| Donny |
12-25-2012 12:29 PM |
SINCE WE'VE NOW BROUGHT UP THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, HERE ARE SOME STATS FOR MY ATHEIST FRIENDS:
In one of his books, Richard Dawkins uses the Infinite Monkey Theorem as an example when writing about how elements can eventually be arranged at random, supposedly resulting in life. The Theorem states this, basically:
If you put a group of monkeys in a room in front of typewriters, given enough time (if they could live forever) they would end up typing out the complete works of Shakespeare.
This is a perfect example of how biologists, even intelligent ones the likes of Richard Dawkins, don't comprehend probability and complexity. Mathematics shows this Theorem is a very BAD example of what Dawkins was trying to prove. The facts are that to produce just one SONNET (never mind all of Shakespeare's works), would require more time in total years than there are particles in the universe.
Again, RICHARD DAWKINS uses the Infinite Monkey Theorem as an example, so don't give me grief for mentioning it.
Here's how the math breaks down for just one SONNET:
All sonnets are 14 lines long. Let's take the sonnet that begins with "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" There are 488 letters in that sonnet. What is the likelihood of a monkey pounding away on a keyboard and getting all 488 letters in sequence? There are 26 letters of the alphabet, right? The odds would therefore be 26 to the 488th power... which in scientific notation (base 10) is 10 to the 690th power.
Now for comparison on how HUGE that number is:
The number of particles in the entire universe - not grains of sand, I'm talking protons, electrons and neutrons - is 10 to the 80th power. 10 to the 690th is larger than all the particles in the entire universe. There are not enough particles in the entire universe to write down all the trials these monkeys would have to go through in order to finally type out a single sonnet.
If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips - forget the monkeys - each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a millions times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second, producing random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of TIME would be 10 to the 90th trials. That's off by a factor of 10 to the 600th of what you'd need to put out ONE SONNET by chance.
In other words, you will NEVER get a sonnet by random chance. Richard Dawkins didn't comprehend this, although I'm sure someone has set him straight since the book that used that example was published, as he no longer uses that example.
Life is far, far more complex than a Shakespearean sonnet. Life would need far, far more time to arise at random than would a single Shakespearean sonnet. Study the complexity of just a cell, never mind a sentient life form. Without intelligent guidance, again, we simply would not be here. There hasn't been enough time.
And consider this: life never arises from non-life. Never, ever.
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