What the Theory of Evolution Says 

Scientists can calculate the probabilities of certain biological changes occurring over a given time.  Evolutionists assume there was enough time (4.5 billion years) to originate pre-biological life and to evolve complex life from the first living cell. 

They think lifeless chemicals were somehow changed into life according to chemical laws that we can observe today.  They propose that small molecules combined to form larger molecules which organized themselves into a one-celled living organism.  But, this simple self-replicating organism (requiring dozens of molecules) would be extremely difficult to assemble by natural process.  While evolutionary biology is not very quantitive, some laws of chemistry and genetics can be expressed in the form of equations which provide probability of change over time.  This means that scientists can estimate the amount of time it would take to originate a single cell and the time needed to evolve complex life forms from it.
 

What Evolutionists Say We Ought to See 

If life originated from chemicals by chance, then under laboratory conditions, we should be able to see chemicals changing into living organisms today.  Mathematics should be able to show with reasonable probability that there is adequate time for chemicals to combine to produce life and cause complex life forms to arise from “primordial soup.”  If some event, such as a specific mutation in a DNA molecule has a mathematical probability greater than zero, the chance that it will occur increases by time.  (Similarly, your chances of having a bicycle accident increase with the amount of time you spend on a bike.)  Even if the probability of occurrence is extremely small, it can happen, given enough time.  Scientists were elated in 1952 when Stanley Miller showed that two organic molecules (such as amino acids, the building blocks of proteins) form when a mixture of simple gasses is exposed to a spark source of energy.  The hope that these molecules would accumulate into a rich organic “soup” that would produce life was dashed by decades of subsequent research showing the strong improbability of this soup-to-life theory.

What We Actually Observe in Nature 

Scientist show that the probability of complex life (such as plants and animals on earth) evolving by Darwin’s evolutionary model is extremely small, zero statistically.  According to most mathematical calculations, a universe 100 billion years old is still not old enough for a simple single cell to have developed on earth.  Even attempts to synthesize RNA, an information carrying molecule, in the laboratory have also been unsuccessful.  Life has not been explained through chemical origins.

Harold Morowitz, a biophysicist, compared the number of interactions needed to randomly produce a living cell with the number of interactions available since the beginning of the universe.  The mathematical probabilities are so small that we ought to see no life at all at this stage of the earth’s history.  The probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is also too small to consider possible.  Random assembly is therefore ruled out of the question.

Hoyle comments, “The current scenario of the origins of life is about as likely as the assembly of a fully functional (Boeing) 747 by a tornado whirling about in a junkyard.”  The Darwinian theory of evolution fails to predict what we actually currently observe.  Schutzenberger, a mathematician writes, “There is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe the gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged by the current conception of biology.  

What Scientists Say 

Hubert Yuckey, an information theorist, argues that the information needed to begin life could not have developed by chance; he suggests that life be considered a given “quantity,” like matter or energy.  He and some other mathematicians have challenged evolutionary biologists with the extreme improbability of the origin of life by chance chemical reactions, and of the improbability of the origin of all known species by random mutations.  If the real “units of life” are bits of information (that is, the messages coded on DNA rather than the DNA molecule itself), evolutionary biology may take quite a different turn in the future.

A very mathematical “information theory” has been developed to solve problems in storing and transmitting information, as do computers and telecommunication systems.  Some scientists are applying information theory to help unravel certain unsolved problems in biology, such as prebiological selection, similar in concept to the biological natural selection of Darwinism.  They are also studying the self-organized properties of complex chemical systems, and searching for ways to reduce the minimum complexity needed for life.  The goal is to find a sensible plausible theory to explain the origin of life.  Nobel Laureate Francis Crick writes, “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have been satisfied to get it going.” 

ON MATHEMATICAL PROBABILITY: "Life cannot have had a random beginning... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 to the 20th) to the 2,000th = 10 to the 40,000th, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup" (Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space [Aldine House, 33 Welbeck Street, London W1M 8LX: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981).

Explanation Offered by Creationists 

Creationists agree with scientists and mathematicians that the formation of life through evolution is extremely impossible, in fact, statistically impossible.  Creationists believe that God is the author of the whole universe and also of the messages written on the DNA molecules of all living things.

How did those DNA messages get there in the first place?  Some scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers are working on a theory of “intelligent design” (ID) claiming that the first life was designed and could not have been produced by an unintelligent naturalistic process.  Most proponents of ID think “God did it” but do not include this claim in their theories.  Scientific evidence for an intelligent designer is discussed by J. P. Moreland and others.  They are trying to find new ways to explore the origin and transformation of biological information, believing firmly that God is the ultimate source of the information. 

The Bible states, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which were seen were not made of things that do appear.” (Hebrews 11:3) and, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” (Revelation 4:11) 

It takes more faith to struggle with the forced supposition of evolution than it does to recognize the amazing intricacy of life joined with a fathomless balance of nature and admit that it could not have happened by chance.  In what have you placed your faith and why?