Claim CF002.1:
Order does not spontaneously form from disorder. A tornado passing
through a junkyard would never assemble a 747.
Source:
Hoyle, Fred, 1983. The Intelligent Universe. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, pp. 18-19.
Response:
- This claim is irrelevant to the theory of evolution itself, since
evolution does not occur via assembly from individual parts, but rather
via selective gradual modifications to existing structures. Order can
and does result from such evolutionary processes.
- Hoyle applied his analogy to abiogenesis, where it is more applicable.
However, the general principle behind it is wrong. Order arises
spontaneously from disorder all the time. The tornado itself is an
example of order arising spontaneously. Something as complicated as
people would not arise spontaneously from raw chemicals, but there is
no reason to believe that something as simple as a self-replicating
molecule could not form thus. From there, evolution can produce more
and more complexity.
created 2001-2-18
