Re: what would happen if I lived to 2037 and Jesus has not come?

AN

Thanks for your message. As per my stated policy, I will respond

[Above (click to enlarge): "The Great Day of His Wrath," John Martin, 1851-1853, Tate Gallery, London: Wikipedia.

"For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev 6:17 KJV)]

to your questions about topics posted on my CED blog to that blog, minus your personally identifying information. Because of its length, I have split my response into three parts. Your words are bold to distinguish them from mine.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:48 AM
Subject: From AN - remarks

>Hello Stephen,
1.Wow, your predictions about Jesus coming back before 2037 are bold one...

As I said in that post, it is not my "prediction" but my interpretation:

Although I have used your word "prediction" in the title of this post, I do not claim or agree that it is my prediction that Jesus will return before 2037, but rather it is my "interpretation" of Jesus' prediction in Lk 21:24b-31 ...

And I don't regard it as "bold," but a logical deduction from the Biblical data. Specifically, if the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is a type of the Second Coming of Jesus:

"In the Olivet Discourse, therefore, Jesus is proclaiming events in the distant future in close connection with events in the near future'. The destruction of Jerusalem which lies in the near future is a type of the end of the world; hence the intermingling. The passage, therefore, deals neither exclusively with the destruction of Jerusalem nor exclusively with the end of the world; it deals with both-sometimes with the latter in terms of the former." (Hoekema, 1978, "The Bible and the Future," pp.148-149).

"`How much of the Olivet Discourse was fulfilled by the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 ... How many of these events will be fulfilled in the future ...? ... double fulfillments may be in view here, with the events of A.D. 70 as shadows of a universal and final cataclysm at the end of the age... We must allow for a double reference, for a mingling of historical and eschatological.' .... In fact, the historical fulfillments may be types of future fulfillment." (Riddlebarger, 2003, "A Case for Amillennialism," pp.159-160).

"It must be said for this view that it is not easy in this great eschatological discourse to tell clearly when Jesus is discussing the destruction of Jerusalem and when the second coming. Plummer offers this solution: `The reference, therefore, is to the destruction of Jerusalem regarded as the type of the end of the world.'" (Robertson, 1930, "Word Pictures in the New Testament: Volume II: The Gospel According to Luke,"pp.261-262).

"The question of the disciples in verse 7 clearly refers to the date of the fall of Jerusalem, but it also seems to involve the date of the end of this age. The fall of Jerusalem becomes a type of the end times." (Shreiner, 1989, "Luke," in Elwell, "Evangelical Commentary on the Bible," pp.834-835).

then Jesus' warning that "this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened" (Mt 24:34; Mk 13:30; Lk 21:32); has a double-fulfillment to the generation that saw "all these things," i.e. the generation that saw all the signs leading up to: 1) the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, which was the end of the "old covenant" (Old Testament) age; and 2) the generation that saw the all the signs leading up to the Second Coming of Jesus, the end of this New Testament age (which is "the end of time"):

"... the catastrophe in Jerusalem (A.D. 70) in a microcosmic view... a harbinger of the crisis which Jesus ... coming ... will bring to 'all who dwell upon the entire face of the earth' ... the first is the inevitable forerunner and prefiguration of the second. The destruction of Jerusalem marks the end of the old covenant ... Such a decisive intervention in the history of salvation will not occur again until the end of time when God will judge the whole human race ..." (Bloesch, 2004, "The Last Things," pp.81-82).

And one sign, found only in Luke 21:24:

"They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled."

was fulfilled in 1967 when Jerusalem came under Jewish control, for the first time since AD 70. This is the only sign pointing to "the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory" (Lk 21:27) that now has a date.

Therefore, if my interpretation is correct, the generation that saw the sign of Jerusalem no longer "trampled on by the Gentiles," i.e. that was alive in 1967, will not pass away until Jesus comes again. And assuming that a generation is 70 years (see supporting quotes in my Re: about your prediction of Jesus' return by 2037), then I expect Jesus will return before 2037.

>Well, if Bertrand Russell ,"bleak atheist" managed to live up to the age of 98, so surely can you,"cheerful christian".

