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The Forum > General Discussion > Are Numbers Against the Chance Emergence of Life?

Are Numbers Against the Chance Emergence of Life?

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The imagery of a room full of monkeys pounding away at typewriters has been successfully used to argue for the chance emergence of life in analogous manner to the chance production of a Shakespearean play by the primates.
A real-life experiment involving 6 monkeys for a month produced 50 pages of gibberish and not a single one-letter word as defined by space-a-space or space-I-space.
Extrapolating from this, the chance of a Shakespearean sonnet being produced was calculated at 1 in 10E690, or 1 with 690 zeroes behind it.
This is claimed to be many times greater than the number of sub-atomic particles in the known universe.
If the random output of a fourteen line sonnet is so unlikely, what then the chance construction of DNA, the exceedingly complex building block of life?
These observations led prominent professional atheist Antony Flew to claim rational justification for acknowledging the existence of a supreme creative intelligence: a non-denominational version of the common person’s God.
Can such a conclusion be rationally drawn or must it remain a leap of faith?
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/one_flew_out_of_the_atheists_nest/?view
Posted by KMB, Friday, 10 April 2009 12:05:14 PM
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Atoms stick together because of electric charges and magnetic fields
on their surface.(I know they don't have a real surface).
Heat makes the atoms jiggle about.
They can bump different other atoms 1 million times a second.
There are thousands of millions in every liter of matter doing this for millions of years.
It only has to happen once for any combination of atoms to be self reproducing and life EVOLVES from there.

I wonder how GOD came into existence as he is much more complicated than Earth life.
Has he come into existence yet?.
I don't think so.
Posted by undidly, Saturday, 11 April 2009 12:09:27 AM
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Troll.
Posted by Sancho, Saturday, 11 April 2009 1:18:55 AM
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The typing monkey hypothesis is flawed and misleading.

If you keep only those bits that are Shakespeare and eliminate the rest, the chances rise astronomically.

That's how natural selection operates. Nature keeps the successful random parts and dumps the rest.
Posted by wobbles, Saturday, 11 April 2009 2:04:16 AM
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We have done this here before the typing monkeys ,and boy have we done God over and over again.
My evidence for man making God is the very many different Gods we made.
Every one yes every one is crafted to be just what those who made him/her needed.
I understand some of the best people in every country are followers of their God.
But am concerned so very many convince themselves their God is the one true God all others false.
Many even kill [most have] in the name of a God.
Posted by Belly, Saturday, 11 April 2009 5:33:48 AM
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One thing most people fail to grasp is just how long 4.5 billion years is. Give those monkeys a few billion years and I bet they could come up with way more than Shakespeare.

The extreme complexity of life we see today took a hell of a long time to get that way and the numbers, if you actually look at them, allow plenty of scope for life as we know it to have evolved.

Statistically we have been very lucky. To have the perfect planet just the right distance from just the right sun and all that. We are very lucky to be the only, as far as we know, sentient life in our corner of the universe.

But also statistically it was bound to happen. There are so may stars and galaxies and planets out there that one (or more) planets with just the right conditions for life to form were bound to exist eventually.

Just like the fact that it is statistically extremely unlikely that you will win lotto. 8,145,060 to 1 for Oz Lotto. But someone always wins dont they. Statistically improbable events do happen and always will given enough time.

So no the numbers arent against the chance emergence of life, indeed the huge numbers involved in the age of the universe make it more likely for really improbable things to have happened. Who knows there may be much stranger and unlikely things out there than just the emergence of life.
Posted by mikk, Saturday, 11 April 2009 9:10:03 AM
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