Take 26 Scrabble letters, A-Z, and put them into a bag. What is the probability that they can be withdrawn in alphabetical order? To get an A on the first attempt would be a 1 in 26 chance. To get a B as the second letter would be 1 in 25 (assuming the first was not a B), but only if that is independent of the result of the first dip into the bag. The probability of getting an A and then a B as the first two letters would be 1 in 26 x 25, or 1 in 650. To get an A, a B and then a C would be 1 in 15,600. To get the whole alphabet in order would be 1 in 403,291,461,126,606,000,000,000,000, or 403 trillion trillion, or 4.03x10^26. If a person wanted to try it out, let us say at 15 seconds per attempt, it would take him 191 million, trillion years to have that many attempts. Approximately. The observable universe itself is a mere 13 billion (US) years old. A fluke might occur first time round. But then again, after all that time, he still might not achieve the correct sequence. That's the thing with probability theory. Is it likely? How likely? It is not a guarantee of certainty. It is simply a calculation of the number of possible permutations. In tackling this task randomly, some sequences may appear more than once in that time, others never.
One might feel that drawing letters out of a bag is a relatively simple thing. It is. There is no real thought involved, other than sequence recognition, no design, just repetitive actions. What about the origin of a living cell? A cell has been likened to a fully self-contained city. It has walls, with gates and security. It has its own power station. It has a transportation system. It has raw materials and a vast array of fully automated factories. It can replicate itself quickly and accurately. There is no room for error. But cells cannot keep on replicating without control otherwise the result would be a featureless mass that would quickly fill the universe. In order to form into a functional organism there must be a control system, a program, that determines what types of cells are required and where. In a human, for example, there are about 200 different cell types, such as eye cells, brain cells and bone cells. The DNA contains the genes, the instructions for building a unique human body which, if each pair were written out, would apparently fill 856 one thousand page volumes (sadly no information supplied as to page size, type face and font size). There is also a 'chicken and egg' conundrum – proteins are needed to produce RNA, but RNA is used to produce proteins. Which came first? Or did they, by chance, just happen to appear together at the same time and place?
Let us now assume that, against all probability and likelihood, a cell of such complexity did just happen. And that it did manage to replicate itself. And that those multiplying cells did somehow organise themselves into a functional organism, be that a human, a bird, a lizard, a trilobite, whatever. For the organism itself to procreate there has to be both a male and a female of the species. Whilst both share common components and may, superficially, look similar, they are nevertheless different, in some cases very different. They are often physically different, mentally and emotionally different. Therefore they behave in different ways. Now here is the point – for the species to breed, both genders would have to evolve in their diverse ways but in a perfectly synchronised manner. A female cannot breed without a male, and vice versa. Generally speaking. Asexual reproduction amongst multi-celled organisms is rare and hermaphroditic reproduction is a fascinating read in itself.
If getting our A to Z in order by chance is all but impossible, try calculating the probability of a functional organism coming into being by blind chance and then allow for the gender elements and adding a synchronisation factor. Oh – and by the way, the first cell is said to have appeared in a prebiotic, organic, primordial soup. Where did that come from? Certainly not Waitrose. Factor that into your calculation. And of course the planet on which it was found, and the universe that the planet is part of. Do you not find that you are heaping improbability upon improbability? As the A-Z example shows, it doesn't take long for improbabilities to become effective impossibilities.
Here's a wonderful illustration from Michael Denton's book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Imagine, if you can, an area of one million square miles (about one third the size of contiguous USA, or 12.5 times the size of GB), covered in a forest of trees containing trees at the rate of 10,000 per square mile. If each tree has 100,000 leaves, then that would be 10^15 leaves in total, a number beyond human comprehension. But that is approximately equivalent to the number of connections in a human brain! Keep on eating the fishy brain food. Jeeves' extraordinary intelligence was as a result of eating fish, or at least so said Wooster. It is needed. Why? Because that number of leaves is a mere fraction of the number of permutations of A to Z. For everyone of those leaves, there are 403 billion permutations. Now is your brain hurting? Mine is! Jehovah has always existed, is without beginning. Is that hard to comprehend? Most certainly, but it's not the only thing hard to imagine. That does not make it untrue! In fact, it has to be true otherwise he would not be God Almighty. Now, if Jehovah has always existed, indeed if time itself is one of his productions as suggested by Paul at Titus 1:2, then he has had ample opportunity to conceive, design, perfect and produce a planet teeming with life, designed with such beauty and elegance that inspires wonder in everyone who views and inquires with a sincere, honest heart. Is not that more satisfying than believing in a process that could actually never happen, simply to deny the existence of God?
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