Sorry, but I fail to follow your reasoning. Even if "cheerful Christians," on average, tended to outlive "bleak atheists," and there is some evidence that they do:

"Here are some interesting data from a study by Hummer et al. (Demography, May 1999). They examined data from 21,000 individuals over an eight year period and observed death rates as a function of various personal characteristics, one of which was religious attendance. From that they estimated life expectancies for sample members, and they found a surprisingly big difference. So, a twenty year old who goes to church more than once a week can be expected to live 8 years longer than a twenty year old who doesn't go to church. (I.e., live to be 72.9 years old) What does this mean? Well, the data don't have measures of types of religion, so we can't disentangle Christian vs. Jew vs. Muslim, but we can assume that he great majority of church goers in the sample are Christians. Why does this occur? There's a big literature on "why" religion is associated with longer lives, which I may blog about some time, but for now it suffices to say that church going Christians live longer than people who don't go to church." (Wright, B., "Do Christians live longer?," Bradley Wright's Weblog, September 28, 2007).

presumably there still would be individual "bleak atheists" who outlive individual "cheerful Christians." I consider it unlikely that I will live till I am 98 (or 91 - see below), even though at 62, I am in excellent health. Nevertheless, one of my goals is to be in that unique group of Christians in all of history, "who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord":

1Th 4:15-17 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

>I wish you that. But what would happen if you live up to that date and Jesus ... has not come?Would that be the great source of your disappointment? Would you then reconsider your attitude to Christianity? If by 2037 Jesus will NOT come, should I wish you NOT to live up till then, for not to be disappointed? Sorry, I cannot wish you that...

Thanks for your concern. But I would be infinitely less disappointed if Jesus did not return by 2037, than you, an "agnostic-deist" (see part #3) would be if Jesus did return by 2037!

And since I am firmly convinced that Jesus will return before 2037, i.e. within the next 29 years, I see no reason to consider what will my response will be if He does not. Except to say, it is just my interpretation and I could be wrong. And as I would then be 91 in 2037, it is more likely than not that I will not be alive (at least not down here on Earth) to know that I was wrong.

Moreover, I could be wrong about the "by 2037" but right about Jesus returning before the generation that was alive in 1967 passes away. That is, if "generation" means more than 70 years and/or "passes away" means not most of that generation but the entire generation, as I pointed out in my post:

However, note that 70 is just the traditional "normal span of life" ballpark figure. It may be that the actual normal average lifespan of those born in 1967 is more like 80. And since the text says, "this generation will certainly not pass away," strictly literally it would mean that the entire generation that was alive in 1967 could almost pass away before Jesus returned:

Continued in Re: Anthony Flew leaving Atheism ... more accurate to state "Victory of Deism".

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
My other blogs: , TheShroudofTurin & Jesus is Jehovah!

---

"Commenting on Luke's rendition of Jesus' eschatological discourse ... Joseph Fitzmyer contends that the `Lucan discourse looks back at the catastrophe in Jerusalem (A.D. 70) in a microcosmic view; it sees the crisis that the earthly coming of Jesus brought into the lives of his own generation, but sees it now as a harbinger of the crisis which Jesus and his message, and above all his coming as the Son of Man, will bring to 'all who dwell upon the entire face of the earth' ([Lk] 21:35).' [Fitzmyer, J.A., "The Gospel According to Luke, X-XXIV," Anchor Bible, Doubleday: New York, 1985, p.1329] The notes on Matthew in The New Jerusalem Bible reflect a similar stance: `This eschatological discourse of Matthew combines the announcement of the destruction of Jerusalem with that of the end of the world.... Though separated in time, these two [events] are inseparable in the sense that the first is the inevitable forerunner and prefiguration of the second. The destruction of Jerusalem marks the end of the old covenant-Christ has thus manifestly returned to inaugurate his kingly rule. Such a decisive intervention in the history of salvation will not occur again until the end of time when God will judge the whole human race, now chosen in Christ, with the same judgment he pronounced (in A.D. 70) upon the first chosen people.' ["New Jerusalem Bible," Doubleday: New York, 1985, p.1649]" (Bloesch, D.G., 2004, "The Last Things: Resurrection, Judgment, Glory," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, pp.81-82).

