I read a fascinating article by Nick Longrich in RealClear Science1 recently on the reasons for why we may be the only intelligent life in the universe. In making his case, he cites seven “unlikely innovations” in the evolutionary chain that are required for the appearance of intelligent life:
- the origin of life
- photosynthesis
- complex cells
- sex
- complex animals
- skeletons
- intelligence itself
He calls each of these steps in the evolutionary chain “bottlenecks,” in the sense that they are highly complex adaptations that have happened only once in what he and other evolutionists say is the 4.5 billion year history of the earth. Therefore, he points out, they are extremely rare. “These one-off innovations,” Longrich writes, “may create a chain of evolutionary bottlenecks or filters. If so, our evolution wasn’t like winning the lottery. It was like winning the lottery again, and again, and again.” And, I might add, again, and again, and again, and again.
He goes on to estimate that if the chance of each of these seven individual “critical flukes” happening is 1%, then the chance of all seven of them happening in consecutive order so that intelligent life could appear is one in 100 trillion.
But my response is, really? One percent? He really wants me to think that the chance of life evolving out of non-life during the history of the earth is one in one hundred? And he wants me to do the same for all of the other six unlikely “bottlenecks”? He cites no scientific evidence for those odds. A one percent chance of each of these things happening seems to me to be incredibly generous. But even with his generous assumptions, he still comes up with a figure of only one in 100 trillion chance for intelligent life to appear.
And then, to top it off, he ends his paper with a classic case of circular reasoning: we’re here and we have evolved, so we know that it’s happened at least once in the universe. “Earth’s history must have allowed intelligent life to evolve, or we wouldn’t be here to ponder it,” he says.
As a man of faith, I know faith when I see it. And Nick Longrich is someone who, quite literally against all odds, has a rock solid faith in evolution.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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- “Evolution Tells We Might Be the Only Intelligent Life,” by Nick Longrich, RealClear Science.
