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In 1859, Charles Darwin changed how people viewed themselves and their place in the universe by setting forth his theory of evolution in his famous work, On the Origin of Species. Darwin proposed that all living creatures, including man, are descendants of some ancient primordial form of life that developed and differentiated through a selection mechanism. Darwin theorized that mutations occur within any given species, creating slight changes over time.
Most often, these mutations are not beneficial and are not passed on to the next generation, while other mutations are deemed detrimental and are therefore considered a hindrance. On rare occasions, however, these mutations do provide an advantage to the species, and it is the natural selection of these advantageous traits that Darwin termed natural selection. In his own words, he wrote, “I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.”
According to Darwin, natural selection becomes the driving force behind simple primordial species becoming more and more advanced through successive generations, eventually evolving into completely different and new species altogether. This is how Darwin proposed man’s descent from a gooey blob in a warm little pond over thousands of generations. However, it is important to note that the key to Darwinian evolution is time; lots of it! Evolutionists argue that given enough time, almost anything is possible, including the evolution of human beings. The probabilities, it is argued, are endless—given enough time.
The concept of endless probability has long been a topic of deep contemplation and has, perhaps, been best asserted by the thought experiment known as The Infinite Monkey Theorem, which states that, given an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of typewriters over an infinite amount of time could produce the entire works of Shakespeare. Given the duration of infinity, I am quite convinced that this is theoretically true. Mathematics tells as much. Given a typewriter with, say, 30 keys, the probability of a monkey typing out the first letter of the word “bananas” would be 1/30.
The probability of the second letter would be 1/30 as well, and so on for all seven letters. And yet the probability of all seven letters together, in order, is incredibly small. Even so, over the course of infinite time, one monkey would surely type the word “bananas.” Not only that, but given an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite amount of time, there is the probability that one of those monkeys would type out the complete works of Shakespeare, regardless of how much time it took. The probability of this occurring is difficult to express because of the very nature of infinity.
Regardless, it can be said that there is certainly the mathematical probability that it will occur; it is, in fact, a long-established eventual certainty. The evolutionist argues that natural selection probabilities work similarly; over a long enough time, human beings could have evolved from a warm, gooey pond into the likes of Albert Einstein.
However, this is not an accurate assessment, given the incomprehensible difference between a hypothetical infinite world and the reality of the finite world in which we live. From modern discoveries in cosmology, scientists know, for several reasons, that the universe did indeed have a beginning and that beginning was the beginning of time itself. Likewise, there is not an infinite number of monkeys existing in this world, nor an infinite number of typewriters for all of then to use. Rather than these things being infinite as suggested by the Infinite Monkey Theorem, everything in this world is in fact, finite: monkeys, typewriters, time, etc. That, of course, changes everything.
Given the finitude of the real world, an accurate mathematical calculation of the probability of a finite number of monkeys typing for a finite amount of time past and producing the works of Shakespeare can be calculated. According to a recent article by Australian mathematicians Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta, given a typewriter with 30 keys, a single monkey has a 5 percent chance of typing the word “bananas” within its own lifetime. However, typing the word “bananas” is not of the same magnitude as the evolution of an amoeba to, say, Einstein. Typing the entire works of Shakespeare from creation forward to the heat death of the universe is much more comparable.
To this point, Woodcock and Falletta report that “all but the most trivial of phrases will, in fact, almost certainly never be produced during the lifespan of our universe.” Sure enough, the mathematicians concluded that the probability of the reproduction of the entire 884,647-word works of Shakespeare from 200,000 monkeys in “a googol of years” is 1 in 6.4 X 107448254 — “it may as well be zero.” Undoubtedly, the odds are 1 in 6.4 with 7.4 million zeros after it!!! Even a monkey would tell you, “It ain’t happening.”
Nonetheless, and this is the point of the exercise, the study demonstrates that the famous Infinite Monkey Theorem, though intellectually stimulating, is not applicable in a finite universe. By the same logic, this means that evolutionists claiming that human beings evolved from gooey pond water over millions of years is statistically near impossible and incredibly misleading. You might even say: “It ain’t happening!” Join us again next week as we continue to attend the question, “Is God dead?”
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife, Vicki, are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore, OK. You can contact him at [email protected].
