Posted on 06/15/2017 12:50:19 PM PDT by Kaslin
Zero times anything is zero. The odds of life just happening by chance are zero.
This universe just springing into being by chance is impossible. It takes a leap of blind faith to believe in evolution, unguided or guided. Of course, there are tiny changes within kinds. It seems to me usually when the evolutionists make their case, they point to these tiny changes.
The analogies to the improbability of evolution by a random process are endless.
A hurricane blows through a junkyard and assembles a fully functioning 747 jet.
Scrabble pieces are randomly spilled out on the board, and they spell out the Declaration of Independence word for word. (Source: Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of Darwin’s Doubt).
A monkey sits at a typewriter and types thousands of pages. He types out word for word, with no mistakes, the entire works of Shakespeare.
The odds against our universe, of the earth, of the creation, to have just come into being with no intelligent design behind the grand scheme are greater than all of these impossible scenarios.
Forget the works of Shakespeare. What are the odds of a monkey randomly typing away simply spelling the 9-letter word “evolution” by chance? That doesn’t sound too hard, does it?
Dr. Scott M. Huse, B.S., M.S., M.R.E., Th.D., Ph.D., who holds graduate degrees in computer science, geology, and theology, wrote a book about creation/evolution back in the early 1980s, The Collapse of Evolution. Huse has done extensive study on these questions of random probability. I had the privilege of interviewing him about it for Dr. D. James Kennedy’s television special, “The Case for Creation” (1988). It was a type of Scopes Trial in reverse---filmed on location in Tennessee, in the very courtroom where the 1925 monkey trial took place.
Later, Huse created a computer program to see what are the odds of a monkey typing the word “evolution”? He notes that the odds are 1 in 5.4 trillion, which statistically is the same thing as zero. Any casino that offered such horrible odds would lose customers quickly, because no one would ever win. Forgive my bluntness, but the suckers have to win something before they start losing big.
Here’s what Scott told me in an email: “The typical personal computer keyboard has 104 keys, most of which are not letters from the alphabet. However, if we ignore that fact and say the monkey can only hit keys that are letters of the alphabet, he has a one in twenty-six chance of hitting the correct letter each time.
“Of course, he has to hit them in the correct sequence as well: E then V then O, etc. Twenty-six to the power of nine (the number of letters in the word “evolution”) equals 5,429,503,678,976.
“So, the odds of him accidentally typing just the 9-letter word ‘evolution’ are about 1 in about 5.4 trillion …From a purely mathematical standpoint, the bewildering complexity of even the most basic organic molecules [which are much more complicated than a nine-letter word] completely rules out the possibility of life originating by mere chance.”
Take just one aspect of life---amino acids and protein cells. Dr. Stephen Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science at Cambridge University. In his New York Times bestselling book, Darwin’s Doubt (2013), Meyer points out that “the probability of attaining a correct sequence [of amino acids to build a protein molecule] by random search would roughly equal the probability of a blind spaceman finding a single marked atom by chance among all the atoms in the Milky Way galaxy---on its face clearly not a likely outcome.” (p. 183)
And this is just one aspect of life, the most basic building-block. In Meyer’s book, he cites the work of engineer-turned-molecular-biologist, Dr. Douglas Axe, who has since written the book, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (2016).
In the interview I did with Scott Huse long ago, he noted, “The probability of life originating through mere random processes, as evolutionists contend, really honestly, is about zero…. If you consider probability statistics, it exposes the naiveté and the foolishness, really, of the evolutionary viewpoint.”
Dr. Charles Thaxton was another guest on that classic television special from 1988. He is a scientist who notes that life is so complex, the chances of it arising by mere chance is virtually impossible. Thaxton, now with the Discovery Institute, has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, and a post-doctorate degree in molecular biology and a Harvard post-doctorate in the history and philosophy of science.
Thaxton notes, “I’d say in my years of study, the amazing thing is the utter complexity of living things….Most scientists would readily grant that however life happened, it did not happen by chance.”
The whole creation points to the Creator. Huse sums up the whole point: “Simply put, a watch has a watchmaker and we have a Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Interesting point....
I agree in part. The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
Tell that to Him when you meet Him- As for me- He’s done enough in my life tat I know He exists-
““...those who choose faith over reason, science and rationality....”
