Changes

Taking the second step of the Explanatory Filter, if necessity can’t explain a pattern, such as the patterns in DNA, then perhaps chance can explain it.  Perhaps random assortments of chemicals came together to produce the first messages of life, for example.  After life got started, maybe random mutations in the initial messages would occasionally generate positive functional novelty that would be embraced by the environment.  Is 4 billion years enough time for a chance process to turn rocks into intelligent beings that have the capacity to use them for a purpose?  

Taking the second step of the Explanatory Filter, if necessity can’t explain a pattern, such as the patterns in DNA, then perhaps chance can explain it.  Perhaps random assortments of chemicals came together to produce the first messages of life, for example.  After life got started, maybe random mutations in the initial messages would occasionally generate positive functional novelty that would be embraced by the environment.  Is 4 billion years enough time for a chance process to turn rocks into intelligent beings that have the capacity to use them for a purpose?  

Calculating the odds is not always easy because one cannot always know all the steps necessary to get from point A to point B – to get from no life to life.  Darwin could not even look into the cell, much less count the steps, the number of times matter would have to be precisely stopped and started to get life.  Also, the possible alternatives at each step are not easy to ascertain.  A calculation of probability requires one to divide a particular outcome (e.g., heads in a coin flip), by the number of possible different outcomes (two – heads or tails), times the number of opportunities for the outcome to occur (the number of flips available).  If a stadium is filled with 10,000 flippers, we would expect about five flippers to get ten heads in a row, the odds of which are 1 over 2,048.  This is because 10,000 times 1/2048 is 4.88.  But what if one needed 500 heads in a row, or a very specific sequence of 500 heads and tails or zeros and ones?  How many people would one need in the stadium?  How many monkeys banging away at typewriters could be expected to generate the first sentence of the Gettsyburg address?

Calculating the odds is not always easy because one cannot always know all the steps necessary to get from point A to point B – to get from no life to life.  Darwin could not even look into the cell, much less count the steps, the number of times matter would have to be precisely stopped and started to get life.  Also, the possible alternatives at each step are not easy to ascertain.  A calculation of probability requires one to divide a particular outcome (e.g., heads in a coin flip), by the number of possible different outcomes (two – heads or tails), times the number of opportunities for the outcome to occur (the number of flips available).  If a stadium is filled with 10,000 flippers, we would expect about five flippers to get ten heads in a row, the odds of which are 1 over 2,048.  This is because 10,000 times 1/2048 is 4.88.  But what if one needed 500 heads in a row, or a very specific sequence of 500 heads and tails or zeros and ones?  How many people would one need in the stadium?  How many monkeys banging away at typewriters could be expected to generate the first sentence of the Gettysburg address?

The answer to this question reveals a key problem with the chance hypothesis.  A sequence that is actually not very long exhausts the universe's available probability resources very quickly.  The reason is that probability decreases exponentially as complexity increases only incrementally.  Add two digits to the state lottery and no one would ever win.   

The answer to this question reveals a key problem with the chance hypothesis.  A sequence that is actually not very long exhausts the universe's available probability resources very quickly.  The reason is that probability decreases exponentially as complexity increases only incrementally.  Add two digits to the state lottery and no one would ever win.