Junkyard tornado
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The junkyard tornado, sometimes known as Hoyle's fallacy, is an argument against
Hoyle's fallacy contradicts many well-established and widely tested principles in the field of evolutionary biology.[6] 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[7] rather than by random chance, over a long period of time.[8] 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
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?[1]: 105
Hoyle used this to argue in favor of panspermia, that the origin of life on Earth was from preexisting life in space.[10]
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.[4][11] 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.[4]
Sometimes, arguments invoking the junkyard tornado analogy also invoke the
The calculation of the probability ignores natural selection and falsely assumes that there is discrete uniform distribution.[12] The junkyard tornado is also applied to cellular biochemistry. This is comparable to the older
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.
- 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.
- They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.
- They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.
- They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.
- They underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences.[2]
The junkyard tornado argument is rejected by evolutionary biologists as based on false assumptions,
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,[13] 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,[13] an argument that philosopher Alvin Plantinga criticised by questioning Dawkins' contention that God is necessarily complex.[14]
See also
- Infinite monkey theorem
- Irreducible complexity
- Law of truly large numbers
- Objections to evolution
- Watchmaker analogy
- Weasel program
References
- ^ ISBN 9780030700835.
- ^ a b c d e f Musgrave, Ian (December 21, 1998). "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations". TalkOrigins Archive.
- New York Times.
- ^ .
- ^ Cicero. De Natura Deorum 2.37
- 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).
- ^ Osterloff, Emily (2018). "What is natural selection?". Natural History Museum, London. Retrieved May 5, 2023.
- ^ Appleton, Sarah; Willis, Margot (August 2, 2022). "Natural Selection". education.nationalgeographic.org. National Geographic Society. Retrieved May 5, 2023.
- J.M. Dent & Sons.
- ISBN 978-9401058629.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 978-1-108-82044-8.
- ^ ISBN 9780593055489.
- ^ Plantinga, Alvin (2007). "The Dawkins Confusion – Naturalism ad absurdum". Books & Culture: A Christian Review. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
External links
- "A memorable misunderstanding" Fred Hoyle's Boeing-story in the Evolution/Creation literature by Gert Korthof
- Evolution Encyclopedia Vol. 1 Chapter 10 Appendix Part 2 Archived 2016-08-20 at the Wayback Machine Contains a number of Hoyle quotations on evolution.