God Arises
The Challenge of The Qur’an
~ 325 ~
As Fred Hoyle puts it, in
The intelligent Universe:
Just how excruciatingly slowly genetic information
accumulates by trial and error can be seen from a
simple
example.
Let
us
suppose
very
conservatively, that a particular protein is coded by
a tiny segment in the DNA blueprint, just ten of the
chemical links in its double helix. Without all ten
links being in the correct sequence, the protein from
the DNA doesn’t work. Starting with all the ten
wrong, how many generations of copying must
elapse before all the links—and hence the protein—
come right through random errors? The answer is
easily calculated from the rate at which the DNA
links are miscopied, a figure which has been
established by experiment.
“To obtain the correct sequence of ten links by
miscopying, the DNA would have to reproduce
itself on an average, about a hundred thousand
billion times! Even if there were a hundred million
members of the species all producing offspring, it
would still take million generations before even a
single member came up with the required
rearrangement. And if that sounds almost within
the bounds of possibility, consider what happens if
