We have seen, through many lines of evidence, that the theory of evolution faces numerous challenges that it simply cannot overcome. The most fundamental of these challenges are the chemical barriers between the simplest form of life and inorganic chemicals, which we discussed in the Origin of Life chapter. As we saw, there are biochemical barriers to the spontaneous formation of life which cannot be accounted for by chance. Further, there are also genetic and biochemical barriers which exclude the possibility of Darwin's gradualistic model of evolution. Other models that have been proposed, like punctuated equilibrium, to account for the failures of the gradualistic model are also fatally flawed.
But even if we ignored these barriers, as many evolutionists do, and assumed it is possible for life to start spontaneously and to evolve as evolutionists claim, what are the chances of this actually happening and what are the odds that random process could have accounting for life, in all its diversity? On this page we will use the science of probability to explore these questions.
The science of probability is one of the most trustworthy disciplines there is. Evolutionists commonly overlook or distort probability science. They overlook probability by automatically assuming there is enough time available to overcome any problem. We will see that this is clearly not the case.
So, let’s start by defining what is theoretically possible and what is not. According to the French expert Dr. Emile Borel, a pioneer in the science of probability:
The occurrence of any event where the chances are beyond one in ten followed by 50 zeroes is an event which we can state with certainty will never happen, no matter how much time is allotted and no matter how many conceivable opportunities could exist for the event to take place.(1)
So what Dr. Borel is saying is that when the chances of an event occurring are less than 1 in 10^50 (which means 10 to the 50th power or the number 10 with 50 more zeroes after it), then there is literally no chance in that event occurring, no matter how many billions of years you give it.
For context, if you flip a coin, the probability of getting heads is one in two. The probability of flipping a hundred straight “heads” on a coin is 1 in 10^30. According to evolutionary theory, spontaneous generation is said to have been a random, chance event, with no outside, purposeful influence. However, the odds of a single protein coming about by random chances are exceedingly higher than flipping a coin "heads" 100 straight times.
Sometimes it is hard to get a feel for these immense numbers. As we mentioned, when a number is written 10^50 for example, it means the number 10 with 50 zeroes after it. If it is written 3x10^50 then that equals the number 30 with 50 zeroes after it, and so on. Here are some real life examples to give you perspective and help you get a feel for the enormity of these numbers:
When the numbers are written this way they sometimes do not seem as large as they really are. In the examples above, the difference between 10^24 and 10^79 may not seem like much until you realize they represent the difference between the number of molecules in a ¼ teaspoon of water and the number of atoms in the entire universe. There are 55 more zeroes after the second number !! So hopefully you have some perspective and a feel for the numbers we will be dealing with.
As stated above, probability expert Emile Borel placed the probability beyond which an event would never happen at one in 10^50. The most conservative limit of probability found in the scientific literature today is called the universal probability bound and is a probability of 1 in 10^150 and beyond which an event would be impossible based on the assumption of a 10-20 billion year old universe.
There are other opinions in the literature of the limits of probability which are not as conservative. The National Research Council set 1 in 10^94 as its universal probability bound to ensure the security of cryptosystems against chance-based attacks. Computer scientist Seth Lloyd sets 10^120 as the maximum number of bit-operations that the universe could have performed throughout its entire history.(2)
So the current scientific estimates of probability beyond which there is no chance of an event happening range from 1 in 10^50 to 1 in 10^150. There is no real dispute here between experts. Now let’s look at probabilities as they relate to evolution and compare them to these universal probability limits.
According to James F. Coppedge,(3) the probability of evolving a single protein molecule over 5 billion years is estimated at 1 chance in 10^161. The smallest theoretical cell is made up of 239 proteins, so the probability of the spontaneous occurrence of this smallest theoretical life is only one chance in 10^119,879 and the years required for it to evolve would be 10^119,841 years or 10^119,831 times the assumed age of the earth !! (4)
Dr. David J. Rodabaugh,(5) Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, estimated the more realistic chance that life would spontaneously generate, (even on 10^23 planets) as only one chance in 10^2,999,940.
British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who is not a creationist, made the following statements regarding the probability of the spontaneous generation of life:
The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 [zeroes] after it (10^40,000)….It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.(6)
Imagine 10^50 blind people, each with a scrambled Rubik’s cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have the chance of arriving by random shuffling at just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.(7)
Supposing the first cell originated by chance is like believing a tornado could sweep through a junkyard filled with airplane parts and form a Boeing 747.(8)
Professor Harold Morowitz, a Yale University physicist calculated that the odds of a single bacterium emerging from the basic building blocks necessary were 1 chance in 10^100,000,000,000. That’s the number 10 with 100 billion zeroes after it! (9) He went on the state:
The probability for the chance formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 to 10^340,000,000. The size of this number is truly staggering, since there are only supposed to be approximately 10^80 electrons in the whole universe! (10)
The renowned atheist of the latter 20th century, Dr. Carl Sagan, estimated that the mathematical probability of the simplest form of life emerging from non-living matter has the unbelievable odds of one chance in 10 to the two billionth power (10^2,000,000,000 which is a 10 followed by two billion zeroes). The enormity of this figure is revealed by the fact that it would take 6,000 books of 300 pages each just to write the number !! (11) So how could an event with a probability of 1 in 10 with two billion zeroes after it ever happen? It is absolutely, mathematically impossible.
Of course, Sagan still believed it happened. He had no choice since he consciously refused to accept even the possibility of a Creator.