And yet, when confronted with the mathematical improbability of life emerging spontaneously from non-life, do you still insist that life MUST have emerged naturally?
Is that reasonable and rational? Or is it FAITH-based?”
Who said it was spontaneous? When there are facts, scientific or otherwise, one can resort to faith because they are so uncomfortable with their belief doesn’t jive with reality.
Not only that, but we can't even create life on purpose in a lab.
This entire line of thinking is a whacky as a three year old digging a hole to China with their plastic shovel in a sandbox.
Take a step back from what you assume is reasonable and ask yourself, if it is actually reasonable. Because to those already stepped back and looking it looks embarrassingly stupid.
Non believers have faith... just not in a creator....
The primary and fundamental prediction of someone who thinks the natural universe did not have a transcendental creator from outside space and time itself, is that there is no such thing as beyond time and space and that the universe has simply always been here.
This primary and fundamental rock of Naturalism was destroyed by the big bang theory.
Now sure we can speculate about how what is beyond time and space itself is just more Natural worlds in some bigger system. And such speculation does not contradict current science. However it does contradict common sense.
The only compelling positive reason to be a Naturalist in the first place was an intuitive notion not a logical one. It is really a kind of extension of the physical world we sense as animals that we conceptually project to all of reality.
However the actual great thinkers have always realized that the physical world was derivative by nature and logic demands something that is not derivative to be its ultimate origin.
The answers to what this is have varied, but there were a people called the Jews whose folk lore included a creation myth and description of God that matched the actual logical facts better than creation myths that had physical things existing before the world began, and included gods that had greater power than men, but seemed to be contained within nature, rather than being the author of nature beyond it.
It is thus reasonable to suspect that the Jews folk lore may have been more inspired. Perhaps by God, or perhaps by better thinkers.
The image of God as a man sitting on a cloud which allows people a way to envision him, is balanced in their scriptures by clear statements that God is a transcendent being which contains all perfections including aseity.
This conception solves the framework of metaphysics like no other ever could. And the meditations of brilliant men like Renee Descartes, if one carefully attends to them and has the logical chops to follow him, will lead one to conclude that God as so conceived must really exist.
>>Why do you think RNA molecules can’t “procreate with one other”
Maybe the molecular structure simply isn’t compatible.
Does it look like evolution or not?
“Maybe the molecular structure simply isn’t compatible.”
So you don’t know.
How do you know RNA molecules don’t procreate with each other?
>>So organisms that reproduce asexually aren’t part of a species
Do molecules reproduce sexually?
>>do you know RNA molecules don’t procreate with each other
Would RNA molecules that were not structurally compatible be able to reproduce?
What do you mean by structurally incompatible?
But, anyhow, what I’m getting at is RNA is auto catalytic.
I mean maybe primordial RNA1 has an extra atom or few compared to primordial RNA2. And the structural difference makes the two incapable of catalyzing each other.
The pattern of natural selection can appear in many contexts. Especially if you look very hard for it.
If I jump toward the sky, you could say I look a bit like a rocket ship. I mean both go up right? But then common sense about how high the moon is and how high a person can jump, and all the other practical problems of reality....I can see my ability to jump upward is not enough to get me to the moon.
One could read natural selection into a lot of processes...including where it doesn't make any sense to do so. One just has to look hard enough for a way to make the connection.
Where it fits best is not in the evolution of species though. The evolutionary process is much more rapid under human guidance. For example the evolution of technology. And even the breeding of animals and plants by people for a purpose.
As we move to processes that do not have the advantage of intelligent guidance, and even more do not have the advantage of living reproduction, we have the analogy to natural selection gets strained...its not really there. Its simpler to just think of chemical processes as processes instead of looking for aspects of them we can read natural selection into.
And when folks think they have ALL the 'facts', they'll feel safe to dismiss 'GOD' from having any input into their lives.
The 'natural' state of the universe is to decay and run down; NOT to increase in complexity.
Wouldn't ETERNAL life be a LOT easier to achieve; evolution wise; than the entire reproductive process?
We're told that we get a new set of cells about every seven years, so most of us already have Eternal life until some FLAWED biological process kills us off.
“One day, after millions of years, the hydrogen fuel in a stellar core will...”
And who created the hydrogen fuel?
We can play all day...
[[Do molecules reproduce sexually?]]
Hey- beer goggles work wonders
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