Laws preventing evolution resurfaces

The San Antonio Bible Based Sciences Association (SABBSA) "has been around for more than a decade with a membership which includes an astrophysicist, teachers, medical doctors, a college biology teacher, computer programmers, civil engineers and many other degreed professionals with varied technical backgrounds."

I just read a letter on mysanantonio.com stating the above, where SABBSA charge that

We stand ready to go to any venue you invite us to, and can present several hours of scientific evidence which supports creation. Included in these will be the fact that evolution violates the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, as well as the Law of Biogenesis.

Not that falsifying evolution would be evidence of creation, but forget that for a moment.

Apparently, neither the astrophysicist nor any of their other "degreed professionals" understand evolution and thermodynamics at the same time. It really should be enough to understand the physics... The second law of thermodynamics is explicitly stated for an isolated system, i.e. a system that does not interact with it's surroundings in any way (contrast witha closed system, which can exchange energy but not matter). It should be clear to most that Earth, and thus life on it, is not an isolated system. We get bundles of energy from the sun, and therefore there is no violation of the second law of thermodynamics in the case of living organisms evolving, and increasing in complexity.

The law of biogenesis is an observation that life does not arise from non-life. It is not a law that states that this should be impossible in principle, in contrast with for example the second law of thermodynamics, which states that as a matter of principle, "heat generally cannot spontaneously flow from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature." Thus, abiogenesis - the origin of life - isn't rendered impossible by the law of biogenesis.

Both claims are perfectly common among creationists. And they are both embarrassingly false. That abiogenesis and some other instances of evolving complexity has yet to be explained in details is true, but the arguments that thermodynamics and the law of biogenesis should prevent these in principle, I guess just because they are stated as "laws", stems from an incorrect understanding of both.

SABBSA also objects that it is incorrect that

evolution above all other scientific theories has neither weaknesses nor points of debate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Science is a field constantly in a state of flux.

That is indeed true as stated. However, when their objections are that the weaknesses and points of debate is the second law of thermodynamics or the law of biogenesis, then their statement falls flat to the ground.

Please don't think you have understood everything we have learned about evolution in the last 150 years just because you have read Evolution for Dummies. One of the core elements of evolutionary theory is easy to understand (natural selection), but it doesn't follow that the rest is as excrement from a baby calf.