Articles
One Chance In ...
The whole structure of the evolutionary model of life depends on multiplied billions of chance occurrences without any thought or planning or purpose. The odds against these things happening are so staggering that they are actually ... impossible.
Since probability studies deal with randomness, and since evolution ... is built upon the very concept of randomness, it would appear that the laws of probability could shed some light on the possibility of evolution having occurred (Bert Thompson, The Scientific Case for Creation, p. 199).
Borel’s law of probability states that the occurrence of any event, where the chances are beyond one in one followed by 50 zeroes, is an event that we can state with certainty never will happen, no matter how much time is allotted and no matter how many conceivable opportunities could exist for the event to take place” (ibid).
Looking at this in reverse, the same odds that a particular thing will not occur are: 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 percent. This is why Borel’s law states that there is virtually no chance of such long odds being overcome.
But when it comes to evolution, the odds far exceed the above numbers. Dr. Harold Morowitz, a biophysicist who has taught at Yale and George Mason Universities, estimates the odds of the chance formation of the simplest form of life as one chance in 1x10340,000,000 (ibid, p. 200). Carl Sagan estimated that the chance of life evolving on any given single planet, like Earth, is one chance in 1x102,000,000,000 (ibid).
By contrast, the relatively “simple” task of flipping a coin and having it come up heads 100 times in a row is a measly 1 in 1x1030 (ibid, p. 203).
The bottom line is that life is far too complex to casually dismiss with a glib “Well, given enough time and chance anything can happen!” No it can’t, and to believe otherwise is irrational and absurd.
