So, here's a question that Articulett asked:
Why is Deepak wrong when he says this:
"To say the DNA happened randomly is like saying that a hurricane could blow through a junk yard and produce a jet plane."
It’s tempting to say “nothing”, because there’s a certain degree of merit in the analogy. Most people here probably know that it was originally attributed to astronomer Fred Hoyle, and it concerned the problem of abiogenesis. The first replicator really did come together randomly, and if it had to be as complicated as DNA, it couldn’t have happened.
(You can read the talkorigins comments about the analogy here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF002_1.html)
Therefore, the first replicating molecule was not DNA, but something simpler. That’s one thing that’s wrong with Deepak’s analogy. He’s acting as if DNA was a starting point in the process. In reality, DNA was quite a few steps down the road.
I say “in reality”, but that’s probably a poor choice of words, because we have no clue what that road looked like. We just know that somehow, it happened, and it didn’t happen by throwing together a bunch of amino acids and pulling out DNA. That would be about as likely as pulling a jet plane out after a tornado passed through a junkyard.
So, how did it happen? Well, there must have been an initial replicating thing. It had to come together randomly, and then through gradual modifications, slowly turn into DNA. Selection must have played a role.
Most people familiar with this debate would say that the failure to recognize the role of selection was the problem with Deepak’s analogy. The standard line would be that DNA did not come together randomly. Some very simple replicating molecule came together randomly, and then through a combination of random variation and selection, it gradually, over many generations, evolved into DNA. It could not be randomness alone; it had to be randomness combined with selection.
Let’s try it out. We’ll clear up the error and correct the analogy.
“To say that DNA came together through a combination of random assembly, random variation, and natural selection is like saying you could assemble a jet plane by starting with some parts in a junkyard. Then, you select parts at random and put them together. If you like what they do, you keep them, and build more of them with the parts you find. Once in a while, you might make a mistake and put the wrong parts together, but you’ll find that it does something nice, so you keep that and start making some of the new assemblies, too. Before you know it, you’ll be winging down to Cancun on your new jet airliner!”
Notice that it doesn’t help much. We’ve removed the “random” problem, and we still have something that sounds like a creationist argument, and one that creationists would accept. We haven’t fundamentally changed the argument.
Certainly one problem with the argument is that it suggests that the complexity of the airplane couldn’t come about randomly. Most people would recognize that the error in that argument is that all of the complexity wouldn’t happen at once. A random process can in fact gradually grow complexity. However, I don’t think that Mr. Chopra’s error is dependent on the complexity of the plane. We can see that if we present an alternate version of the argument.
“To say the DNA happened randomly is like saying that a hurricane could blow through a junk yard and produce a mousetrap."
The argument doesn’t lose much of its appeal, despite the fact that we have substituted a very simple system for a very complex one. As evidence that it doesn’t lose much of its appeal, consider that mousetraps are creationist celebrities these days, ever since Behe (I think) used them as an example of an “irreducibly complex” system.
The mousetrap and the plane don’t share complexity, but they share something else. They share function. They share purpose. They are both created for a reason.
When a creationist looks at a living thing, and especially the components thereof, he sees something with a purpose. Whether it’s an eye, or a kidney, or a cell wall, or a flagellum, he sees something that is there for a purpose, and he doesn’t see how something with a purpose could develop from a process that has no purpose. The key feature of the “random” process of evolution that Choprah referred to is not the uniform distribution, or the range of the probabilities involved, but rather the purposeless nature of it.
I think that’s the key error made in that argument. They are asserting that pieces of us, of living things, have purpose, and that the living things couldn’t exist without purpose, and that this purposeless, i.e. random, process could not produce something with a purpose.
To defeat this argument, you would have to demonstrate either that something with a purpose could emerge from a process that had no purpose, or demonstrate that something that appears to have a purpose does not really have one in a meaningful sense of the word. In my opinion, the latter task is easier, and emphasizing the randomness of evolution makes that task easier, not more difficult.
All right, I addressed that one. If there's another one you would like me to address, feel free to let me know. I know you've mentioned quite a few already, but one at a time, please, if you really want to hear my answer. I'll have a few for you as we go on, but for now I'm content to answer, not ask.
