One of the fundamental tenets of the evolutionary theory is that the first living cell was formed spontaneously, without the need for a creator of any kind. Now, when Darwin claimed that by "a happy chance" life started on prehistoric Earth, the science of the time was not aware of any of the incredible complexities that comprise even the simplest bacterium imaginable. After all, the simplest imaginable life form has to have at least 124 proteins which have, on the average, 124 amino acids in each one. These proteins are incredibly complicated, and the odds of a single one of them forming on it's own (even in a 100% amino acid soup) are extremely low (see http://theevolutionproblem.blogspot.in/2012/09/amino-acids.html). However, the evolutionary belief is that everything can happen, given enough time, and therefore life could have formed on it's own. But is this feasible? Could time, chance and nature manage to produce the incredibly complex structure that is a bacterium?
A bacterium, which is one of the simplest forms of life possible, is so complex that scientists are still trying to work out the motor that power that flagellum, and the chemical composition of the cytoplasm. However, there is a hypothetically possible creature simpler than this. The absolute minimum number of proteins a single-celled organism must have to function is 124. Each of this proteins is constructed, on the average, of roughly 400 amino acids. If even one of the amino acids is misplaced, the creature will most likely die (the dread sickle-cell disease, scourge of Africa, is caused by two misplaced amino acids among thousands). There are two types of amino acids - D and L. Both of them are almost precisely identical chemically, and yet only L amino acids are found in proteins, as they are the only type that will work biologically speaking. They can form proteins, but these proteins are worthless when it comes to constructing a creature. When amino acids are formed in the laboratory, there is an exact ratio of L and D amino acids. The odds of all the amino acids in one of the smaller strands of protein being L handed are pretty much the same as the odds of you flipping a coin 100 times and expecting it to come up heads every time.
Clearly this is ridiculously improbable, as the odds of this happening are around 1 over 10 power 32, which is 10 followed by 32 zeroes (if you didn't know that already). To put this in perspective, if I flipped the coin once a second, it would take me approximately 10^25 years. Considering that the upper age limit for the universe if around 10^10 years, this is clearly impossible. So, to recap, the odds of all the amino acids in a single protein is ridiculously small, and yet, despite the fact that amino acids have not been formed even in laboratory settings, despite the fact that amino acids are known to degrade in the open, despite all these facts, die-hard evolutionists still claim that somehow life could have formed. This mentality reminds me of the words of Saki:
A bacterium, which is one of the simplest forms of life possible, is so complex that scientists are still trying to work out the motor that power that flagellum, and the chemical composition of the cytoplasm. However, there is a hypothetically possible creature simpler than this. The absolute minimum number of proteins a single-celled organism must have to function is 124. Each of this proteins is constructed, on the average, of roughly 400 amino acids. If even one of the amino acids is misplaced, the creature will most likely die (the dread sickle-cell disease, scourge of Africa, is caused by two misplaced amino acids among thousands). There are two types of amino acids - D and L. Both of them are almost precisely identical chemically, and yet only L amino acids are found in proteins, as they are the only type that will work biologically speaking. They can form proteins, but these proteins are worthless when it comes to constructing a creature. When amino acids are formed in the laboratory, there is an exact ratio of L and D amino acids. The odds of all the amino acids in one of the smaller strands of protein being L handed are pretty much the same as the odds of you flipping a coin 100 times and expecting it to come up heads every time.
"Once you have taken the impossible into your calculations, its possibilities become practically limitless"
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