Junkyard tornado

Last updated

The junkyard tornado, sometimes known as Hoyle's fallacy, is a fallacious argument formulated by Fred Hoyle against Earth-based abiogenesis and in favor of panspermia. The junkyard tornado argument has been taken out of its original context by theists to argue for intelligent design, and has since become a mainstay in the rejection of evolution by religious groups, even though Fred Hoyle declared himself an atheist, [1] and even though the junkyard tornado argument is considered a fallacy in its original context of Earth-based abiogenesis vs. panspermia.

Contents

The junkyard tornado argument uses a calculation of the probability of abiogenesis based on false assumptions, as comparable to "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein" and to compare the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cubes simultaneously. [2] [3] [4] [5] It was used originally by English astronomer Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) in his book The Intelligent Universe, where he tried to apply statistics to evolution and the origin of life. [2] Similar reasoning were advanced in Darwin's time, [3] and indeed as long ago as Cicero in classical antiquity. [6]

Hoyle's fallacy contradicts many well-established and widely tested principles in the field of evolutionary biology. [7] As the fallacy argues, the odds of the sudden construction of higher lifeforms are indeed improbable. However, what the junkyard tornado postulation fails to take into account is the vast amount of support that evolution proceeds in many smaller stages, each driven by natural selection [8] rather than by random chance, over a long period of time. [9] The Boeing 747 was not designed in a single unlikely burst of creativity, just as modern lifeforms were not constructed in one single unlikely event, as the junkyard tornado scenario suggests.

The theory of evolution has been studied and tested extensively by numerous researchers and scientists and is the most scientifically accurate explanation for the origins of complex life.

Hoyle's statement

According to Fred Hoyle's analysis, the probability of obtaining all of life's approximate 2000 enzymes in a random trial is about one-in-1040,000: [10]

Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

His junkyard analogy:

The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.

This echoes his stance, reported elsewhere:

Life as we know it is, among other things, dependent on at least 2000 different enzymes. How could the blind forces of the primal sea manage to put together the correct chemical elements to build enzymes? [2] : 105 

Hoyle used this to argue in favor of panspermia, that the origin of life on Earth was from preexisting life in space. [11]

History and reception

The junkyard tornado derives from arguments most popular in the 1920s, prior to the modern evolutionary synthesis, which are rejected by evolutionary biologists. [5] [12] A preliminary step is to establish that the phase space containing some biological entity (such as humans, working cells, or the eye) is enormous, something not contentious. The argument is then to infer from the huge size of the phase space that the probability that the entity could appear by chance is exceedingly low, ignoring the key process involved, natural selection. [5]

Sometimes, arguments invoking the junkyard tornado analogy also invoke the universal probability bound, which claims that highly improbable events do not occur. [3] It is refuted by the fact that if all possible outcomes of a natural process are highly improbable when taken individually, then one of the highly improbable outcomes is certain. The true law being referenced is actually the Strong Law of large numbers, but creationists have taken a simple statement made by Borel in books written late in his life concerning probability theory and called this statement Borel's Law.[ citation needed ]

The calculation of the probability ignores natural selection and falsely assumes that there is discrete uniform distribution. [13] The junkyard tornado is also applied to cellular biochemistry. This is comparable to the older infinite monkey theorem but instead of the works of William Shakespeare, the claim is that the probability that a protein molecule could achieve a functional sequence of amino acids is too low to be realised by chance alone. [3] [5] The argument conflates the difference between the complexity that arises from living organisms that are able to reproduce themselves (and as such may evolve under natural selection to become better adapted and perhaps more complex over time) with the complexity of inanimate objects, unable to pass on any reproductive changes (such as the multitude of manufactured parts in a Boeing 747). The comparison breaks down because of this important distinction.

According to Ian Musgrave in Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations:

These people, including Fred, have committed one or more of the following errors.

