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Date Posted: 13:47:12 02/13/12 Mon
Author: Pahu
Subject: Improbabilities


Improbabilities


To claim life evolved is to demand a miracle. The simplest conceivable form of single-celled life should have at least 600 different protein molecules. The mathematical probability that even one typical protein could form by chance arrangements of amino acid sequences is essentially zero (a)—far less than 1 in 10^450. To appreciate the magnitude of 10^450, realize that the visible universe is about 10^28 inches in diameter.


From another perspective, suppose we packed the entire visible universe with a “simple” form of life, such as bacteria. Next, suppose we broke all their chemical bonds, mixed all their atoms, then let them form new links. If this were repeated a billion times a second for 20 billion years under the most favorable temperature and pressure conditions throughout the visible universe, would one bacterium of any type reemerge? The chances (b) are much less than one in 10^99,999,999,873. Your chances of randomly drawing one preselected atom out of a universe packed with atoms are about one chance in 10^112—much better.


(a) Coppedge, pp. 71–72.


“Whether one looks to mutations or gene flow for the source of the variations needed to fuel evolution, there is an enormous probability problem at the core of Darwinist and neo-Darwinist theory, which has been cited by hundreds of scientists and professionals. Engineers, physicists, astronomers, and biologists who have looked without prejudice at the notion of such variations producing ever more complex organisms have come to the same conclusion: The evolutionists are assuming the impossible. Even if we take the simplest large protein molecule that can reproduce itself if immersed in a bath of nutrients, the odds against this developing by chance range from one in 10^450 (engineer Marcel Goulay in Analytical Chemistry) to one in 10^600 (Frank Salisbury in American Biology Teacher).” Fix, p. 196.


“I don’t know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the Earth. Astronomers will have a little difficulty at understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so, the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The ‘others’ are a group of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles. They advocate the belief that tucked away in nature, outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). This curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations of biblical miracles.” Fred Hoyle, “The Big Bang in Astronomy,” New Scientist, Vol. 92, 19 November 1981, p. 526.


“The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual motion machine is impossible in probability. ... A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance.” Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 257.


(b) Harold J. Morowitz, Energy Flow in Biology: Biological Organization as a Problem in Thermal Physics (New York: Academic Press, 1968), pp. 2–12, 44–75.


[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown ]

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