Chances slim for evolution
This is in response to a June 2nd letter attacking the movie "Expelled." This movie deals with the intelligent design versus evolution debate. The writer states 470,000 scientists can't be wrong for believing in evolution. Well, they could be wrong for many reasons! A primary one is the indoctrination found in most textbooks as well as in the general media.
For example, most students are taught at an early age and accept as fact that life occurred spontaneously in the sea by forces of nature. Oddly enough, scientific research refuting this teaching is not presented in textbooks.
Abiogenesis, or the appearance of life from non-living matter, was researched by information scientist Hubert Yockey. Yockey calculated the probability of a protein containing one hundred amino acids forming spontaneously would be one chance in 10 to the 65th power.
In 1989, Robert Sauer and his colleagues at M.I.T. demonstrated amino acids in protein are arranged in rare and unique combinations. Sauer also confirmed Yockey's research of the probability of a single protein coming into existence by chance. The earth is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old. The number of seconds in 4.5 billion years is 1.43 times 10 to the 17th power. So, at the rate of one new trial every second, there would not be enough time to crank out a protein molecule consisting of 100 amino acids.
If that isn't enough to throw evolution into the trash bucket, consider the next example. British astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle and his colleague, Chandra Wickramasinge, used a super computer to calculate the probability of one single-celled amoeba with only 2,000 proteins coming into existence by chance. Their finding? There is only one chance in 10 to the 40,000th power.
Sir Hoyle stated, "It is enough to bury Darwinism and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence." ("Nature" vol. 294:105; November 12, 1981.)
The rejection of an intelligent designer is another reason people embrace evolution. If there is no Creator, there can be no accountability to Him. Perhaps they should reconsider.
Mark Foley
Carpentersville