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Author Topic:   The Sex Life of 747 Aircraft
NosyNed
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Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 1 of 84 (407946)
06-29-2007 11:41 AM


I'm proposing this topic so it can be referred to anytime anyone brings up the 747 in a junkyard strawman (or any other arguments like Paley's watch).
This particular one was triggered by:
apoligize for the response i made earlier. I was a little harsh and mainly it was due to reading most of these threads about people being closed mind thinking. By that i mean i saw most people defend evolution(evilution) with a death wish but refuse to look at other theories with same intensity(creation theory for example)and was wondering why would you?. There is a better chance in a tornado for 747 to be created from an airplane wrecking yard than for any of these theories to exist. But anyways your wright i'm probably in the wrong area for this discussion. Sorry.
I'll present a short comment on what is wrong with this argument and then a slightly longer one.
1) 747's don't f**k!
2) The analogy is a complete straw man if it is intended to be an argument against evolutionary theory because it doesn't represent in any way what evolutionary theory is saying.
It suggests that evolution is a random process and this isn't true. The analogy leaves out the mechanism of natural selection. It is wonderfully ironic when a poster puts "but refuse to look at other theories" and this strawman in the same paragraph. (The poster may be disappointed to discover that most of the "evilutionists" here have studied his theories more than he has.
I'd suggest that any poster wanting to use this argument explain why they think it applies and then we can discuss it further here.

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AdminPD
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Message 2 of 84 (407947)
06-29-2007 11:45 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 3 of 84 (407954)
06-29-2007 12:18 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by NosyNed
06-29-2007 11:41 AM


Basic misconceptions
You are right. I imagine that every "evilutionist" has a far better knowledge of Biblical Creationism than any of the Biblical Creationists. Not only have we looked at it, but it has been rejected by all but the Christian Communion of Bobble-heads.
To quote what Christian Clergy think about the subject, they say:
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God’s loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris.
Not only is Biblical Creationism bad science, it is even worse theology.
Edited by jar, : appalin spallin

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 4 of 84 (407960)
06-29-2007 12:37 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by NosyNed
06-29-2007 11:41 AM


I have a different take on the "tornado in a junkyard" analogy:
Suppose we line up a million people outside the junkyard and let each one in for an hour at a time, to do whatever he wants. Even if none of them knows how to put a 747 together, certain parts will fit naturally with certain other parts.
Under those circumstances, what are the odds that the result will be a 747?

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This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 5 of 84 (407967)
06-29-2007 12:58 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by NosyNed
06-29-2007 11:41 AM


Everytime I hear people say something like this...
quote:
There is a better chance in a tornado for 747 to be created from an airplane wrecking yard than for any of these theories to exist.
I always want to ask for the mathematics behind the calculations of the "chance" or "probability".

Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

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Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 6 of 84 (407968)
06-29-2007 1:18 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by ringo
06-29-2007 12:37 PM


Ringo writes:
Suppose we line up a million people outside the junkyard and let each one in for an hour at a time, to do whatever he wants. Even if none of them knows how to put a 747 together, certain parts will fit naturally with certain other parts.
Under those circumstances, what are the odds that the result will be a 747?
If you're trying to change this analogy to something more analogous to evolution, you're still missing natural selection. All you have now are random mutations.
Suppose we have a million people lined up ready to do whatever he wants in the junkyard. But then, there also is a team of highly skilled engineers, each one knowing a 747 inside and out. Whenever someone does something that would bring the piece of junk further from a 747, the team of engineer would stab the person from behind and change the piece of junk to its previous state.
But then if you look carefully, you will see that even this analogy is faulty in that the whole thing is aiming toward getting a 747, implying a direction. Evolution is not directional.
Ok, let me take another stab at this. Suppose we have a junkyard with a kazillion people lined up outside ready to go in and do whatever they want, each at a time. Suppose we are on an island where the island will have a giant earthquake and sink to the bottom of the ocean in a few decades, so everyone has to find a way to get off the island. Therefore, naturally, the pieces of "stuff" that result from the juryriggings will be selected for their ability to take people off the island.
There will undoubtedly be pieces that will float, acting like a raft or canoe. Then, there will be bigger and more stable pieces that resemble small boats. Someone will undoubtedly stumble into making an engine for the boats. In a few years, or a few decades, we there would be some people coming up with ideas to create something that will glide in the wind. Then after many trials and deaths, someone will realize that the vehicles needed some kind of propulsion system that creates thrust. After some more trials and deaths, there will be someone or some people being able to build a proper engine to propel the aircraft.
So now, we all kinds of different types of aircrafts and all kinds of different types of boats and other floating things, all with the purpose of taking people off the island before it sinks to oblivion.
What about the natural selection, you ask? Well, all those land vehicles that people will undoubtedly make will be thrown away because they do no good to bring people off the island. In fact, I'd imagine that the bicycles never had a chance, therefore no motorcycles will ever be built.
If you think about it some more, there will undoubtedly be very creative ideas to get off the island like having a personal floatation device and using your own legs as propelers. These people will represent the worms and rodents in our ecosystems. The boats represent larger creatures, like dinosaurs and later on mammals. The airplanes represent the creatures that could fly, like some dinosaurs and birds. The will to get off the island represents survival.

Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 7 of 84 (407976)
06-29-2007 1:53 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Taz
06-29-2007 1:18 PM


Tazmanian Devil writes:
If you're trying to change this analogy to something more analogous to evolution, you're still missing natural selection.
You take a lot of words to miss a point, don't you?
My only point was that some parts will fit "naturally" together and that assemblies will "naturally" grow. (I guess I'm thinking of abiogenesis more than evolution.) A tornado in a goo-pond would have prevented life from forming too.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 8 of 84 (407982)
06-29-2007 2:57 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by ringo
06-29-2007 1:53 PM


Several years ago, I offered a similar response, which I unfortunately cannot locate at the moment. That's a pity, since I thought it was brilliant, though presenting it to the creationist with whom I was corresponding was casting pearls before swine.
Basically I suggested an experiment in which we toss some parts into a coffee can, put the lid back on it, and shake it vigorously for a long time. What we get from that experiment is deaf, not an assembled mechanism. The reason is that the assembly of mechanical parts doesn't work that way, so of course they didn't get assembled.
But on the other hand, if you follow Sidney Fox's experiments with proteinoid microspheres and pour amino acids into a solution and heat them, then they will assemble themselves into short protein-like chains. The reason is that they do work that way.
But the fundamental problem with the tornado-in-a-junkyard analogy is that it doesn't apply. I took the time to look it up in the source, Fred Hoyle's book. He was applying a single-step selection model, not the cumulative selection model of evolution (refer to beginning of Chapter 3 in Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker"). He had set up the problem entirely wrong. He may have indeed been describing the probably of a tornado assemblying a 747, but he most certainly was saying nothing about the probabilities of evolution nor of abiogenesis.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 9 of 84 (407989)
06-29-2007 4:59 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by NosyNed
06-29-2007 11:41 AM


NosyNed writes:
1) 747's don't f**k!
Right, they reproduce asexually!
One of the most puzzling things about the "tornado in a junkyard" analogy is that it was first offered by Fred Hoyle, who more than knew better a thousand times over. What was he thinking? Bothers me every time I think about it.
The proper analogy to evolution would be tornados that tear through thousands of junkyards, and then those resulting scrap heaps which most resemble a 747, no matter how incipiently, are kept and placed in new junkyards for tornados to tear through. This process is repeated thousands of times. You still wouldn't end up with an actual 747, seems wildly unlikely especially since a tornado is totally unlike natural selection, but it's a better analogy.
--Percy

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Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 84 (407992)
06-29-2007 5:23 PM


Let's also remember that there was no preprogrammed plan to make humans during the evolutionary history of life on earth. The evolution of humans is like a single person winning the lottery; it is very unlikely that humans would have evolved (and if Gould is right, it is very unlikely that anything remotely like humans would have evolved), but something was going to evolve, and humans are one of the lucky species.
So the analogy suffers from the additional fallacy of specifying a particular result (a 747) from the start.

Q: If science doesn't know where this comes from, then couldn't it be God's doing?
A: The only difference between that kind of thinking and the stereotype of the savage who thinks the Great White Hunter is a God because he doesn't know how the hunter's cigarette lighter works is that the savage has an excuse for his ignorance. -- jhuger

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 11 of 84 (407996)
06-29-2007 6:05 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Chiroptera
06-29-2007 5:23 PM


Example:
You're playing poker and you are dealt a hand of five cards. What was the probability that you would have been dealt that one particular hand? We can calculate that probability and it is very small, hence very improbable.
But what is the probability that you would have been dealt a hand? Barring some event that would have interrupted the game or removed you from the game (eg, somebody poisoned your martini), that probability would be 100%, a dead certainty.