Evolutionists claim the earth is about five billion years old and the universe 10 to 20 billion years old. There are about 10^18 seconds in 20 billion years. Therefore, even if a trial and error combination occurred every second for 20 billion years, the odds still appear hopelessly high against the natural assembly of even a single molecule.
Stuart Kauffman, in his book Investigations (12), considers the number of possible proteins of length 200 and the maximum number of pairwise collisions of particles throughout the history of the universe. Kauffman concluded that the known universe hasn’t had time since the big bang to run through all possible proteins of length 200 even once. To emphasize this point, he notes it would take more than 10^67 times the current [accepted] time span of the universe to construct all possible proteins of length 200 even once.(13) And that is just proteins composed of 200 amino acids, not even close to what would be required in the simplest theoretical cell.
As the facts intrude on the evolutionists’ worldview, they have offered lame explanations that are impregnable to attack. They claim there are innumerable other possible life forms unlike any life we know of—there are other possible proteins, other possible arrangements, other possible simpler organizations suitable for life.(14,15) Evolutionists use the same basic argument for biomolecules, life, the Earth, and the universe itself. When a design is too improbable to form by chance, they claim there are an infinitude of other biomolecules, other life forms, other planets, or other universes unlike ours. Their desperation is obvious.
As stated above, evolutionists commonly overlook or distort probability science. They overlook probability by automatically assuming there is enough time available to overcome any problem. As we have seen, that is not the case. The college-level introductory biology text by Gould, Luria, and Singer states:
Is life…a product of chance—some fundamentally ‘lucky’ event that happened only because so much time was available? (Given enough time, you will eventually flip 100 heads in a row, however improbable it might be in any one trial.) (16)
This statement is obviously misleading and not based on probability science or any science at all. Actually, probability science shows that if you flipped an honest coin once a second continuously around the clock, then you would require 200 thousand billion times the maximum estimated age of the universe to flip a coin heads 100 times in a row. This is no exaggeration.
Some evolutionists, seeing how probability presents a daunting barrier to their theory, directly assault probability science itself in an attempt to eliminate probability science from the study of origins. Robert Steiner, in a vociferous anti-creationist article in Reason magazine, responded to a creationist that argued that the odds against forming even the simplest protein molecule by random chance were far greater than 10^67 to one:
So what? Think of anything that has in fact occurred; if you look back far enough, the probability of the occurrence of the sequence of events necessary for that event to have occurred is infinitesimal. Shuffle a normal deck of playing cards. The probability of arriving at the precise arrangement of cards at which you in fact arrive is one in 8-followed-by-67 zeroes. That is, the occurrence of [the random origination of a simple protein molecule] is eight times more likely than the arrangement of cards you arrived at by one simple shuffle of the deck.(17)
This is simply not accurate and a purposeful distortion of the facts. There are an unspeakably large number of possibilities that never occur. Yet Steiner wants to convince you that most anything will occur given time. So he focuses on things known to have occurred, rather than on the overwhelming infinitude of things that do not, and this skewed focus distorts your perspective. In addition, the idea of the spontaneous generation and evolution of life is not a proven fact. True enough, life is here, but spontaneous generation and evolution are not necessarily how life got here. So you can’t say life is here, therefore it must have evolved. That is the whole issue here !!
To regain perspective, let us discuss the example of the deck of cards. Give a deck a thorough random shuffling. There are 8x10^67 possible sequences to a deck of 52 cards. No one is remotely in a position to arrive at that same sequence by random means. Imagine there were 10 billion people on earth, each shuffling a deck once a second around the clock. Imagine they are being helped by one billion-billion (10^18) similarly sized extra-terrestrial civilizations. Imagine this activity is occurring continuously over the maximum estimated age of the universe (20 billion years). Yet it would require over ten thousand billion-billion (10^22) such universes before we could expect your card sequence to be duplicated by chance !! (18)
Evolutionary philosophy is now so pervasive that it distorts fields well outside biology. One case is Stephen Hawking’s book on cosmology, A Brief History of Time.(19) Hawking misinterprets the probabilities involved in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He has the reader imagine two boxes: one containing oxygen and the other containing nitrogen. The boxes are joined together and the intervening wall is removed. As predicted by the second law, the gases will mix throughout the box. But what is the probability the oxygen gas will randomly move back to its half of the box? According to Hawking:
The probability of all the gas molecules in our first box being found in one half of the box at a later time is many millions of millions to one, but it can happen.(20)
Hawking claims “it can happen” without supplying exact details, so his readers will most likely assume he is correct. After all, he’s Stephen Hawking !! However, when you apply the laws of probability to the issue, it is found that the probability that all the oxygen molecules would randomly move back into half the box is one chance in 10^40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The number would be a 1 followed by forty thousand billion-billion zeros !! Hawking’s casual argument has misrepresented the facts.(21) It is a fact the gases will not separate by chance, since the universal probability bound is, at most, 1 in 10^150.
There are many other examples of evolutionists distorting the truth of probability science. It is remarkable that evolutionary scientists stand by silently while other evolutionists (often their leaders) propagate errors that normally would not be tolerated in science for a minute. Apparently the errors go unchallenged or are tolerated because they promote evolution. These fellow scientists certainly do not want to be labelled as being again evolution and accused of being creationists. Stripped of all references to evolution the errors would not stand. Evolutionists themselves would readily discredit them.
After a truly honest investigation of the science of probability, it becomes obvious that it requires much more faith to believe that life could have arisen by random chance than it does to believe in a Creator.
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