Evolution: By the numbers
Given Enough Time Anything is Possible - Even Evolution
By David N. Menton
(C) copyright 1991 Missouri Association for Creation, Inc.
(repetative exclamation points removed)
This myth is the ultimate argument of those who attempt to "explain" the origin of the Cosmos and all life by CHANCE and the natural properties of matter and energy. Evolutionists hope that by invoking immense amounts of time, highly improbable events can somehow be made probable.
But with this type of argument it is possible to "explain" ANYTHING. We've all heard it said, for example, that "given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, EVENTUALLY one of them is bound to type the sonnets of Shakespeare error free." But this outrageous myth violates the statistical foundation on which all modern science rests.
Statistically controlled experiments are useless if we do not assume that highly improbable events simply do not occur. The probability of any event which has a known number of possible outcomes can be calculated quite easily.
The probability of rolling a particular number on a die, for example, is one chance out of six (the total number of possible sides) or 1/6. The probability of getting TWO particular numbers on two successive rolls of the die is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36, which is to say you would expect to succeed once in 36 rolls.
What then is the probability of randomly selecting the appropriate letters and spaces from a Scrabble set to spell "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION"? There are 26 different letters and a space in the alphabet (total 27) and there is a total of 23 of these letters and spaces in our sentence.
The probability of spelling this sentence without error by blindly drawing and replacing letters from our 27 character set is calculated by multiplying 1/27 x 1/27 x 1/27 .... 23 times. The answer reveals that we would expect to spell this simple sentence correctly by CHANCE approximately ONCE IN 8 HUNDRED MILLION, TRILLION, TRILLION draws!! If we drew and replaced letters at the rate of a billion a second we would expect to succeed once in 26 THOUSAND, TRILLION YEARS.
Now the simplest living organism is so vastly more complex than our simple sentence, that we have no way of really calculating its probability. If, however, we consider just one one particular protein of average size (say 500 amino acids) from among the thousands of proteins in a living organism, we can easily calculate the probability of forming it by CHANCE.
Proteins are made of a tightly linked chain of amino acids. There are only 20 different amino acids used in the proteins of ALL living organisms and they are arranged in a linear sequence much like the letters of a long paragraph. Assuming an inexhaustible supply of each of the 20 different amino acids, the probability calculation would be 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 ... 500 times. The number of possible combinations of the amino acids in this protein is 1 with over 600 zeros after it.
Even if we were to begin with the proper mixture of 500 amino acids to make our particular protein, we could never get the correct sequence for them by CHANCE.
Even if the entire universe were packed tight with computers the size of electrons, each trying a billion combinations of our 500 amino acids a second, we could sample only an infinitesimally small fraction of all of the possible combinations in 300 billion years.
Even if every medium sized protein molecule that ever existed on earth were ALL DIFFERENT, our vast "fleet" of busy computers could not be expected to come up with the combination of amino acids in ANY ONE OF THEM in a mere 300 billion years.
What all this means is that if the whole of evolution were reduced to the question of the probability of forming ANY ONE biologically useful protein of average size, we could safely conclude that evolution would be a VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITY by reason of the fact that there would be INSUFFICIENT TIME AND MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE. Now calculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution.
By David N. Menton
(C) copyright 1991 Missouri Association for Creation, Inc.
(repetative exclamation points removed)
This myth is the ultimate argument of those who attempt to "explain" the origin of the Cosmos and all life by CHANCE and the natural properties of matter and energy. Evolutionists hope that by invoking immense amounts of time, highly improbable events can somehow be made probable.
But with this type of argument it is possible to "explain" ANYTHING. We've all heard it said, for example, that "given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, EVENTUALLY one of them is bound to type the sonnets of Shakespeare error free." But this outrageous myth violates the statistical foundation on which all modern science rests.
Statistically controlled experiments are useless if we do not assume that highly improbable events simply do not occur. The probability of any event which has a known number of possible outcomes can be calculated quite easily.
The probability of rolling a particular number on a die, for example, is one chance out of six (the total number of possible sides) or 1/6. The probability of getting TWO particular numbers on two successive rolls of the die is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36, which is to say you would expect to succeed once in 36 rolls.
What then is the probability of randomly selecting the appropriate letters and spaces from a Scrabble set to spell "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION"? There are 26 different letters and a space in the alphabet (total 27) and there is a total of 23 of these letters and spaces in our sentence.
The probability of spelling this sentence without error by blindly drawing and replacing letters from our 27 character set is calculated by multiplying 1/27 x 1/27 x 1/27 .... 23 times. The answer reveals that we would expect to spell this simple sentence correctly by CHANCE approximately ONCE IN 8 HUNDRED MILLION, TRILLION, TRILLION draws!! If we drew and replaced letters at the rate of a billion a second we would expect to succeed once in 26 THOUSAND, TRILLION YEARS.
Now the simplest living organism is so vastly more complex than our simple sentence, that we have no way of really calculating its probability. If, however, we consider just one one particular protein of average size (say 500 amino acids) from among the thousands of proteins in a living organism, we can easily calculate the probability of forming it by CHANCE.
Proteins are made of a tightly linked chain of amino acids. There are only 20 different amino acids used in the proteins of ALL living organisms and they are arranged in a linear sequence much like the letters of a long paragraph. Assuming an inexhaustible supply of each of the 20 different amino acids, the probability calculation would be 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 ... 500 times. The number of possible combinations of the amino acids in this protein is 1 with over 600 zeros after it.
Even if we were to begin with the proper mixture of 500 amino acids to make our particular protein, we could never get the correct sequence for them by CHANCE.
Even if the entire universe were packed tight with computers the size of electrons, each trying a billion combinations of our 500 amino acids a second, we could sample only an infinitesimally small fraction of all of the possible combinations in 300 billion years.
Even if every medium sized protein molecule that ever existed on earth were ALL DIFFERENT, our vast "fleet" of busy computers could not be expected to come up with the combination of amino acids in ANY ONE OF THEM in a mere 300 billion years.
What all this means is that if the whole of evolution were reduced to the question of the probability of forming ANY ONE biologically useful protein of average size, we could safely conclude that evolution would be a VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITY by reason of the fact that there would be INSUFFICIENT TIME AND MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE. Now calculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution.
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