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Grizz
Member (Idle past 5471 days)
Posts: 318
Joined: 06-08-2007


Message 12 of 84 (408004)
06-29-2007 7:28 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by dwise1
06-29-2007 6:05 PM


Hi Ned,
The 747 argument originally put forth by Fred Hoyle was based on the the calculations he used to deduce the probability of the various chemical pathways and molecular machinery neccesary to create a cell arrising spontaneously through natural process.
Currently we lack any substantial knowledge of the prebiotic conditions that existed to really arrive at any such calculation of probability. Hoyles figures were based on assumptions about those conditions. Our speculations about such things as the RNA world or mineral synthesis ect realy offer nothing about specifics. We can just guess at what compounds or configuarions existed at the time. We may never know. Your guess is as good as mine.

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Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 13 of 84 (408007)
06-29-2007 8:24 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Percy
06-29-2007 4:59 PM


Percy writes:
The proper analogy to evolution would be tornados that tear through thousands of junkyards, and then those resulting scrap heaps which most resemble a 747, no matter how incipiently, are kept and placed in new junkyards for tornados to tear through. This process is repeated thousands of times. You still wouldn't end up with an actual 747, seems wildly unlikely especially since a tornado is totally unlike natural selection, but it's a better analogy.
I somewhat get a little nervous everytime I see this analogy comes up and the preceding changes in the analogy.
What I mean is the presupposition of the analogy is faulty simply because it implies that that evolution has some kind of direction. The analogy is based on the presuposition that there is some cosmic aim for the tornado to produce a 747. And to a layman who isn't familiar with evolution, this leads to the misinterpretation that evolution somehow has some kind of cosmic aim to produce higher lifeforms, or that a sentient being like human is the ultimate goal.

Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

This message is a reply to:
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Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 14 of 84 (408008)
06-29-2007 8:31 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Grizz
06-29-2007 7:28 PM


Grizz writes:
The 747 argument originally put forth by Fred Hoyle was based on the the calculations he used to deduce the probability of the various chemical pathways and molecular machinery neccesary to create a cell arrising spontaneously through natural process.
Currently we lack any substantial knowledge of the prebiotic conditions that existed to really arrive at any such calculation of probability. Hoyles figures were based on assumptions about those conditions. Our speculations about such things as the RNA world or mineral synthesis ect realy offer nothing about specifics. We can just guess at what compounds or configuarions existed at the time. We may never know. Your guess is as good as mine.
In later years after the initial urey miller experiment, scientists have been able to produce in laboratory condition "pre-cells" that have primitive metabolic processes. The only thing these self contained bags of organic molecules were the ability to reproduce themselves.
These experiments were done in a course of only a few weeks. It doesn't take that much imagination to think that a billion years time could potentially give some carbon base molecules to assemble themselves in such a way that would produce self contained bags of stuff with lipid bilayers with the ability to reproduce themselves via mitosis.

Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Grizz, posted 06-29-2007 7:28 PM Grizz has not replied

  
Taz
Member (Idle past 3291 days)
Posts: 5069
From: Zerus
Joined: 07-18-2006


Message 15 of 84 (408009)
06-29-2007 8:36 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by dwise1
06-29-2007 6:05 PM


dwise1 writes:
You're playing poker and you are dealt a hand of five cards. What was the probability that you would have been dealt that one particular hand? We can calculate that probability and it is very small, hence very improbable.
But what is the probability that you would have been dealt a hand? Barring some event that would have interrupted the game or removed you from the game (eg, somebody poisoned your martini), that probability would be 100%, a dead certainty.
Haha, this reminds me of an example I once heard from a teacher. He was trying to tell me something, but I totally took it the wrong way.
Anyway, the example is this. Just imagine the probability that the current you ended up being you. Out of the millions of sperm cells trying to get the egg cell in your mother, what was the probility that the one sperm cell containing just the exact genetic combination for the current you would make it to the egg and be the first to fertilize it? And yet, you are here now. Since the probability was so small, I'd have to conclude that you don't really exist
Added by edit.
Oops, I just realized I have posted more messages in this thread than the rest of you combined... almost anyway. I'll shut up now.
Edited by Tazmanian Devil, : No reason given.

Disclaimer:
Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.
He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by dwise1, posted 06-29-2007 6:05 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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