  1. They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.
  2. They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.
  3. They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.
  4. They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.
  5. They underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences. [3]

The junkyard tornado argument is rejected by evolutionary biologists as based on false assumptions, [5] since "no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step", as John Maynard Smith put it. [12] Evolutionary biology explains how complex cellular structures evolved by analysing the intermediate steps required for precellular life. It is these intermediate steps that are omitted in creationist arguments, which is the cause of their overestimating of the improbability of the entire process. [3]

Hoyle's argument is a mainstay of pseudosciences like creation science and intelligent design. Richard Dawkins described it as a fallacy in his book The God Delusion , [14] arguing that the existence of God, who under theistic uses of Hoyle's argument is implicitly responsible for the origin of life, defies probability far more than does the spontaneous origin of life even given Hoyle's assumptions. Dawkins describes God as the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, [14] an argument that philosopher Alvin Plantinga criticised by questioning Dawkins' contention that God is necessarily complex. [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Hoyle</span> English astronomer (1915–2001)

Sir Fred Hoyle (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory (a term coined by him on BBC Radio) in favor of the "steady-state model", and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth. He spent most of his working life at St John's College, Cambridge and served as the founding director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panspermia</span> Hypothesis on the interstellar spreading of primordial life

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms, known as directed panspermia. The theory argues that life did not originate on Earth, but instead evolved somewhere else and seeded life as we know it.

The teleological argument also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument, is a rational argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world, which looks designed, is evidence of an intelligent creator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Infinite monkey theorem</span> Counterintuitive result in probability

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. The theorem can be generalized to state that any sequence of events that has a non-zero probability of happening will almost certainly occur an infinite number of times, given an infinite amount of time or a universe that is infinite in size.

<i>The Blind Watchmaker</i> Book by Richard Dawkins

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins, in which the author presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his first book, The Selfish Gene. An unabridged audiobook edition was released in 2011, narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fine-tuned universe</span> Hypothesis about life in the universe

The characterization of the universe as finely tuned intends to explain why the known constants of nature, such as the electron charge, the gravitational constant, and the like, have their measured values rather than some other arbitrary values. According to the "fine-tuned universe" hypothesis, if these constants' values were too different from what they are, "life as we know it" could not exist. In practice, this hypothesis is formulated in terms of dimensionless physical constants.

The argument from poor design, also known as the dysteleological argument, is an argument against the assumption of the existence of a creator God, based on the reasoning that any omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity or deities would not create organisms with the perceived suboptimal designs that occur in nature.

<i>Climbing Mount Improbable</i> Book by Richard Dawkins

Climbing Mount Improbable is a 1996 popular science book by Richard Dawkins. The book is about probability and how it applies to the theory of evolution. It is designed to debunk claims by creationists about the probability of naturalistic mechanisms like natural selection.

Specified complexity is a creationist argument introduced by William Dembski, used by advocates to promote the pseudoscience of intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept can formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex, where in Dembski's terminology, a specified pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is one that is unlikely to occur by chance. An example cited by Dembski is a poker hand, where for example the repeated appearance of a royal flush will raise suspicion of cheating. Proponents of intelligent design use specified complexity as one of their two main arguments, along with irreducible complexity.

The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chandra Wickramasinghe</span> British astronomer (born 1939)

Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Sri Lankan-born British mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist of Sinhalese ethnicity. His research interests include the interstellar medium, infrared astronomy, light scattering theory, applications of solid-state physics to astronomy, the early Solar System, comets, astrochemistry, the origin of life and astrobiology. A student and collaborator of Fred Hoyle, the pair worked jointly for over 40 years as influential proponents of panspermia. In 1974 they proposed the hypothesis that some dust in interstellar space was largely organic, later proven to be correct.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weasel program</span>

The weasel program or Dawkins' weasel is a thought experiment and a variety of computer simulations illustrating it. Their aim is to demonstrate that the process that drives evolutionary systems—random variation combined with non-random cumulative selection—is different from pure chance.

The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument, an argument for the existence of God. In broad terms, the watchmaker analogy states that just as it is readily observed that a watch did not come to be accidentally or on its own but rather through the intentional handiwork of a skilled watchmaker, it is also readily observed that nature did not come to be accidentally or on its own but through the intentional handiwork of an intelligent designer. The watchmaker analogy originated in natural theology and is often used to argue for the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design. The analogy states that a design implies a designer, by an intelligent designer, i.e. a creator deity. The watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. The original analogy played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God of the universe, in both Christianity and Deism. Prior to Paley, however, Sir Isaac Newton, René Descartes, and others from the time of the Scientific Revolution had each believed "that the physical laws he [each] had uncovered revealed the mechanical perfection of the workings of the universe to be akin to a watch, wherein the watchmaker is God."

The Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit is a counter-argument to modern versions of the argument from design for the existence of God. It was introduced by Richard Dawkins in chapter 4 of his 2006 book The God Delusion, "Why there almost certainly is no God".

Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but eventually came to receive near-universal acceptance in the scientific community. The observation of evolutionary processes occurring has been uncontroversial among mainstream biologists since the 1940s.

<i>Growing Up in the Universe</i> 1991 television film

Growing Up in the Universe was a series of televised public lectures given by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins as part of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, in which he discussed the evolution of life in the universe. The lectures were first broadcast on the BBC in 1991, in the form of five one-hour episodes.

Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology is a 1970 book by Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod. Aimed at a general audience, the book describes the basic characteristics of life, reviews findings of modern biochemistry and molecular biology, and argues that life arose by blind chance guided by natural selection, could not have been predicted, and does not have a higher purpose. The author concludes that traditional philosophical or religious systems of value, explanation and meaning are untenable, and advocates for an "ethic of knowledge": committing to objectivity in the pursuit of knowledge.

<i>The Edge of Evolution</i> 2007 book by Michael Behe

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism is an intelligent design book by Discovery Institute fellow Michael Behe, published by the Free Press in 2007. Behe argues that while evolution can produce changes within species, there is a limit to the ability of evolution to generate diversity, and this limit is somewhere between species and orders. On this basis, he says that known evolutionary mechanisms cannot be responsible for all the observed diversification from the last universal ancestor and the intervention of an intelligent designer can adequately account for much of the diversity of life. It is Behe's second intelligent design book, his first being Darwin's Black Box.

<i>Why Evolution is True</i> Popular science book

Why Evolution is True is a popular science book by American biologist Jerry Coyne. It was published in 2009, dubbed "Darwin Year" as it marked the bicentennial of Charles Darwin and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection. Coyne examines the evidence for evolution, some of which was known to Darwin (biogeography) and some of which has emerged in recent years. The book was a New York Times bestseller, and reviewers praised the logic of Coyne's arguments and the clarity of his prose. It was reprinted as part of the Oxford Landmark Science series.

Directed panspermia is a type of panspermia that implies the deliberate transport of microorganisms into space to be used as introduced species on other astronomical objects.

References

  1. ↑ Gregory, Jane (2005). "Fighting for space" . Fred Hoyle's Universe. Oxford University Press. p.  143. ISBN   978-0191578465. According to Hoyle: "I am an atheist, but as far as blowing up the world in a nuclear war goes, I tell them not to worry."
  2. 1 2 3 Hoyle, Fred (1984). The Intelligent Universe. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN   9780030700835.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Musgrave, Ian (December 21, 1998). "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations". TalkOrigins Archive .
  4. ↑ Johnson, George (October 28, 2007). "Bright Scientists, Dim Notions". New York Times .
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Gatherer, Derek (2008). "Finite Universe of Discourse: The Systems Biology of Walter Elsasser (1904-1991)" (PDF). The Open Biology Journal . 1: 9–20. doi: 10.2174/1874196700801010009 .
  6. ↑ Cicero. De Natura Deorum 2.37
  7. ↑ National Academy of Sciences (US) (1999). "Evidence Supporting Biological Evolution". Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: National Academies Press (US).
  8. ↑ Osterloff, Emily (2018). "What is natural selection?". Natural History Museum, London . Retrieved May 5, 2023.
  9. ↑ Appleton, Sarah; Willis, Margot (August 2, 2022). "Natural Selection". education.nationalgeographic.org. National Geographic Society . Retrieved May 5, 2023.
  10. ↑ Hoyle, Fred; Wickramasinghe, N. Chandra (1981). Evolution from Space. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
  11. ↑ Hoyle, Fred; Wickramasinghe, N. Chandra (2000). Astronomical Origins of Life. Springer Publishing. ISBN   978-9401058629.
  12. 1 2 Maynard Smith, John (1986). The Problems of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 49. ISBN   0-19-289198-7. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.
  13. ↑ Rosenhouse, Jason (2022). The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism. Cambridge University Press. pp. 127–128. ISBN   978-1-108-82044-8.
  14. 1 2 Dawkins, Richard (2006). "The Ultimate Boeing 747". The God Delusion . Transworld Publishers. pp. 118–120. ISBN   9780593055489.
  15. ↑ Plantinga, Alvin (2007). "The Dawkins Confusion – Naturalism ad absurdum". Books & Culture: A Christian Review . Retrieved 7 July 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.