Professor Andy McIntosh, an expert in thermodynamics, has provoked the ire of Professor Richard Dawkins by highlighting the thermodynamic problems which must have been overcome if the living world has come about by undirected natural processes.

An exchange between them started in a live debate on BBC Northern Ireland's Sunday Sequence on 10 December. When the subject of thermodynamics was brought up by Professor McIntosh, Professor Dawkins immediate response was to launch a personal attack. In the last few minutes of the programme he heeded the protests of the studio audience and started a scientific response. But at this stage there was not time for either side to develop the argument.

The debate has been continued by Richard Dawkins in the Guardian letters column and his personal website. Andy McIntosh has replied on the Sunday Sequence blog (also reproduced here with commentary). The heart of the problem, according to Prof McIntosh is this:

The principles of thermodynamics even in open systems do not allow a new function using raised free energy levels to be achieved without new machinery. And new machines are not made by simply adding energy to existing machines.

And this thesis is falsifiable. If anyone was to take an existing chemical machine and produce a different chemical machine which was not there before (either as a sub-part or latently coded for in the DNA template) then this argument would have been falsified.

Tomorrow, between 8.30 and 9.00am Professor McIntosh will describe the issue in more detail during a reappearance on the BBC Northern Ireland Sunday Sequence.

Note added 8 Jan: On the programme (linked above) Professor McIntosh stated:

"My whole point is this: that without information in a system for a machine you cannot form a machine. Without machines already there you cannot form a machine: that's the abiogenesis problem. Even after that, more complex machines cannot be made from simpler machines."