"When we ask what the New Testament teaches about the sign of tribulation, we must, look first of all at the so-called `Olivet Discourse' - Jesus' eschatological discourse found in Matthew 24:3-51, Mark 13:3-37, and Luke 21:5-36. This is, however, a very difficult passage to interpret. What makes it so difficult is that some parts of the discourse obviously refer to the destruction of Jerusalem which lies in the near future, whereas other parts of it refer to the events which will accompany the Parousia at the end of the age. The setting for the discourse is as follows: when the disciples pointed out to Jesus the buildings of the temple, Jesus replied, `I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down' (Matt. 24:2). When Jesus had seated himself on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him and said, `Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?' (v. 3). Note that ... the question of the disciples concerns two topics: (1) when will this be? (literally, these things; Greek, tauta)-an obvious reference to the destruction of the temple Jesus had just predicted; and (2) what will be the sign of your coming (Greek, parousia) and of the close of the age?-a reference to Christ's Second Coming. We may properly conclude, therefore, that the discourse will deal with both of these topics. As we read the discourse, however, we find that aspects of these two topics are intermingled; matters concerning the destruction of Jerusalem (epitomized by the destruction of the temple) are mingled together with matters which concern the end of the world-so much so that it is sometimes hard to determine whether Jesus is referring to the one or the other or perhaps to both. Obviously the method of teaching used here by Jesus is that of prophetic foreshortening, in which events far removed in time and events in the near future are spoken of as if they were very close together. The phenomenon has been compared to what happens when one looks at distant mountains; peaks which are many miles apart may be seen as if they are close together. ... In the Olivet Discourse, therefore, Jesus is proclaiming events in the distant future in close connection with events in the near future'. The destruction of Jerusalem which lies in the near future is a type of the end of the world; hence the intermingling. The passage, therefore, deals neither exclusively with the destruction of Jerusalem nor exclusively with the end of the world; it deals with both-sometimes with the latter in terms of the former. ... Though the, tribulation, persecution, suffering, and trials here predicted are described in terms which concern Palestine and the Jews, they must not be interpreted as having to do only with the Jews. Jesus was describing future events in terms which would be understandable to his hearers, in terms which had local ethnic and geographic color. We are not warranted, however, in applying these predictions only to the Jews, or in restricting their occurrence only to Palestine." (Hoekema, A.A., 1978, "The Bible and the Future," Paternoster Press: Exeter, Devon UK, Reprinted, 1979, pp.148-149).

"It is this immanent-future tension within the text itself which forces us to deal with the critical questions: `How much of the Olivet Discourse was fulfilled by the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (the preterist view)? How many of these events will be fulfilled in the future (the futurist view)? The way one answers these questions is the source of the preterist-futurist debate. In another approach, some argue that this prophecy has both historical and future elements. Portions of the Olivet Discourse were fulfilled by the events of A.D. 70, while others remain to be fulfilled at the end of the age. Even double fulfillments may be in view here, with the events of A.D. 70 as shadows of a universal and final cataclysm at the end of the age. This is why C. E. B. Cranfield cautions that `neither an exclusively historical nor an exclusively eschatological interpretation is satisfactory ...We must allow for a double reference, for a mingling of historical and eschatological.' [Cranfield, C.E.B., "The Gospel According to St. Mark," Cambridge University Press: New York, 1983, pp.401-402] If Cranfield is correct, we should avoid reducing the Olivet Discourse to a prophecy of the events of A.D. 70 and a local judgment upon Israel, typical of preterism. We must also avoid treating the historical sections as though they are exclusively future, as is the case with many dispensational writers. In fact, the historical fulfillments may be types of future fulfillment. The difficulty in interpreting this text is to know which is which." (Riddlebarger, K., 2003, "A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, pp.159-160).

