“The achievement of nonrandom natural selection is to tame chance. By smearing out the luck, breaking down the improbability into a large number of small steps–each one somewhat improbable but not ridiculously so–natural selection ratchets up the improbability. As the generations unfold, ratcheting take the cumulative improbability up to levels that–in the absence of the ratcheting –would exceed all sensible credence. Many people don’t understand such nonrandom cumulative ratcheting. They think natural selection is a theory of chance, so no wonder they don’t believe it!”

Now, apply this same thought process to evolution. We look at our planet, apply the syntax rules for life as we know it today, and, behold, we find “perfect” strings of DNA that correspond to today’s life forms. However, what we don’t know is how many other strings of DNA might be “perfect” if we were to merely apply different syntax rules for life — syntax rules that might exist on other planets or that might have existed on our own planet in the past (including in places we have not yet looked, or in places that no longer exist because of geologic changes). By “syntax rules for life,” I mean things such as the climate, the atmospheric composition, the availability of food, the existence of predators, etc. Clearly, the fact that our planet, millions of years ago, supported many life forms that it does not support today indicates that the “syntax rules for life” on our planet have changed over time, so this idea has validity.

Why do I mention it? Because when creationists talk about the “improbability” of life as we see it today on our planet, they are applying a very narrow set of syntax rules (i.e., the ones that work for the species we see today), yet we know for a fact that these rules are too narrow to account for the full history of life on our planet. This is part of the reason why we must call their argument a straw man.

Why is it important for us to do so? Because at the moment when “life” first began on our planet — i.e., the moment when some molecule could perform metabolism, reproduction and adaptation — our planet’s climate and atmosphere were different (perhaps more conducive to the creation of life), there was no competition for “food,” and there were no predators around to destroy it, so its odds of survival would probably have been a lot higher than they might be today. In other words, perhaps just about any “syntax rule” would have enabled that first life form to be a “perfect copy” of something, simply because many syntax rules would have been possible. Going back to the “Library of Babel,” consider a book that has only one letter in it: for example, the letter “I.” Such a book would be relatively easy to generate “at random” from even a large collection of letters and it would be meaningful in many languages, because it would satisfy many different “syntax rules.” Likewise, perhaps the appearance of life on our planet was both relatively easy to generate “at random” from even a large collection of molecules and also had available to it a relatively wide range of viable “syntax rules for life” (i.e., more than exist today). In other words, perhaps life on our planet was not as improbable as the creationists would want us to believe. Give a million chimps a million typewriters, and a million years to write a book, and likely one of them would eventually type the letter that means something in some language.

Cheers!
Marc Holt

With this distinction in mind, let’s focus on creation. Did life arise on our planet because it was created by a supernatural being, or did it arise without such intervention? Creationists argue that life is exceedingly unlikely to have arisen without supernatural intervention; therefore, they claim supernatural intervention must have been involved.

This argument is rooted in the belief that life is exceedingly unlikely to have arisen without supernatural intervention. This is not necessarily a bad argument: even evolutionists acknowledge that life has apparently only been created once in the 4-billion-year history of our planet.

However, the argument misses some key points. First, we don’t know the minimum criteria for creating reproductive life. For all we know, reproductive life might be very easy to create — indeed, it might be sprouting up all over our universe — and our planet might just be a relatively poor environment for life to arise in. For all we know, our planet might not be unique in having life; it might be unique in having life that took such a long time to appear. For all we know, life might appear on other planets in a matter of thousands or millions of years and, thus, not be as unlikely as the creationists claim. Maybe life is very likely to occur “by accident” (without supernatural intervention) and only on our planet *appears* to be unlikely.

Second, we also don’t know how frequently life is created on our planet. Maybe life arises relatively often on our planet and we just don’t realize it, because the new life forms are quickly destroyed by the life forms that are already here. This isn’t far-fetched: existing life forms, having lived here for 4 billion years, would presumably be good at killing off invaders, especially some new life form that has never had to fight for its survival. Maybe life has appeared on earth only once in 4 billion years simply because subsequent creations were quickly killed by the “natives.” For all we know, a new life form might have been created just this afternoon, without supernatural intervention, in my laundry hamper, but maybe it won’t survive my next laundry day. Maybe this is why the creation of life appears to be a rare event on our planet.

Third, with many billions of galaxies in our universe, and many billions of stars in each galaxy, and many billions of years of elapsed time, there are many opportunities for life to arise “by accident.” Maybe our planet was simply one of the lucky ones where life arose. It is the same with, for example, state lotteries: just because only one person in a hundred million wins, it doesn’t mean supernatural intervention caused that person, against all odds, to win. He was simply lucky. It’s like when someone survives an airplane crash: regardless of the odds against their survival, it doesn’t demonstrate supernatural intervention, it simply demonstrates that very small odds of survival, when combined with a relatively large number of airplane crashes, will occasionally produce a survivor.

Issues like these need to be kept in mind when the “improbability” of life arising on our planet is used to support the creationist argument for supernatural intervention. We know so little about the actual odds, and about the other factors that impact the odds (e.g., the size of the universe of possible trials), that such arguments have little merit.