Anti-evolutionists give the "junkyard forming 741 in a tornado" argument to prove that evolution couldn't have occurred. But evolution doesn't say that living things just jumped together like that. Living things gradually developed bit by bit. A 747 wouldn't pull together bit by bit in a tornado in a junkyard, but that's the misleading thing about the analogy-metal doesn't act as carbon compounds do. An organic molecule or living thing made of organic molecules, based on carbon compounds, would gradually change, through random mutation guided by non-random natural selection. Natural selection is the tendency to survive and reproduce due to having the right characteristics. There is no "circular reasoning" here. Survival and reproduction are the result, not the definition, of fitness. "It is a favored argument of creationists to calculate the statistical probability of the molecules necessary for life (say the formation of DNA) arising spontaneously in a primeval biological soup. The chances are next to zero..... But they misunderstood the process of evolution by natural selection." "Adding natural selection to random molecular events imposes order and law. The combination of chance modifications plus the filtering effect of natural selection produces a genuinely creative system that allows new and novel properties to emerge." (Blackmore & Page, 1989, pp. 178, 179, 181) The way the term "natural selection" is used may sound as if it is a conscious force, but that is just a misleading interpretation of its meaning; natural selection is an unconscious process working inanimately.
Carbon is an atom that naturally and readily forms chains into other compounds, including the protein sequences that make the DNA-RNA molecules that male up living things on earth. Anti-evolutionists grossly misstate the difficulty of these compounds forming in nature. They are wrong in their assumption that all possible combinations of atoms must be included in calculations of probability of this. Only successful combinations need be considered. No matter how many unsuccessful chains develop, enough successful ones could develop that could take additional carbon compounds into themselves (eating), give off the residue of these mixes (defecation) and make copies of themselves (reproduction). The successful ones would continue on and build themselves up.
"Because of internal chemical restrictions (certain chemical bonds are easier to form than others) and because certain intermediate structures are more stable than others, there may well have been a sort of 'natural selection' occurring even at the molecular level The result is that quite complex chemical structures necessary for life are far more readily formed than chance alone would suggest. The odds against the sudden yet complete, formation of a DNA molecule are greater than the atoms in the universe. Yet in the early days of the earth's history, simple building blocks may have occurred not just once but many times. The route from these sub-units to the final DNA is still shrouded in mystery. But ignorance is insufficient reason for us to plead impossibility." (Blackmore & Page, pp. 181-182)
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