The tornado and the 747
I was recently taken to task for making reference to the fabled 747/tornado argument during a discussion of abiogenesis.
The comment read:
Please don't bring that old canard up. It's really beneath you. Anyone who thinks that is analogous to the way evolution (and these hypotheses of abiogenesis) works is only displaying a profound lack of understanding of the most basic concepts.
The above comment shows a profound lack of understanding of the origin of the argument, the context it was made in, and the point it sought to make. The original argument was that the chances that higher life forms could develop by chance were equivelent to the chances that a "tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein."
Sir Fred Hoyle said it. The general argument is accredited to several publications, but the earliest I could find was Nature magazine, issue 294, 1981. He expounded further in "The Intelligent Universe", 1983. He also brought the idea to full completion, including other similar examples, with the "Mathematics of Evolution."
And he was not a creationist. He was an atheist, and a respected astronomer, mathematician and theoretical physicist. As the name "Mathematics of Evolution" implies, he looked at evolution from a mathematical standpoint, and found it to be mathematically impossible. In comparing abiogenesis and a 747, he was not so much comparing the processes, but the mathematical probabilities that either could occur.
Interestingly enough, he was considered a lock for the Nobel prize until publishing his work critical of evolution. His coworker won the Nobel Prize in 1983 with no mention of Hoyle.
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Still beneath you
The original argument was that the chances that higher life forms could develop by chance were equivelent to the chances that a "tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein."
That's an accurate description of the argument, and it's ludicrous. First, no one has proposed that pure chance is responsible for the development of higher life forms.
The tornado scenario has a single possible target: a 747. The natural processes we're talking about don't have any single target, or any expected target at all. There may be many possible results that would produce a self-replicating system that leads to what we see today. As we've already agreed, no one really knows what the early earth was like. Without this information, probability calculations are meaningless.
If you're interested, here's a more in-depth treatment:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
he was considered a lock for the Nobel prize until publishing his work critical of evolution.
A lock? His exclusion did raise some eyebrows, but it may have been due to his controversial refusal to accept the Big Bang (preferring a steady state universe instead), or one of his other unorthodox claims, or there may have been (gasp!) a legitimate reason.
A lock? His exclusion did
A lock? His exclusion did raise some eyebrows, but it may have been due to his controversial refusal to accept the Big Bang (preferring a steady state universe instead), or one of his other unorthodox claims, or there may have been (gasp!) a legitimate reason.
Yah. I figured it may have had something to do with panspermia. :)
I'm definitely not a mathematician, so I won't speak to the validity of his findings. I will say that he and others more qualified than I have stated similar findings. I won't rest an entire case on an appeal to authority, though.
The point of the blog was the distinction between the process comparison you made and the actual comparison he did.
Other than that, I'll leave others to crunch the numbers.
No number crunching here, either
The point of the blog was the distinction between the process comparison you made and the actual comparison he did.
My point is simply that you can't make an accurate probablility statement without understanding the processes at work. The 747 analogy fails because it does not accurately represent the proposed processes.
Regarding the improbability...
... of standard naturalistic explanation for the origin of life.
The scientific community is slowly becoming more willing to admit their misgivings about the impossibility of life originating under the conditions required by the standard naturalistic model. Below is an article by famed origin of life researcher Eugene V. Koonin in which he appeals to the currently fashionable, highly speculative, and empirically ungrounded multiverse theory to support his idea of a Biological Big Bang. It seems that many scientists are unwilling (at least publicly) to let go of the crumbling theory of Darwinistic naturalism, regardless of the evidence against it, until some other God-denying alternative can be credibly embraced.
The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution
From the abstract: Major transitions in biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are hard to decipher and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that, following Darwin's original proposal, remains the dominant description of biological evolution.
Interesting article. I
Interesting article. I especially like the open peer-review, which is unsurprisingly biting. Koonin appears to be trying to marry abiogenesis with cosmology, but ends up with a bit too much philosophy and/or metaphysics.
I don't see this as a trend, more of an outlier. The fact that at least three of the four reviewers seemed unwilling to accept the hypothesis as legitimate science (and the fourth a little reluctant to rely on it), even though the conclusions would tend to exclude traditional religion, is reassuring.
The bottom line is that far too little is known to make definitive statements in this area. This cosmological hypothesis might strike some as an interesting avenue, but it is FAR from ever being granted theory status in the life sciences.
I agree
I'm pointing out that this man, who has invested a lifetime in origin of life studies, now has such low confidence in the status quo that he's willing to hitch his wagon to this star.
Tell me, exactly what areas
Tell me, exactly what areas of the naturalistic model are crumbling, and what evidence can you present against them? I have been hearing creationists say that the theory of evolution is dying for years, but when confronted, they can never give any specific evidence to back up their claims, leading me to believe that such assertations are just wishful thinking on their parts.
I can see the thought process of those who invent such ideas: "I believe evolution to be false, therefore it is false, therefore there must be evidence against it, scientists are constantly researching evolution, so they must be finding more and more of this evidence, thus their faith in evolutionary theory is becoming weaker."
The obvious problem with this line of thought is that it starts with the unfounded assumption that evolution is false (wishful thinking), then draws ideas from this assumption.
So many creationists fail to realize that reality doesn't care what their opinion is. Just because you whole-heartedly believe something to be true, doesn't make it true. To start with what you want to believe, and then seek to prove it is a logical fallacy, to reach the truth, one should look at the evidence with no bias as to what that evidence is going to support.
Furthermore, your claim that evolution is a "God-denying" theory is false. Sure many atheists use evolution to explain the existance of life, but it is likely that to these individuals, the non-existance of God is also wishful thinking. Evolution does not seek to deny God's existance, only that He/She was activily involved in the origin of life.
Whether or not there is a God is not something to be resolved with biochemistry, in fact it probably isn't something to be resolved at all. God's unwillingness to reveal Himself combined with His apparent command of our faith, and of course the everyday atrocities that could be effortlessly prevented with omnipotence, has lead me to suppose that if God does exist, then He is malevolent. Of course neither choice will alter the present reality, so I have no preference to either.
Tornado and 747
Good post. I would argue that the 747 is indeed a bad analogy of evolution because complexity in living organisms does not result through blind chance in one great event, but through many small, gradual events over successive generations. Evolution occurs through natural selection (which is the opposite of chance). The analogy is flawed because it does not adequately describe evolutionary theory at all. Hoyle might have been a brilliant astronomer, but didn't seem to understand how evolution works.
Hi Kevin, welcome...
Specifically, the original quote was directed to abiogenesis, before natural selection had a chance to take effect.
It was a comparison of mathematical probabilities and not necessarily a comparison of methodology. I'm not a mathematician, so can't speak to the math.
Again, welcome... And thanks for the input. I look forward to perusing your blog.