The chances of random design and the problem with absolute relativism

See website http://wasdarwinwrong.com/kortho46a.htm for original article by Gert Korthof
10 Oct 1999 (updated 19 Oct 2009) from which the following are taken:

 

Hoyle is definitely not ignored in the evolution literature. The following stories circulate in the literature: Panspermia, Hoyle's famous Boeing-747 story, his cosmological design argument and the Archaeopteryx forgery (1). In this overview I will focus on the Boeing-story:

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing-747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? (2).

The actual statement was originally in a radio lecture in 1982. It may have been a wild guess, but "A colleague of mine worked out that a yeast cell and a 777 airplane have the same number of parts, the same level of complexity" (3). (The Boeing 747-400 has 6 million parts). Hoyle uses the Boeing-747 argument to prove the impossibility of the natural origin of life.

Few writers about the origin of life fail to mention Hoyle's Boeing-747 analogy. However, Hoyle is absent from university textbooks on evolution. All creationists accept the Boeing-747 argument as a disproof of the natural origin of life, and evolutionists reject it as such. Yockey is the only writer who improves the argument. A definitive answer to the Boeing-747 argument is not yet possible. Just as Maxwell's demon has set a puzzle that is still not fully resolved. A convincing rebut is nothing less than the solution of the problem of the origin of life. As long as science doesn't have a satisfactory and complete theory of the origin of life, science cannot answer Hoyle's Boeing-argument.

 

Hoyle's Boeing-747 is an anti-spontaneous-origin-of-life-argument. The argument uses logic and probability. Hoyle did not publish the argument in scientific journals.

 

1. F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe(1986) Archaeopteryx, the Primordial Bird - a Case of Fossil Forgery, Christopher Davis. A detailed account can be found in: Paul Chambers (2002) Bones of contention. The Archaeopteryx Scandals, chapter 13.
2. Fred Hoyle(1983): "The Intelligent Universe", page 19. The Boeing 747 metaphore is reported in Nature, 294 (1981), p.10. I need to check this reference (quoted in S.J. Freeland (2008) 'Could an intelligent alien predict earth's biocehmistry?' in: J.D. Barrow et al (2008) Fitness of the Cosomos for Life, note 11.
   According to Greg Reinking, Zuckerman's article ("Extraterrestrials - Where Are They?" Nature, Vol. 294, Nov. 5, 1981, pp. 10-11) does not mention the Boeing 747 analogy. [8 Jun 2009]
3. Elliot Meyerowitz of Caltech quoted by Gail Vines, New Scientist 2 Dec 2000 p36-39.Hubert

Yockey (1992): Information theory and molecular biology, p.247,248.