A common criticism of abiogenesis is the alleged improbability of life developing by natural means. Often cited is Sir Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer and mathematician, who calculated the odds at 1 in 10 to the 40,000 power against the proteins serving as enzymes in a cell all forming by chance. Is this a valid argument against life developing naturally?
The first problem is that we aren't told where this number comes from. Without a source, it is impossible to evaluate the claim. As an example of how problematic these numbers must be, let’s take a look at something simpler: dice.
To figure out how likely a rolled die (assuming it is not loaded) will come up on any one side, you have to know how many sides there are — you need to know how many different, equally probable, possibilities exist. If there are 6 sides, the chance of any one side is 1 in 6. Hoyle's calculation states 1 in 10 to the 40,000 power, which indicates a 10 to the 40,000 different, equally probable possibilities.
Where did this number come from? It is made up. It is impossible to know how many possible combinations existed at the time when life would have formed and that means it is impossible to calculate the odds. Statisticians understand this.
Then there is that tricky phrase “equally probable.” If the die is “loaded,” not all sides are equally probable. Many, if not most, things in nature are “loaded.” Hold a ball in the air: how many possible directions are there for it to travel once you let go? Perhaps an infinite number. Are they all equally probable? No, only one is probable: down.
Chemical process are also “loaded.” Given certain conditions, some results are more likely than others. Did the people offering/making the calculations take this into account? There is no evidence of that; if by some miracle they did, do they have good evidence to know what, exactly, the more probable results might have been and why? Not that I’ve ever seen.
Furthermore, the calculation involves many complex molecules forming all at once. Who said they did? Most biologists realize that this sort of thing develops slowly, bit by bit. Evolution is about organic matter developing gradually, not all at once. It is creationists who postulate living matter arising instantly at the behest of their deity.
In addition, the number of attempts is completely ignored. If I have a 6-sided die and roll it 6 times, I have a good chance of getting #5. If 6 people roll a die once, we have a good chance of getting at least one #5. If there are a gazillion places on the planet where molecules are forming up, the chances of getting a good, protein-producing formation, is pretty good that day. It's a simple fact of statistics that as the number of opportunities for an event to occur increase, the chance for even a highly improbable event become a virtual certainty.
Finally, if every possibility is equally likely, then every possibility is also equally unlikely. The formation of a protein molecule, then, is not more unlikely than any single instance of a non-formation. It isn’t more unlikely simply because the results were good for us.
Thus, if the attempted assembly only happened once, there had to be some result — and the protein-forming result is just as likely as any other. Some number has to win the lottery — the fact that protein won that lottery isn’t any great mystery. If you buy a lottery ticket and your chances are one in a million — and you win — is it an Act of God? No, just good fortune...for you. Bad fortune for the others. That’s how you’d expect things in a non-created universe.
If you have a deck of shuffled cards in front of you and draw five from the top, the odds against any combination of five are equal — no matter what the combination is. Drawing a royal flush might seem supernatural to people with a superstitious mind, but only because of our subjective preferences for it. Just because an outcome is favorable to us doesn’t mean that it cannot have purely naturalistic origins.
As a matter of fact, we can easily use the same creationist arguments to “prove” that none of us should exist. Each of us is the product of the union of one of some billions and billions of spermatozoa produced by our fathers and one of many ova (eggs) produced by our mothers. What then are the odds against any one sperm combining with any on egg, thus making us? We can increase this number by including similar calculations of the odds against the conception of our parents, and their parents, their parents’ parents, and so on. By multiplying them all out, the numbers we’d produce would be beyond belief.
Yet here we are. We exist.
Although the odds against a particular sperm & egg combination are incredible, the odds against some sperm & egg combination are not. Similarly, the odds against living things today being just as they are high, but the odds against some kind of living thing arising by natural processes may not be.