"[Lk 21:]32 This generation (he genea haute). Naturally people then living. Shall not pass away (ou me parelthei). Second aorist active subjunctive of parerchomai. Strongest possible negative with ou me. Till all things be accomplished (heos an panta genetai). Second aorist middle subjunctive of ginomai with heos, common idiom. The words give a great deal of trouble to critics. Some apply them to the whole discourse including the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, the second coming and the end of the world. Some of these argue that Jesus was simply mistaken in his eschatology, some that he has not been properly reported in the Gospels. Others apply them only to the destruction of Jerusalem which did take place in A.D. 70 before that generation passed away. It must be said for this view that it is not easy in this great eschatological discourse to tell clearly when Jesus is discussing the destruction of Jerusalem and when the second coming. Plummer offers this solution: `The reference, therefore, is to the destruction of Jerusalem regarded as the type of the end of the world.'" (Robertson, A.T., 1930, "Word Pictures in the New Testament: Volume II: The Gospel According to Luke," Broadman Press, Nashville TN, pp.261-262).

"Apocalyptic discourse ([Lk ]21:5-38). The temple that elicited the admiration of his disciples was beautiful indeed. ... Jesus, however, predicts that the temple will be completely demolished (21:5-6). The Romans fulfilled this prophecy in A.D. 70. ... Jesus now warns his disciples against eschatological enthusiasm and braces them for future persecution (21:7-19). The question of the disciples in verse 7 clearly refers to the date of the fall of Jerusalem, but it also seems to involve the date of the end of this age. The fall of Jerusalem becomes a type of the end times. .... Jesus specifically answers the question about the destruction of Jerusalem (21:20-24). One will know that Jerusalem's time of destruction has arrived when foreign armies surround it. This encirclement is a signal, not of the need for heroism, but the need to flee. God's avenging wrath will be poured out on the city, bringing distress to the entire populace. `The times of the Gentiles' (v. 24) refers not to the Gentile mission but to Gentile authority over Jerusalem. Josephus's Jewish War contains a graphic commentary on the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. From the destruction of Jerusalem Luke moves to the coming of the Son of man (21:25-28). Luke does not specify the temporal relationship between these events, but the former clearly functions as a correspondence of the latter. ... The signs picture in dramatic terms the breakup of the natural world order, and the resulting terror and fear which seize the human race. The Son of man will return during these troubled times. The message for believers is: When the world begins to convulse, take hope! Your redemption is imminent." (Shreiner, T.R., 1989, "Luke," in Elwell, W.A., ed., "Evangelical Commentary on the Bible," Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Second printing, 1990, pp.834-835).

Re: I am requesting your help involving Daniel 9:24-27

AN

Thanks for your message. As per my policy when I receive a

Above: An 18th century Russian icon of the prophet Daniel, Kizhi monastery, Russia: Wikipedia]

private message on one of my blog posts, in this case, Daniel's 70 `weeks': Proof that Naturalism is false and Christianity is true!, I will respond in due course via that blog, CED, minus your personal identifying information. Your words are bold to distinguish them from mine.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 7:11 PM
Subject: For Mr. Jones

> ... I am requesting your help here if that's ok involving the famous Daniel 9:24-27 passage, Mr. Jones. ...
>
>If I understand this correctly, in order to effectively conclude that the "Weeks" described specifically in Daniel 9:24-25 can be assumed to mean "Years" here-thus, the seventy "Sevens" of YEARS specifically, the Hebrew term for "Weeks" here, "Shabuwa'," which I understand WOULD BE the masculine, or "Shabua'," would have to unmistakably appear as such in the ancient Hebrew scrolls.

As explained in footnote 19 of my Daniel's 70 `weeks': Proof that Naturalism is false and Christianity is true!, "The Heb. shebu`im here" in Dn 9:24-26 translated "weeks" (KJV) or more accurately "sevens" (NIV) "is masculine, whereas the normal gender of seven, as in a seven-day week, is feminine, thus indicating that time units other than ordinary seven-day weeks is here intended":

[19] The Heb. shebu`im here is literally "sevens." (Harris, R.L., Archer, G.L. & Waltke, B.K., eds, 1980, "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament," Moody Press: Chicago IL, 1992, Twelfth Printing, p.2:899). The Heb. here is masculine, whereas the normal gender of seven, as in a seven-day week, is feminine, thus indicating that time units other than ordinary seven-day weeks is here intended (Archer, G.L., 1982, "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, p.289). Clearly ordinary weeks of seven days cannot be intended, because then after 70 weeks (i.e. about a year and four months) Daniel would have been discredited as a false prophet (Archer, G.L., "Daniel," in Gaebelein, F.E., ed., "The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Daniel and the Minor Prophets," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 1985, Vol. 7, p.121).

