Fundie Uncle

[ThePinsir]

I'm kinda reluctant to do this...But I need some help.

A fundamentalist Christian uncle of mine and I have been going at it for a while. The argument he keeps going back to is: DNA needed to be encoded by an intelligence, which I usually respond to with "GOTG" (God of the gaps). And I think that works.

Then he says, repeatedly: "a tornado in a streak crap yard can't build a car. Chaos can not produce order."

I'm tempted to use some probability argument, something like "on one of the billions of planets, yes, your metaphorical tornado will in fact build a metaphorical car."

But I still feel like that argument is week. Is it? How would you respond?

I realize I'm kind of asking a personal favor from strangers on the internet, so I'm extremely grateful for any replies!

[KichigaiNeko]

Who said that a tornado was chaos?

[Ryantology]

Ask him if he's ever seen steam condense into water and water freeze into ice.

[SteelCurtain]

It's a false dichotomy.

The argument from improbability. Also known as the Ultimate 747 argument. The basic, and faulty assumption is that there are only two options. One: that life came about via complete randomness, or that there was a designer. And since things look as if they were designed...

This is bullshit. There is random genetic drift, the way the current spectrum of life came about was very directed. Random genetic mutations that weren't beneficial did not survive. The ones that were, did. That is not random. Sexual selection is not random. Fitness survival is not random. It's not a random accident. That is the straw man that fundies put up in order to have something to tear down.

[Mudhammam]

Who said that a tornado was chaos?

It is a little long, but listen to the first hour and thirty minutes and you'll have a thorough understanding of the fundamental problem with ID:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CnZ3n8I5b8

I find Ruse's analogy of the Indian rope trick to be particularly insightful.

According to Wiki:
"-In the simplest version, a long piece of rope would be left in a basket and placed in an open field, usually by a fakir. The rope would levitate, with no external support. His boy assistant, Jamoora, would climb the rope and then descend.
-A more elaborate version would find the magician (or his assistant) disappearing after reaching the top of the rope, then reappearing at ground level.
-The "classic" version, however, was much more detailed: the rope would seem to rise high into the skies, disappearing from view. The boy would climb the rope and be lost to view. The magician would call back his boy assistant, and, on getting no response, become furious. The magician would then arm himself with a knife or sword, climb the rope, and vanish as well. An argument would be heard, and then limbs would start falling, presumably cut from the assistant by the magician. When all the parts of the body, including the torso, landed on the ground, the magician would climb down the rope. He would collect the limbs and put them in a basket, or collect the limbs in one place and cover them with a cape or blanket. Soon the boy would appear, restored."

Does any of that caste doubt on Newton's law of universal gravitation? Of course not because tricks are involved. Likewise, "tricks" are involved in the evolution of non-self-replicating matter into self-replicators, through some currently unknown synthesizing chemicals, followed by selective pressures that lead to more complex molecular structures such as RNA and then DNA. Among the tricks involve the right combination of chemicals, an apparently turbulent and unguided process, and then natural selection. There are working theories, some very plausible, as to other factors but nobody is certain about all the processes yet.

[Minimalist]

I guess everyone has a dopey uncle like that.

Tell him DNA is not mechanical. It should be obvious but with jesus freak shit flingers you can never rely on the obvious. DNA changes over time.
A metal part will simply rust away.

Tell him to put down his fucking bible and learn some stuff.

[ThePinsir]

I'll watch the video as soon as I get a chance. Thanks for posting!

[TaraJo]

All honesty, the process of evolution is hardly chaos. The species adapts to its environment; if a trait is advantageous to its environment, that's the trait that helps the species propogate. If it isn't advantageous, it dies out since the individuals with that trait won't reproduce as well. You don't even have to understand genetics to see how this would work, either.

Take that process and multiply it by a few billion years and you have a basic understanding of how single celled organisms evolved, over time, into modern humans.

[KichigaiNeko]

The video is not available in my area

[Zen Badger]

Introduce him to chaos theory.
That should shut him up.