                          GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #8
                              by David N. Menton

    GIVEN ENOUGH TIME ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE - EVEN EVOLUTION

    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  cal-
    culated  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  mult-
    iplying  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  combi-
    nations  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 re-
    duced   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.

                    FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution PBBS
                     (314) 821-1078, 3/12/24 baud, 24 hrs
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