Here are quotes to support that:

"Daniel 9:24 reads: `Seventy weeks have been determined for your people and your holy city ....' The word for `week' is sabuac, which is derived from seba` the word for `seven.' Its normal plural is feminine in form: sebu`ot. Only in this chapter of Daniel does it appear in the masculine plural sabu`im. (The only other occurrence is in the combination sebu`e sebu`ot ['heptads of weeks'] in Ezek. ... 21:23 ...). Therefore, it is strongly suggestive of the idea `heptad' (a series or combination of seven), rather than a `week' in the sense of a series of seven days. There is no doubt that in this case we are presented with seventy sevens of years rather than of days." (Archer, 1982, "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties," p.289).

"The `seventy `sevens' are usually understood to be `weeks' of years ... the usual feminine form for `week,' ... is not used here. ... what Daniel means by these seventy `heptads' is seventy units of seven years, or `seventy' times `seven' years (i.e., 490 years)." (Kaiser, 1995, "The Messiah in the Old Testament," p.202).

"[Dn 9:24]. ... Seventy sevens ... The word sevens here occurs in the m.pl. [masculine plural], whereas it generally has a f.pl. [feminine plural] ... What led Dan. to employ the m. [masculine] instead of the f. [feminine] however, is not clear unless it was for the deliberate purpose of calling attention to the fact that the word sevens is employed in an unusual sense. .... It seems obvious that ordinary weeks of 7 days are not intended." (Young, 1972, "A Commentary on Daniel," pp.195-196).

>Here again, I don't know anything about the Hebrew language or the ancient writings, and thus I am concerned about the fact that according to the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, the amateur like myself cannot seem to determine whether the term appears in the masculine or feminine since Strong's also lists its feminine form of the Hebrew as a potential relation to the "Seventy weeks" term-"Shebu'ah."

It is not the "seventy" that is the key word but the "sevens". It is the latter "sevens" or "weeks" which are the time units. "Seventy" is just the normal 70 times whatever the "sevens" time units are, i.e. 70 x 7 years = 490 years.

>For the English "Seventy" translated from the Hebrew, however, I have noted that 7651 does seem to demand the masculine according to the Strong's-"Sheba'," or "Shib'ah."

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance numbers are only to the roots of Heb. and Gk. words, not to every variant grammatical form of those words:

"Not every distinct word is assigned a number, but only the root words. For example, agapeseis is assigned the same number as agapate - both are listed as Greek word #25 in Strong's `agapao'." ("Strong's Concordance," Wikipedia. My transliteration)

Also, you are looking up the Strong's number for the wrong word, "seventy." The Strong's number for "sevens" is 7620, i.e.:

"Strong's Number: 07620 ... Shabuwa ... Noun Masculine ... seven, period of seven (days or years), heptad, week period of seven days, a week Feast of Weeks heptad, seven (of years)" ("The KJV Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon," Crosswalk.com).

>Thus, according to the Hebrew language, is this a situation that because the "Seventy" can, beyond any doubt, be associated to the concept of "Years" that one is fully, unmistakably allowed to consider the conjoined "Seventy weeks" as a DIRECT association to YEARS? If so, why is this fundamentally true if in fact the actual "Weeks" cannot be determined to be masculine or feminine?

See above where you are confusing the "seventy" which just means literally seventy (i.e. 70 multiplied by whatever the "sevens" time units are), with the "sevens" which are the time units and in the context mean "sevens of years":

"shabua`. A period of seven ... in Dan 9:24,25,26,27 it denotes a period of seven years in each of its appearances in these four verses. This is proven by the context wherein Daniel recognizes that the seventy-year period of captivity is almost over. ...the angel Gabriel appears and informs him that Israel's restoration will not be complete until she goes through another seventy periods-of-seven, shabua' (Dan 9:24ff)!" (Harris, et al., eds, 1980, "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament," p.2:899).

