| In 1969, Dr. Frank Salisbury of Utah State University, [of] the Division of Biomedical and Environment Reserch at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, examined the chance of one of the most basic chemical reactions for the continuation of life taking place. This reaction involves the formation of a specific DNA molecule. It is important to realize that Dr. Salisbury was assuming that life already existed. His calculations do not refer to the chance of the origin of life from dead matter - something infinitely more improbable - but to the continuance of life already existing. |
He calculated the chance of this molecule evolving on 10^20 hospitable planets, or one hundred, thousand, million, billion planets. This is a figure with twenty zeros after it and is at least 1,000 times more hospitable planets than the number many scientists have estimated could exist. Dr. Salisbury allows four billion years for the chance coming into existence of this molecule on all these planets. But remember, he is not speaking here of life as we know it - developed, intelligent living beings, or even of one singe cell for that matter. He is only calculating the chance of this one appropriate DNA molecule. He concluded that the chances of just this one tiny DNA molecule coming into existence over four billion years, with conditions just right, on just one of these almost infinite number of hospitable planets, including the earth, as one chance in 10^415. This is a number with 415 zeros after it. Such a large number is unimaginable. Even if we packed the entire universe with hospitable planets, so no space was left between them, the chance of this molecule forming on all these planets would still be one chance in a figure with 377 zeros after it. This shows that life simply could not originate in outer space, period. But, you ask, isn't there still one chance in a number this size, even if it is so large? Given enough time, wouldn't eventually anything happen? |
Dr. Emile Borel, one of the world's great experts on mathematical probability, formulated a basic law of probability. It states that the occurrence of any event where the chances are beyond one in 10^50 - a much smaller figure than what we have been dealing with - is an event which we can state with certainty will never happen - no matter how much time is alloted, no matter how many conceivable opportunities could exist for the event to take place. In other words, life by chance is mathematically impossible on earth or any place else. A rather humorous example will help us to understand the size of very large numbers. Suppose that an amoeba, that microscopic little creature, were given the job of moving the entire universe - the earth, the solar system, all the stars, all the galaxies (billions of them), etc., one atom at a time. It had to carry each atom across the entire universe, a distance of thirty billion light years (a light year is the distance light travels in a year going at the speed of 186,000 miles per second). To top it off, it had to carry these atoms at the incredibly slow traveling speed of one inch every 15 billion years. If this amoeba, traveling one inch in 15 billion years over such a vast distance, moved atom by atom not just one universe, but six hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion universes the size of ours, the number of years it would take it would be "only" 10^171. This is almost infinitely smaller than 10^415, the chance that for all practical purposes the universe could evolve one appropriate DNA molecule necessary for a certain chemical reaction. |
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If you want a really big number, try calculating the chance of life itself evolving on just one planet, i.e., the earth. Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University estimated this to be roughly one chance in ten followed by two billion zeros. A number this size is so infinitely beyond 10^50 (Borel's upper limit for an event to occur) that it's absurd to even contemplate. Evolution shows how far even brilliant men will go to escape the idea of God [as] their Creator. It is a sad commentary on the human condition when we find a belief in the obvious replaced by a belief in the impossible. Clearly, God Himself had no second thoughts: |
| "It is I who make the earth, and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with my hands, and I ordained all their host" (Isaiah 42:5). |
[The preceding excerpt was taken
from
Close Encounters by Wilson and Weldon, pp. 320-322]
