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THIS
PHYSICAL LIFE.
••
Did
lt
Begin
by
Chance?
·
W
HERE
did physical
life come from?
Did highly com–
plex molecules form by chance
in a primeva! chemical soup?
Did these molecules combine by
chance into highly complex
combinations of molecules,
thereby producing "simple" liv–
ing organisms? Did such "sim–
ple" organisms evolve into
increasingly more
complex living orga-
-;---__
nisms over billions
of years by chance
m u tations and
natural selec-
tion?
by
William Stenger
According to the theory of evo–
lution, all living things, all human
beings, al! that we know of life on
earth, carne into existence through
such chance processes.
Just how credible is the theory of
evolution? What happens if we
apply the laws of chance-proba–
bility-to the theory?
In the following, the facts will
show the utter improbability of
even the "simplest" constituents of
physical life coming into existence
by chance, the even greater
improbability
of such constituents actually pro–
ducing living organisms by chance,
and, finally, the fundamental inade–
quacies of the arguments otfered
by evolutionists to try to make
improbable events probable.
A "Simple" Case
First of all, let us consider the
probability of a "simple" protein
forming by chance.
Proteins are, of course, essential
molecules for the existence of phys–
ical life. These molecules actually
consist of chains of chemical com–
pounds called amino acids. A rela–
tively simple protein would consist
of a chain of about 100 amino
acids. How likely would it be for
such a protein to form by chance?
Suppose we have a "soup" full of
amino acids. We want these acids
to link up at random to form a pro–
tein consisting of 100 amino acids.
How many ditferent combinations
are there?
Suppose there are 20 different
types of amino acids available.
If
we wanted a chain of two acids,
there would be 20 possibilities for
the first acid and 20 for the sec–
ond-or a total of 20 X 20
=
400
possibilities. Similarly, if we
wanted a chain of three acids, there
would be 20
X
20
X
20
=
8,000
possibilities.
Therefore, for a