Creation Station
Science and Technology
One Million Monkeys: The Odds of Life Arising by Random Chance
One of the most common errors made by those discussing the origins issue is in attempting to calculate the odds of life arising on its own without any divine intervention. One of the ways that evolutionists have attempted to illustrate this is with the monkey and typewriter analogy. Evolutionists have written that a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters would eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. This analogy is false for two reasons; first even a million monkeys typing for eternity wouldn’t be able to get all of Shakespeare’s words in the right order. This experiment has been simulated on a computer and it doesn’t work. Second, the monkeys, representing evolution’s speculated upon randomness, would have to first invent Shakespearean English, then produce readers who would be able to read their work, not to mention having to also invent and manufacture the typewriters.
DNA is a language, a language written on the medium of chemicals to be sure, but a language none the less. But a language only makes sense if both the sender and receiver understand it. DNA is useless unless all of the receiving mechanisms of the cell are already in place. It is this irreducible complexity of the cell, not just the complexity of DNA, which is convincing so many scientists that only intelligent design can explain the origin of life.
The impossibility of life arising on Earth without outside help is so obvious that even hard-core atheist and evolutionist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, had to invent the idea called directed panspermia, the aliens did it. Crick realized that naturalistic evolutionism couldn’t explain life’s origin, so he speculated that alien intelligence had seeded the galaxy with bits of DNA, that this DNA then landed on Earth and started the whole process of evolution. The absurdity of this idea is obvious even to most other evolutionists.
Even some Creationists make the mistake of stating the origin of life question as a matter of odds. This is a mistake, because the odds of life arising naturally are in fact zero. An analogy I use is how long would it take for ink and paper to write a book? The answer of course is never. A book requires an author, it can’t write itself. DNA is the book of life written in chemicals, but chemicals can no more write a book than can ink and paper. A book requires an author and to be useful it must be understandable to the reader. This is something that can only happen if there is both an intelligent author and a literate reader sharing a common language. This can only happen if the language is invented before the book is written and all of this can only happen with an intelligent designer.
