DNA by chance?

In the movie Dumb and Dumber Lloyd asks Mary what are the chances that they'll be together and the following clip shows what happens in the movie.



We laugh because we know she's telling him there is no chance.  This clip comes to mind when really examining the probability of DNA arising by chance.

My career area of expertise is computer information systems so I'm not a molecular biologist or a mathmetician.  I would say though that I have a very good lay understanding of these areas because of my interest in the subjects.  So I'll just try to summarize what the actual chances are of a cell forming by chance and random variation.  See my previous post on what DNA is and how it works.

Proteins are the machines in the body that make life tick.  Let's take a short functioning protein of a chain of 150 amino acids.  I'll spare you all the math behind it but it can be referenced in the book I give below.  The odds of getting one functional protein in a chain of 150 amino acids from the prebiotic soup (the chemical condition that would have existed for proteins to form by chance) is no better than 1 in 10¹⁶⁴.  How big is that number? 

1016	Seconds since the Big Bang
1065	Atoms in our galaxy
1080	Protons, electrons, and neutrons in the observable universe
10139	Number of possible events that could have taken place in the observable universe since the Big Bang

However there's more.  The 1 in 10¹⁶⁴ chance is just the probably of one protein being formed.  A cell is made up of many proteins.  A "simple" cell needs at least 250 proteins each made up of at least a chain of 150 amino acids.  To get the probability of the most simple cell being created by chance and random variation you multiple that out and get a 1 in 10^41,000 chance.  That number is really not even comprehensible.  It's certainly a lot less than a 1 in million chance.

It would be like sitting down to play poker against someone and every hand they had a royal flush.  One, you'd expect.  Two in a row you'd be amazed.  Three in a row and you'd be highly suspicious and four in a row you'd know it was fixed.  This chance is way more than 4 royal flushes in a row.  So why is it that some scientists still cling to chance as the cause for life?  Well, the truth is more and more non-theistic (agnostic or atheistic) scientists are doubting the chance explanation.  However, in spite of the actual data and facts there are still many who hold on to chance as being the explanation for life.  Because the facts and science don't actually support chance as being the best explanation for the origin of life there has to be something else at play here.  What is it? Whatever it is it's certainly not because science supports it as being the best or even a good explanation.

So we can take confidence in a position of intelligent design as being not only a reasonable explanation given the facts, science, and evidence but we can take confidence in it being the best explanation.  Many would have you believe that intelligent design is not science or can't be supported by science.  Take another look at the probability of chance explaining our existence.  You can't look at that and say objectively that ID isn't a better option than chance.

I've done a lot of summarizing for these numbers and the details can be found in the book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design which also has extensive bibliography to site the references for the calculations in Chapter 8 and 9.  If nothing else you should take away that the rhetoric about ID not being scientific or supported by science is just plain false and likely uninformed.