"The probability that human intelligence developed all the way from the chemical ooze of the primeval ocean solely through random sequences of random mechanical processes has been aptly compared to the probability of a tornado blowing through a gigantic junkyard and assembling by accident a 747 jumbo jet."
I'm having difficultly figuring this out. Is the preceding argument logically sound? If this argument is a logical fallacy, which would it be?
I am not a mathematician and do not know if the probabilities are equal or not.
Is it logically sound? A complex orderly result emerging from pure chance events - this seems contrary to the thermodynamic law of increasing entropy.
But are the two cases compared the same?
In the biological instance we can refer to laws of nature (or of God, too, possibly) inscribed within the material, which make a chain of deterministic events have the particular orderly result we know.
In the wind instance, the assumption is that there are no such laws, and therefore the probabilities seem very low indeed that it would happen.
Or perhaps, more precisely, we should work backwards, and infer the cause from the effect.
Since we have never empirically observed wind producing a jet plane from debris, we can reasonably say this is highly improbable. If we had observed it, we would say it is inscribed in the nature of things.
Since we have observed living matter, we must seek an explanation for it, and it is reasonable to say that this event was inevitably inscribed in the nature of inanimate matter from the day of the Big Bang.
The thing to understand is that this natural explanation does not exclude God. Because this is of course the underlying philosophical issue of the given question. The fact is that the scientific narrative does not logically exclude God, so there is no need for believers in God to try and combat it, as many do.
The scientific narrative is sound - and (contrary to what some atheistis scientists claim) logically compatible with belief in God.
