A man stands on a stage. In his two cupped hands are two hundred U.S. dimes. The dimes are numbered 1 thru 200. Behind him on the stage are two hundred randomly scattered empty wine bottles. The bottles are numbered 1 – 200. A dime will just fit into the opening of the bottle. At the signal the man swings his hands up and hurls the dimes over his head towards the bottles behind him.
Question; How many dimes will land in a bottle?
Me; none
You; ?
Evolution; all of them
Question; How many dimes will land in the bottle with its matching number?
Me; none
You; ?
Evolution; all of them
Question; is it possible for the dimes to all go in their matching bottles in sequence – i.e. – dime one into bottle one, dime two into bottle two– untill the last sound you hear is dime 200 hitting the bottom of bottle 200 ?
Me; fall out of chair in a fit of helpless laughter
You; distracted by man rolling on floor
Evolution; absolutely – it’ll happen every time.
If you take this little mental exercise and expand it a thousand fold, you will begin to approach the degree of impossibility of life beginning from nothing.
In Charles Darwin’s day the understanding of the simplest form of life, the single cell, was that it was about as complex as a ping-pong ball; it had an outside and an inside, and a few bits of something inside. A hundred and fifty years of research with ever more powerful equipment has revealed to us a degree of complexity in the single cell that would have sent Darwin back to the seminary a much humbler student. Darwin can be forgiven his ignorance, we cannot.
Life cannot come from non life. The belief that it could was only possible because of an almost complete ignorance of the nature of genes and the staggeringly complex code contained in them. The simple exercise above provides a feeble example of the difficulty involved in just assembling the elements and compounds necessary to build the most elemental life form we know of , the cell. There is no natural process in the universe that cannot be replicated to some degree in the laboratory. save this one, the generation of life. The greatest rewards that mankind can offer await the man who can do it. The best minds that human beings can produce have failed at it, some after lifetimes devoted to the attempt.
Evolution asks us to believe that the universe around us is structured in such a way that it’s not only possible that all of the dimes will go into the right bottle in the right sequence, but that it is imperative. We are not asked to believe this because the evidence shows it to be true but because the evolutionists cannot or will not accept the consequences of it not being true.
Some – Force – Thing – Being – – God , that is not the product of this existence; that is outside of this realm, caused these things to happen. It would be a good idea to find out what we can about Him and what He expects of us.
thelastminstrel 
unfortunately, i can’t seem to grasp what is being criticized by this analogy. is it the abiogenesis (living coming from a non-living) or the likelihood of mutations?
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The difficulties of Abiogenesis is the primary subject of this post. I was trying to find an analogy that would show the impossibly long odds of the right components, in the correct sequence, coming together by chance to generate life.
Mutations are a common occurence in all life forms. What evolution requires on the other hand is a very specific kind of mutation that has not been observed in nature. In order for the Darwinian model to be viable mutations that ADD IMFORMATION to the genetic code should be as common as sand on a beach; there should be millions of examples of such mutations in nature; there are not. Information is either lost or rearanged, but never added.
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“This is a fabulous analogy”
It’s a fabulous analogy only if you don’t understand evolution.
‘The theory of evolution by natural selection’ has a clue in its name as to how its not random. It is selective.
The random component is the occurrence of mutations (which is what, over the long-run, generates substantial change).
However, random inputs does not mean random outputs – the entire point of natural selection is that genes which better equip an organism to survive in a particular environment will, in the long-run, become more common as its better surviving hosts get to have more offspring. These genes (and the changes they make at the higher/phenotypic levels) are thus “selected” in a completely non-random way.
The analogy also completely overlooks that evolution (once again … clue is in the word) is a series of small cumulative changes, whereas the analogy seems to imply that all evolutionary progress is completely independent.
Re. non-life springing from life – the exact process is not yet understood, but Miller and Urey demonstrated that organic components can spring from inorganic ones. It’s a start. Regardless, whether abiogenesis (life created “from nothing”) happened or not is completely separate from whether evolution by natural selection is the best explanation for what we see in the world.
However you cut it – the analogy is terrible.
If you dislike evolution by natural selection because it clashes with your theological beliefs – fine, that’s your prerogative. Please don’t dress up your disagreement as being somehow rational when you don’t seem to actually understand what evolution by natural selection actually is.
It wouldn’t hurt to bear in mind that both the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury are fully supportive of it …
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(once again … clue is in the word)
As much as people like to think so, ‘organic’ is not a magic word, it simply means carbon based; charcoal brickets are ‘organic’, and while they can do marvelous things to formerly living matter, they cannot , of themselves, generate new ones.
Genetic Mutation, or , if we use the term it is most commonly known by; birth defects; always result in a loss of information that , over time, reduces the available genetic information and therefore the genetic flexibility in a species, eventually leading to its extinction. There has NEVER been a genetic mutation observed that led to an increase in information, something that the evolutionary model REQUIRES to be viable.
Virtually all that we have learned about DNA and the gene in the last hundred years points to the rigidity of the genetic code. The smallest variation in the transfer of genetic material from parent to offspring has been shown to be “Relentlessly Fatal”
Evolution requires that ‘Beneficial Mutation’, or additions to the genes information, be so common that they couldn’t possibly be missed by the most incompetant researcher. There should be millions of examples to point to, there are none.
To say that they will happen ‘over time’, is begging the question.
My ‘theological beliefs’ do not affect the absense of a workable Evolutionary model.
Evolution says that the universe is so structured that simplicity over time becomes more complex; The world that you and I walk around in, with or without a ‘Theology’ teaches us with a relentless consistancy that the complex simplifies over time. The Darwinist boasts that he can explain all that is; the universe that I see tells me that he cannot even guess at all that is.
“The world is more than you know”
As for the Pope and Archbishop, it won’t be the first time they have been wrong, or the last.
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Loved the analogy and the thought process
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I propose that we stop using the word “evolution” as a scientific term and use it for what it literally means. The evolution of fashion, for instance, just means the changing of fashion over time.
To me “the evolution of man” doesn’t mean that I believe something came from nothing – it means that men used to live in mud huts and now we live in modern housing with electricity, drive automobiles and eat fast food. That is an evolution that actually occurred.
In other words, “evolution” is not a dirty word that we can’t use for anything. We just need to use it properly – descriptively – to refer to “a change that occurs over time”. Using it to describe an almost religious belief of science is an inappropriate use of what is otherwise a decent word.
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This is a fabulous analogy. Sharing. . .
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