The Evolution of Life, Probability Considerations and Common Sense-Part 4

By: Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon; ©2002

The authors give additional illustrations to show the overwhelming odds against evolution as the source of life.

 

The Evolution of Life, Probability Considerations and Common Sense – Part Four

Miracles Without End

The point we have been making in this series of articles is that the existence of man­kind—or of living things generally—isn’t just one miracle, it is a succession of innumerable miracles. Every beneficial combination of factors to produce the simplest mechanism for evolution to occur would require more miracles.

All this and more are why evolution can rationally be classified as one of the “worst superstitions of all time.”^[1] And it explains why Dr. Holroyd is correct in concluding that evolution is not just physical and mathematical nonsense, “it is logical nonsense as well, for a sound thinker does not assume anything which must be deduced from his theory.”^[2]

So perhaps now we have some idea of the odds against evolution. Neither words nor figures can adequately convey them. But two final illustrations may help.

Texas Silver Dollars

On a cross-country drive, co-author John Weldon recently drove through the great state of Texas. As he drove through Texas, he was reminded of an illustration of Professor Don Stoner used in our book on messianic prophecy.^[3] In that book we showed that the odds that, by chance alone, Jesus would fulfill only eight Old Testament prophecies, was 1 in 10¹⁷. To illustrate how infinitesimal such a chance is we used the state of Texas.

First, we filled the entire state of Texas two feet deep with silver dollars. We marked one with an “X” and stirred up all the silver dollars throughout the state. Then, we blindfolded, say, an evolutionist, had him drive anywhere he wished in the state of Texas, stop, get out of his car, reach down into the silver dollars and pick one out. The odds that he would find the one marked silver dollar are 1 in 10¹⁷, or one in one hundred quadrillion, or one in 100 million billion.

Now, anyone who has driven through Texas knows how long it takes. You drive and drive and drive for hours before you reach another state. If you imagine that as you drive, everywhere you look, the land is covered with silver dollars two feet deep, the mind boggles—and yet your field of vision from the road is only an infinitesimal part of Texas. To drive the entire state so that you saw every acre would take years.

Yet this number, one chance in 10¹⁷, is nothing compared to one chance in 10^1,000, the chance distinguished evolutionists gave for the formation of a simply precursor to life. Trying to comprehend one chance in 10^{100,000,000,000}, the chance development of a simple bacterium, would drive one insane. In telling us to believe that such odds are not only conceivable but also probable, evolutionists would drive us all bananas.

Electrons and Gigantic Balls

Consider a final illustration, again of a number infinitely smaller than 10^1,000. How large is the number one in 10¹⁵⁷? 10¹⁵⁷ contains 157 zeros. Let us try to illustrate the size of this number.

Electrons are very small objects. They are much, much smaller than atoms. As noted previously, it would take 2.5 times 10¹⁵ of them, laid side by side, just to make one inch. Even if we counted four electrons every second and counted day and night, it would still take us 19 million years just to count a line of electrons one-inch long.

But how many electrons are we dealing with in 10¹⁵⁷ electrons? Imagine building a solid ball of electrons that would extend in all directions from the earth a length of 6 billion light years. The distance in miles of just one light year is 6.4 trillion miles. That would be an incredibly big ball! But not big enough to measure 10¹⁵⁷ electrons.

In order to do that, you must take that big ball of electrons reaching the length of 6 billion light years long in all directions and multiply it by 6 x 10²⁸! How big is that? It’s the length of the space required to store trillions and trillions and trillions of the same gigantic balls and more. In fact, the space required to store all of these balls combined together would just start to “scratch the surface” of the number of electrons we would need to really accurately speak about 10¹⁵⁷.

But assuming you have some idea of the number of electrons we are talking about, now imagine marking just one of those electrons in that huge number. Stir them all up. Then appoint an evolutionist to travel in a rocket for as long as he wants, anywhere he wants to go in a 30 billion light year diameter. Tell him to stop and segment a part of space, then take a high-powered microscope and find that one marked electron in that segment. What do you think would be his chances for success? It would be one in 10¹⁵⁷.

Again, how small is one chance in 10¹⁵⁷? The number 10¹⁵⁷ can be further illustrated this way. We earlier saw that the number of atoms in the universe was estimated at 1078. You could take these 10⁷⁸ atoms and expand each one to the size of our own universe, with each universe having 10⁷⁸ atoms. The total number of atoms in all these 10⁷⁸ universes would be 10¹⁵⁷.

Yet we saw that Bradley and Thaxton calculated the chance that one single protein molecule would evolve at about one chance in 10¹⁹¹—odds trillions of times larger than one chance in 10¹⁵⁷.

The odds of finally evolving just one man may be conservatively put at one chance in 10¹⁰ or one chance in 10^{1,000,000,000,000}. This is a figure with a trillion zeros. If written out in a single line it would extend some 300,000 miles—and circle the earth 24 times. It would require a million books just to print it! Yet again, beyond one chance in 10⁵⁰, no chance remains—ever, even in all eternity, for an event to occur.

We hope the above material has given the reader at least some small comprehension of the faith of the evolutionist. It is, again, a wonderfully large faith, a faith so large it fills the whole universe to produce miracles without end.

Notes

1. ↑ Howard Byington Holroyd, “Darwinism is Physical and Mathematical Nonsense” Cre­ation Research Society Quarterly. June 1972, p. 13.
2. ↑ Ibid., p. 12.
3. ↑ John Ankerberg, John Weldon, The Case for Jesus the Messiah (Chattanooga, TN: Ankerberg Theological Research Institute, 1992).

Read Part 5