The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 6 of 14)

Why Not Goldwater : /p>

In his report on the Florida "educrats" attempt to introduce strict Darwinism in the school curricula, Ben Stein reminded me of the conversion by a noted French scientist and agnostic (whose name escapes me for the moment). This scientist calculated the probability of accidental formation of life in that Darwinian organic soup. He first postulated a very extremely simple living cell, consisting of only two kinds of molecules, say black and white (there are in reality many thousands of different molecules in a living cell); then he postulated that there are only 2000 such molecules necessary to produce such a living cell (a real living cell has millions of different types of molecules). In a further attempt to simplify this cellular structure, he assumed that an orderly line of one white and one black would be arranged in a line of only 1000 each of such molecules.

His question was as follows: a) how big would such an organic soup have to be to produce that simple living cell by chance mixing, and b) how long would it take. He calculated the following: it would take the entire known universe of some 10 to the power of 80 molecules, half white and half black, about 16 billion years which is the longest estimated age of the known universe, to produce such a simple living cell once.

His conclusion was that a spontaneous formation of that vastly simplified living cell in a vastly simplified universe was absolutely and definitely impossible. He then stated that anybody believing in a chance formation of life in the face of these mathematical facts must be totally insane.

p>Perhaps Ben Stein might be interested in these scientific facts. br> -- Marc Jeric /p> p> By its very definition, a "theory" is not a scientific fact, but rather a supposition to explain something otherwise unexplained. There is no doubt that the theory of evolution can sometimes explain how life has developed, but it cannot explain how life was created. The problem comes when someone tries to force the truth about the former to fit a theory about the latter. br> -- A. C. Santore /p>

Ben old bean, anybody can protest that "To my little pea brain, these are some pretty big issues about evolution, the origins of life, and genetics that Darwinism cannot answer." But being a lawyerly sort you know you risk getting sanctioned big time if you start pounding the table before you check to see if there are law books you can open to relevant precedent.

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