is natural, though. But that is because all we ever find are natural explanations. I could wind up being wrong.

time=0 is merely a human convention because we have no model which predicts what was before the big bang. Its an error to say there was nothing before the big bang.

Krauss and Hawkings suggest the universe spontaneously arose from nothing(but they use a different diffinition for nothing). Now if we use are model of entropy to make a prediction about the how much entropy existed in that nothingness, the model suggest it would be a lot higher than the amount of entropy shortly after the big bang.

Agreed. It is an error to say that before the big bang means anything.
Are you sure you're not assuming that there was nothingness at some time and then there was a big bang? I didn't think Krauss or Hawkings would agree with that.

General question: Does the concept of entropy even apply to whatever caused (rather than "preceded" imo) the sum of all matter and energy?

This is kind of what I'm asking Stu Pidasso. I can't see how entropy makes sense if the universe doesn't exist.

Lets assume for a momement that once time=0 and before that nothing existed...Not the universe, not entropy, just nothingness. Then bam! out pops the universe in a state of remarkably low entropy. Now the universe is capable of existing at much higher states of entropy. In fact the number of high entropy states the universe can exist in vastly exceeds the number of low entropy states the universe can exist in. Why is it that it popped into existence in a remarkably low state of entropy?

Maybe I am misinterpeting Krauss and Hawkings but it seems to me that they are saying if you sum up all the energy it nets to 0. Meaning that eventually the positive engergy and negative energy end up cancelling each other out.

Are not Krauss and Hawkings suggesting that somehow...spontaneously the positive energy seperated from the negative energy in a manner that would allow work....and that event is what is known as the big bang? Isn't that just spontaneously moving from a state of high entropy to low entropy?

You've lost me. Can we equally assume that the universe used to have zero size and prior to that it was smaller?
I don't know if it's remarkable. Why is it so remarkable to begin where it did? It had to be something and it could have been much lower (especially if there's time "before the big bang" - presumably there can be negative entropy as well - so it's actually 'remarkably high' why not -1000 or -254?).

We need Max Raker for technical answers like this. My only point is that, if there's no time, there's no moving. Change can only occur during the universe's existence.

Although the universe clearly proceeds from low entropy to high entropy - the creation is a special event, you can't blithely extrapolate from ice cubes to the beginning of spacetime, matter and energy.

The mathematics would seem to suggest that if there time(or a before) before the big bang, the universe would have been in a much higher state of entropy. A historical graph of entropy would be like a U shaped curve with the big bang representing the bottom of the curve.

I would say dips like that in entropy are more likely to be the result of intelligence than happenstance.

Max is a little to arrogant. He is blinded by his atheism and doesn't look at things objectively imo.

I'd rather hear from David Steele, RLK or Jason1990.

You think Krauss and Hawkings would agree with that? I haven't read hawkings for years, but I'm sure he at least used to be of the view that 'before the big bang' is a nonsense.