>.... while I can see beyond any doubt that the city of Jerusalem could never have possibly been rebuilt over a period of 7x69 days, while such would seem just as unlikely, one would have to at least question the possibility that such could have been completed over a nine year period (69x7 actual weeks=9 years) depending specifically what God had in mind here.

See above. The city of Jerusalem was in fact to be rebuilt in the

[Above (click to enlarge): "The Traditional View" of Daniel 9:24-27 (Smith, 1993, "What the Bible Teaches About the Promised Messiah," p.390).]

first "seven `sevens'" (Dn 9:25). If (as I maintain), the terminus a quo (starting point) is 457 BC, when Ezra returned to Jerusalem in the seventh regnal year of Artaxerxes I (Ezra 7:12-26) and the "sevens" time units are ordinary solar years, then that fits very well with "the first seven heptads as running from 457 to 408, within which time the rebuilding of the walls, streets, and moats was completed":

"Verse 25 ...`From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One [massiah], the ruler, comes, there will be seven sevens,' and sixty-two `sevens.' ` It should be observed that only sixty-nine heptads are listed here, broken into two segments. The first segment of seven amounts to forty-nine years, during which the city of Jerusalem is to be `rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.' ... If, then, the terminus a quo for the decree in v.25 be reckoned as 457 B.C. (the date of Ezra's return to Jerusalem), then we may compute the first seven heptads as running from 457 to 408, within which time the rebuilding of the walls, streets, and moats was completed." (Archer, 1985, "Daniel," pp.7:113-114).

>At that point, I suppose the final requirement would be to go to the history books regarding the rebuilding of the 2nd Temple itself and determine specifically when such had been completed as it would related to the decree to rebuild the city and Temple itself. Thus, if history would be able to prove the fact that the city's reconstruction was not complete by 400 BC via the highly liberal estimation here, this would in fact prove to me that the prophecy really was intended to be about Jesus Himself.

I don't know why you think that if "the city's reconstruction was not complete by 400 BC ... this would in fact prove ... that the prophecy really was intended to be about Jesus Himself." If the "issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" was the that of Artaxerxes I in 457 BC to Ezra, then Jerusalem and its temple would be "rebuilt with streets and a trench ... in times of trouble" in the period 457-408 BC:

"we may compute the first seven heptads as running from 457 to 408, within which time the rebuilding of the walls, streets, and moats was completed." (Archer, 1985, "Daniel," pp.7:113-114).

which in fact is what happened:

"... A period of seven weeks or forty-nine years came to a close about 408 B.C., and the reformation under Ezra and Nehemiah was conducted during this period and characterized this period as a whole. ... Nehemiah's successor, who was a Persian ... was in office in 411 B.C., before the close of the seventh week." (Davis, 1924, "A Dictionary of the Bible," p.163).

"Finally, in 445 BC, Ezra was joined by a powerful contingent headed by a leading Jew and prominent Persian official called Nehemiah, who was given the governorship of Judah ... This fourth wave at last succeeded in stabilizing the settlement ... Nehemiah ... rebuilt with commendable speed the walls of Jerusalem ... The rebuilt city was smaller than Solomon's. ... The years 400-200 BC are the lost centuries of Jewish history. There were no great events or calamities they chose to record." (Johnson, 1987, "A History of the Jews," pp.86-87).

"... the whole period of 70 weeks is divided into three successive periods, 7, 62, 1 ... the division would be unmeaning, unless something were assigned to this first portion. The text does assign it. It says, the street shall be restored and be builded; and that, in troublous times. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah give the explanation. Ezra came to Jerusalem, B.C. 457 ... Nehemiah was sent by Artaxerxes, B.C. 444. ... Ezra and Nehemiah conjointly, a time somewhat exceeding 45 years; so that ... the restoration was completed in the latter part of the 7th week of years ...." (Pusey, 1885, "Daniel the Prophet, pp.189-191).

