[It's easy with ice. You freeze it and it crystalizes. You freeze it some more, and there it sits. Still Ice. Doesn't matter how much more you freeze it, you still have ice.
Same goes for the iron rusting business. Iron and oxygen lock in with each other and become pretty well useless. That's why we try to prevent rust. I know we can break up the bond, but I'm not aware of natural ways for it to just up and happen. Neither will rust evolve into something useful if you leave it setting around long enough.
Iron has been shown to have the bond broken in hot forest fires (rusty nails and such becoming pools of molten iron) and near volcanic activity.
I may have some self-educating to get around to. It's my understanding that these examples actually represent higher entropy / lower complexity states; but I don't understand this well enough to explain it. I admit that to the layman things could appear more complex, but the pros know better. Basically that's why they lock up tight.
I don't understand the "lock up tight" comment unless it is about the fact that rust requires energy input to break apart. You are right about the lower energy level of compounds that spontaneously combine. Snowflakes and rust are at lower energy levels (they release energy to reach that state) but they are still more complex. Some living compounds are at a lower energy level than the surrounding chemicals but they are more complex.
I'll try to start anyhow. Ice is a solid. And it's also a crystal. It's molecules are all locked together, just like they're designed to do. You can't combine it with anything unless you melt it. That's the direction you need to go to make it into something more complex. So water at least has some potential, where ice does not. Now which is the road to complexity, ice or water?
But take that water and combine it with iron. Another dead end! It's locked up and there it'll set 'til doomsday. I saw some evolutionist propaganda on TV claiming some rusty hills had been that way since oxygen first became available. Like 3B years. Even they don't seem to expect rust to evolve.
No it won't "evolve" or change to something else, unless it receives an energy input (heat) or gets in contact with another compound that would cause it to move to an even lower energy state. Sulfur might come in contact with it and form FeS and H2SO4(if it rained on it), both may have lower energy states than the rust.
Part of the confusion is caused by the snowflake being a very poor choice. You'd do well to part company with your fellows on this one. Snowflakes are ice, and structural complexity hasn't got anything to do with chemical complexity. You can end up arguing apples & oranges.
Another reason it's a bad choice is because it's too obvious that it's not going to evolve - ever. How long has there been ice all over Antarctica? Any sign of it evolving? Zip!
Ah! So the emphasis is on chemical complexity!! I thought you were saying that complexity itself could not occur naturally. That's why I chose the snowflake. Besides, change of state (liquid to solid) is a change of chemistry. I guess that's not the chemistry you were interested in talking about.
On the flip side, life has both chemical complexity and structural complexity going on within the cell. Confusing detail, that one. And you had enough obstacles already...
Plastics have structural complexity because of their chemical complexity. They are related very closely. The same with cells (I assume you are talking about cells).
Looking at cells, there are extremely complex things going on in there. However, each step is a chemical reaction. The compound either loses energy, transferring it to something else, or gains energy, taking it from something else.
These are questions I would expect anti-abiogenesists to explore in order to support their theory that God made life in it's final form instantaneously.
My, don't you just shun that burden of proof! The abiogenesis crowd is making the crazy claim that life arose from a random natural process. They up & made that claim after it was well known that life does not arise from non-life. Now they'd made it in the past & got slam-dunked, but they didn't learn their lesson. This time, they need to produce.
Louis Pasteur's experiment was not about producing life in the way abiogenesis is. It was about determining if complex life forms (maggots...etc) arise from dead meat.
Besides, life comes from nonlife all the time....look at flowers. They take in nutrients from the soil and carbondioxide and sunlight. Voila! they add cells and grow, adding life to their being! Maybe that is not abiogenesis either.
Now chemistry ain't my bag. It's fascinating, but too much memorization. And I'm confident they already know most of the ways atoms bond, and the limitations. Bonds are bonds, after all. Things that are bound can't up & do as they please. I'd say those bonds are probably the very mechanism you're asking me to provide, but I'd have to investigate some more before I could be firm about it.
And besides, if nature could manufacture anything better in the way of complexity, why are you guys always bringing up snow?
I'm sure I could find stuff much more complex arising naturally. I'll work on it but it may take a bit.
