(Dis)Proving Evolution

 I created a series of posts on the topic of (Dis)Proving God quite some time ago. I believe I need give a similar exploration of evolution now.

I believe it is necessary to consider the concept of evolution in two separate categories:

1. Evolution as a mechanism utilizing natural (or artificial) selection to alter the characteristics of a living organism.

2. Evolution as the origin of life.

In the case of the former, this has been quite clearly observed and documented. The peppered moth is a key example of this. The moth was largely white in color with black spotting, which worked well as camouflage against lichen covered tree trunks. There were of course mutant variations of the moth which had less white and more black. They were easy prey for birds, however, thus rarely survived to procreate. 

As we humans constructed cities, and burned wood and coal to keep ourselves warm, we introduced pollution which blackened the nearby trees. Suddenly it was the black moths, not the white ones which had the advantage. Their numbers rose, while the population of white moths declined. 

We humans have been using this evolutionary process to our advantage for millennia now. We have carefully selected and breed dogs for specific characteristics. We manipulated evolution to create dog breeds specifically suited to heard and guard grazing animals. We created breeds to pull sleds or wagons, breeds to retrieve small game. Breeds to hunt and kill small rodents in and around our homes. Breeds to protect our families from potential threats.

We have manipulated various vegetation, selecting for sweeter, hardier, more visually appealing characteristics. Many of today's vegetables would be unrecognizable to those who first used them.

Evolution is a clearly observed mechanism. Only an utter fool would argue against it at this point.

What is not entirely clear is whether this scales beyond altering characteristics within a species. Certainly, it is reasonable to conclude that a new type of animal can be created through this process. I use the Mule (a cross between a horse and a donkey) and the Liger (a cross between a Lion and a Tiger) as observed examples of this. And though ligers are usually sterile, there have been instances where they have produced offspring.

It is notable a Liger is still a cat. We haven't observed the creation - through natural or artificial selection - of a 'cog' for instance (a hypothetical cross between a cat and a dog, though some might point to the fox...). 

There are two possible arguments to rebut this however:

1. Such drastic evolution takes more time than human history has yet had to observe. (i.e. men evolved from monkeys over millions of years)

2. Such drastic evolution does not directly occur; rather two different mutations in two different surviving species of a primitive organism lead to the two entirely different creatures. (i.e. men and monkeys both evolved from the same origin ancestor [a frog? an amoeba?]  over billions or trillions of years)

Each of these is a potentially viable possibility, based on what we have observed within natural selection. Or perhaps better stated, it is not an unreasonable theory to propose, based on what we have observed. Certainly not one which can be summarily discarded.

There is still that question of the first spark, the initial origin of life.

Now this one is arguably problematic for both evolution and intelligent design. If you are going to posit the question, "where did the first living thing come from?" it is equally fair to ask the question "Where did God come from?" And if you are willing to accept that God just always existed, why then is it not equally acceptable to claim the first living organism always existed?

(Perhaps my mind is simply too fettered by its finite limitations, but to me, both seem improbable).

But setting that aside for the moment, let's just consider this universe as something which came into existence. "Bang", and there it was. Either it did so because some external, intelligent entity acted upon it (perhaps even utilizing artificial selection to evolve it), or it did so through random chance.

There is a thought experiment which posits the argument, if you have an infinite number of monkeys banging away on an infinite number of typewriters, one of them will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. That is fundamentally what is at the heart of the random chance argument.

That is a probability problem. What is the likelihood of such an occurrence happening?

Just a quick probability primer: If you flip a coin, for instance, you have a 1 in 2 chance of it landing on heads.

If you flip two coins at the same time, you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting one heads and one tails. But only a 1 in 4 chance of getting two heads or two tails. See the table of possible outcomes below.

So let's examine the monkey-Shakespeare problem in light of probability.

First, we'll adjust the odds in the monkeys favor. Well ignore spaces, punctuation, and capitalization. In other words, we are only going to deal with the lower case letters, therefore the odds of our monkey banging on the typewriter and getting the first letter correct is one in twenty-six. (assuming the  odds of hitting every key is the same, which it is not. That further reduces our chances, so again, arguing in favor of the monkeys, we'll ignore that.)

The first word in the synopsis of Hamlet is "on". The odds of our monkey typing that is 1/26 * 1/26  or one in 676. ignoring the space, the next word is "the" the odds of our monkey getting the first two words correct is one in eleven-million (actually, closer to one in twelve-million).

just going from two character correct, to five characters correct changes the probability from one in 676 to one in twelve-million. adding just the next letter of the next word jumps the odds to one in 300 million! Do you see how rapidly the odds of this actually occurring are dropping?

There are roughly 8000 characters in Act I, Scene I of Hamlet.

There are in total 20 scenes spread across 5 acts.

The odds of a monkey randomly producing that are astronomical, not even bothering to consider the nine other tragedies and seventeen comedies Shakespeare wrote, not to mention all the Sonnets and other works.

The probability of that occurring is a number too infinitesimally small for us to even wrap our heads around.

The number of characters in all of Shakespeare's works pales in comparison to the number of atoms in a single cell (Scientists estimate there are on average 100 trillion atoms in a single cell). 

Now the number of different types of atoms in a single celled organism is a smaller list than the number of characters in the alphabet, so that helps some. However there are a number of other conditions which would also necessarily have to be met.

There would need to be a mass of appropriate materials, of sufficient size to produce an appropriate gravitational field. This  mass would need to be an appropriate distance from - and orbiting - a source of heat and light sufficient to support said lifeform. Said mass would also have to have a correct orientation and spin direction and speed to avoid one side being a furnace, and the other an ice cube.

Oh, and since cells tend to have short lifespans (an amoeba's average life span is two days.) The aforementioned 100 trillion cells must coalesce in a very precise window of time, and then successfully obtain sufficient energy and mass to replicate itself before it is killed by the wildly unreliable environment in which it lives.

There are a number of other factors one must consider, but I believe the above is sufficient to make the point, the likelihood of life randomly, spontaneously occurring is extremely unlikely. Not impossible, perhaps, but absurdly improbable. Certainly small enough to be considered a statistical impossibility.

It is quite frankly more reasonable to assume the intervention of an intelligence in the process, than it is to believe in blind, random chance.