Evolution and Randomness
In our world today, evolution is presented as a random occurence which follows the rules of survival of the fittest. Evolution assumes, like all of science, that there is no consciousness involved. It is simply random mutations that lead to complexity.
Many people have a hard time with this idea. How could something as marvelous as the human being come from random reactions between atoms? The more I think about this, the more I wonder how this is possible. If our Universe is 12 billion years old, give or take a million years, then how many chemical interactions have happened so far?
In 12 billion years there have been 4,380 billion days, 10,512 billion hours, 63,072 billion minutes and 378,432 billion seconds. Most scientists agree that in an excited state atoms will react with one another about a billion times per second. Using this information it is safe to say that every atom in our Universe has reacted somewhere in the region of 3.7 x 1026 times.
Now, let us look at our DNA. A human has 2.9 billion base pairs of DNA in their genome. Each base pair is roughly 60 atoms in size. That means that a molecule of DNA is composed of roughly 174 billion atoms. There seem to be 118 different types of atoms in our Universe. For those 118 atoms to combine themselves in a way that would represent the DNA of a Human they must combine in a particular order. DNA is like a language, and if there is a typo, the meaning is lost. In order for a human to form, the atoms must arrange themselves in a way that is very precise. There is only 0.01% variation in the genetic code between different Humans. And this variation is still expressed as DNA. The number of actual atoms that could change position is much smaller. The percentage of variation in the atomic order of a human being is 0.00000000000001%. So for the ease of this arguement, lets just assume that all humans are essentially composed of the same genetic code.
The number of combinations of the 118 atoms that exist in this universe is quite astounding. Especially when the molecule in question is 174 billion atoms long. There are literally 3.217 x 10360,500,000,000 different combinations! For those of you that are not great with math, that number means that you have 3217 and then add 360,500,000,000 zero’s to the end of it. An absolutely massive number with no real way to imagine it!
So, if we believe that evolution is random then we must agree that in the last 12 billion years an atom has had 3.7 x 1026 chances to become DNA. But there are 3.217 x 10360,500,000,000 different combinations of atoms that are not DNA. These numbers are not even similar. It would seem the chance of human DNA arriving by randomness is almost an absurdity.
3.217 x 10360,500,000,000 possible combinations of atoms to create a molecule of Human DNA.
3.7 x 1026 possible number of reactions an atom can undergo in 12 billion years.
3 x 1023 solar systems in our Universe.
1.33 x1054 atoms per solar system.
3.99 x 1077 atoms in our Universe. Assuming each atom reacts the maximum number of times there will be
1.48 x 10104 possible reactions that could have occured in our Universe in the last 12 biliion years.
So if we take the number of combinations of atoms that could be used to create a single molecule of DNA and then divide it by the number of possible reactions between all of the atoms in our Universe during the entire length of time that our Universe is known to have existed we can find the likelihood that a group of atoms would turn into Human DNA by chance.
3.217 x 10360,500,000,000 possible combinations of atoms to create a molecule of Human DNA divided by 1.48 x 10104 possible reactions in time gives us a 1 in 2.173 x 10360,499,999,895
This means that a molecule of Human DNA has 1 chance in 273000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000….. and onwards for another 359 billion zero’s or so.
So, evolution through randomness simply could not have happened yet. There has not been enough time to even consider that this is a possibility. Evolution must have had some conscious driving force to help it arrive at the complexity it has in such an incredibly short amount of time.
Or else we have been incredibly lucky.
