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Noted creation scientists Walter L. Bradley and Charles Thaxton, authors of The Mystery of Life’s Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, point out that the probability of assembling amino acid building blocks into a functional protein is approximately one chance in 4.9 X 10191.16 "Such improbabilities have led essentially all scientists who work in the field to reject random, accidental assembly or fortuitous good luck as an explanation for how life began."17 Now, if a figure as "small" as 5 chances in 10191 is referenced by such a statement, then what are we to make of the kinds of probabilities below that are infinitely less? The mind simply boggles at the remarkable faith of the materialist.

According to Coppedge, the probability of evolving a single protein molecule over 5 billion years is estimated at 1 chance in 10161. This even allows some 14 concessions to help it along which would not actually be present during evolution.18 Again, this is no chance.

Consider that the smallest theoretical cell is made up of 239 proteins. Further, at least 124 different types of proteins are needed for the cell to become a living thing. But the simplest known self-reproducing organisms is the H39 strain of PPLO (mycoplasma) containing 625 proteins with an average of 400 amino acids in each protein.

Yet the probability of the occurrence of the smallest theoretical life is only one chance in 10119,879 and the years required for it to evolve would be 10119,841 years or 10119,831 times the assumed age of the earth!19 The probability of this smallest theoretical cell of 239 proteins evolving without the needed 124 different types of proteins to make up a living cell, i.e., the chance of evolving this "helpless group of non-living molecules" in over 500 billion years is one chance in 10 119,701.20 Dr. David J. Rodabough, Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Missouri, estimated the more realistic chance that life would spontaneously generate (even on 1023 planets) as only one chance in 102,999,940.21

Whether we are talking about giving evolution every conceivable chance to evolve a single protein molecule or the smallest theoretical cell, the odds are still impossible.22

In the 1970s Sir Frederick Hoyle calculated the mathematical probability that a single bacterium could be spontaneously generated. He determined the chance of this occurring was 1 in 1040,000.

Hoyle confessed what most scientists are, strangely, unwilling to confess, "The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40 thousand naughts [zeros after it]. It is enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet or on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."23

In his book, Origins—A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, Robert Shapiro comments concerning the probabilities calculated by Morowitz, "The improbability involved in generating even one bacterium is so large that it reduces all considerations of time and space to nothingness. Given such odds, the time until the black holes evaporate and the space to the ends of the universe would make no difference at all. If we were to wait, we would truly be waiting for a miracle."25

Again, these numbers are unimaginable. That’s why even scientists don’t know what to do with them. Consider that a given individual’s chance of winning the state lottery is about one in ten million. The odds of winning each successive week involve the multiplication of probabilities so that the odds of winning the lottery every single week of your life from the age of 18 to 99, a period of 80 years, is 1 chance in 4.6 X 1029,120. In other words, it is infinitely more likely that you would win the lottery every week of your life consecutively, from the day you were born, without missing even one winning weekly ticket, for 80 years, than it is that we would have the spontaneous generation of a simple bacterium.26

Dr. Holroyd also discusses factorial numbers. A factorial number is a number that multiplies each successive number by the next number. So ten factorial would be to multiply 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8 X 9 X 10. Seventy factorial is around a googol (1.198 X 10100). Sir Arthur Eddington estimated the total number of electrons and protons in the entire universe as approximately 3.145 X 1079. This is infinitely less than 100 factorial, which equals 9.3 X 10157. But when it comes to evolution, we are not dealing with 100 factorial but millions X millions factorial. To illustrate, there are 5,000 fibers in the auditory nerve of man that may be connected to the brain in 5,000-factorial ways—and probably only one is correct. The optic nerve has about one million fibers, and these may be connected to the brain in one million factorial ways. The odds they could have been connected correctly by chance cannot even be written out longhand. Holroyd proceeds to show by several other examples how absurd belief in chance evolution is. He points out that the straight hydrocarbon chain C40H82 has about 6.25 X 1013 isomers. It would be impossible for the entire human race, working full time for four billion years, just to study all the isomers of this single organic molecule of no great size.28 (Yet it just happened to evolve by chance.) When we consider there are ten billion cells in the cerebral cortex, that there are several trillion nerve connections between cells in the brain, plus many other amazing factors, it becomes "preposterous beyond words" to believe that all this originated by chance: