Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit
The argument is a play on the notion of a "tornado sweeping through a junkyard to assemble a Boeing 747" employed to decry abiogenesis and evolution as vastly unlikely and better explained by the existence of a creator god (although this quote is first attributed to Fred Hoyle, who used it to argue for panspermia, not creationism).
[n 2][3] Dawkins summarizes his argument as follows;[4] the references to "crane" and "skyhook" are two notions from Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
A central thesis of the argument is that compared to supernatural abiogenesis, evolution by natural selection requires the supposition of fewer hypothetical processes; according to Occam's razor, therefore, it is a better explanation.
Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all thoughts and prayers cannot be simple.
[5] Dawkins then turns to a discussion of Keith Ward's views on divine simplicity to show the difficulty "the theological mind has in grasping where the complexity of life comes from."
Dawkins writes that Ward is sceptical of Arthur Peacocke's ideas that evolution is directed by other forces than only natural selection and that these processes may have a propensity toward increasing complexity.
[6] Theist authors have presented extensive opposition, most notably by theologian Alister McGrath (in The Dawkins Delusion?)
[9] Another negative review, by biologist H. Allen Orr, sparked heated debate, prompting, for example, the mathematician Norman Levitt to ask why theologians are assumed to have the exclusive right to write about who "rules" the universe.
Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point.
According to his definition (set out in The Blind Watchmaker), something is complex if it has parts that are "arranged in a way that is unlikely to have arisen by chance alone."
Dawkins has responded to this point in his debate with Lennox and at other times, saying that while physics is hard to understand, fundamentally, unlike biology, it is simple.
But the reason why theists and atheists do not usually address this prior to making their arguments is because they want to go beyond merely discussing whether God is maximally probable or impossible.
[23] He reports the strongest response as the claim he was imposing a scientific epistemology on a question that lies beyond the realm of science.
"[24] Dawkins writes that he did not feel that those employing this "evasive" defence were being "wilfully dishonest", but that they were "defining themselves into an epistemological safe-zone where rational argument could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could not.
Postulating a prime mover that is capable of indulging in intelligent design is, in Dawkins's opinion, "a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation"; instead, he seeks a "self-bootstrapping crane" (see above) that can "lift" the universe into more complex states.
