That is exactly what the theory states. And yes, for a precise copy of just *one* piece of literature to be produced, would take an amount of time much closer to infinity than to any number our minds can even begin to comprehend.
Now you know well and good in your heart that such things cannot be randomly generated
That is incorrect.
even by a super computer working at warp speed to approximate millions and even billions of years.
This is correct. We don't have nearly the computing power yet. The numbers are HUGE. Take a very simple case:
Just to randomly generate a four-letter word like "LOVE". The number of four-letter permutations using our 26-letter alphabet is already huge:
26 possibilities for the first letter, 26 for the second, 26 for the third and 26 for the fourth. Or 26 x 26 x 26 x 26, giving 456,976 permutations, only one of which is "LOVE."
Simple enough for our computers today. But extrapolating that out to even a short children's book would make the number of permutations astronomical.
The whole point of the "monkey-literature" example isn't to say, as apparently some people hear are thinking, that something like this is likely to happen in our lifetime.
It is simply a curious fact, and a mathematical certainty, that given enough time (and yes, this means something approaching infinity) all possible permutations of a given set will occur.
Keep in mind, my whole point was that the "monkey" thing did not come from evolutionary theory, but rather from probability theory. Speaking of which, let me throw another one on:
If it were possible to sit 456,976 monkeys down in front their own keyboards, consisting of just 26 keys representing our English alphabet, and have each monkey type out four purely random letters, it is highly probable that one of them would just by chance type "LOVE".
Even if that were true, applied to evolutionary development, it would surely require not billions but surely trillions upon trillions of years.
I recently heard of a scientist likening the workings of a "simple" cell to that of a vast city, with all of the endless complexity. He concluded by admitting that we probably understand only about 1 percent of what goes on within a cell.
Given that the most basic building block of the unfathomable complexity of life is in itself infinitely more complex than a trifle such as "War and Peace," one would think that we are talking about - as I suggested - time requirements on an order vastly greater than imagined by evolutionists.
From my perspective, such complexity requires what the ancients via Thomas Aquinas called a "Prime Mover" - the formative cause behind all things. One classic argument for the existence of God used, e.g., with devastating force by Bishop Copleston against Bertrand Russel in their classic debate was the argument from contingency: the idea that everything must have a sufficient cause.
The only remaining question, in my mind, is whether God "used" evolutionary process to create the world, a question answered by the philosopher theologian Francis Schaeffer, who spoke of "the ghost in the machine."
According to Schaeffer, one may postulate that there exists a "ghost" that is actually making the "machine" (evolution) work. A scientist, however, will look bemusedly upon such superstition as totally unnecessary. Why? Because science can fully explicate how the machine works without recourse to any "ghost."
Similarly, a Christian who accepts evolution as God's creative "mechanism" has unwittingly made God superfluous.