Note that in the first "seven `sevens'" during which "Jerusalem ... will be rebuilt with streets and a trench" would be "times of trouble" (Dn 9:25). But by 400 AD, the city was rebuilt and there were "no great events or calamities" recorded for the next 2 centuries. So the city's reconstruction was complete by 400 BC.

And also note that if the starting point is 457/458 BC and the time units ordinary solar years, then 7 + 62 = 69 "sevens" would be 69 x 7 = 483 years from 457/458, and after adding 1 since there is no year 0 between 1BC and AD 1, the ending point of the 69th "seven" is 26/27 AD. Which `just happens' to be the very year of Jesus' baptism and the beginning His public ministry! :

"If, then, the decree of 457 granted to Ezra himself is taken as the terminus a quo for the commencement of the 69 heptads ... we come out to the precise year of the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah ... 483 minus 457 comes out to A.D. 26. But since a year is gained in passing from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1 ... it actually comes out to A.D. 27." (Archer, 1982, "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties," pp.290-291).

"Then from 408 we count off the sixty-two heptads also mentioned in v.25 and come out to ... A.D. 27, since a year is gained in our reckoning as we pass directly from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1 (without any year zero in between)." (Archer, 1985, "Daniel," pp.7:113-114).

"Using the date of 457 B.C.E. as our starting point ... and putting the two sets of weeks together (7 x 7 + 7 x 62), we would arrive at a total of 483 years, ending in 27 C.E.-the very year that Jesus began his public ministry ... because there is no `zero year.' ... from 1 B.C.E.. to 1 C.E. ... What an incredibly accurate prophecy this would be!" (Brown, 2003, "Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus," pp.102, 220).

"The decree to rebuild Jerusalem, as noted above, was 457 B.C. Adding 483 years to 457 B.C. brings us to A.D. 26, the very year that Jesus was baptized and began his public ministry. A most remarkable fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy, even to the year." (Halley, 1965, "Halley's Bible Handbook," p.349).

"The terminus a quo for the commencement of these sixty nine weeks of years is stated to be from the going forth of the word (or decree) to restore and build Jerusalem (ver 25). This may refer to ... (2) the order of Artaxerxes to Ezra in 457 B.C. .... Only (2) comes out right according to regular solar years, for it yields the result as A.D. 27, or the commencement of Christ's ministry." (Lindsell, 1964, "Harper Study Bible," pp.1312-1313).

"The term also corresponds. Unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks [v.25 ... But 483 years from the beginning of B.C. 457 were completed at the beginning of 27 A.D. which ... would coincide with His Baptism, `being about 30 years of age,' when the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Him manifested Him to be the Anointed with the Holy Ghost, the Christ." (Pusey, 1885, "Daniel the Prophet, p.189).

"... Ezra the Scribe .... issued the word to restore and to build Jerusalem in the spring of 457 B.C. ... from that date seven sevens and sixty two sevens of years would elapse before the appearance of Messiah-Prince. ... Subtracting 483 years from the starting point of 457 B.C. the year A.D. 27 is reached. ... there is no year zero. Hence the year A.D. 27 must be reduced by one .... According to Daniel, Messiah-Prince would appear in A.D. 26. It is surely more than a coincidence that the baptism of Jesus occurred in A.D. 26. ..." (Smith, 1993, "What the Bible Teaches About the Promised Messiah," p.386).

Therefore Christianity is true and Naturalism is false!

>... if you can help me, here again I would appreciate that ever so much. ... thank you ....
>
AN

I hope this has helped, albeit belatedly.

The quotes below (emphasis italics original, emphasis bold mine) are hyperlinked to the inline references above.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
Blogs: CreationEvolutionDesign, TheShroudofTurin & Jesus is Jehovah!

---

"How can we make any sense out of Daniel's prophecy of Seventy Weeks? The prophecy of the Seventy Weeks in Daniel 9:24-27 is one of the most remarkable long-range predictions in the entire Bible. It is by all odds one of the most widely discussed by students and scholars of every persuasion within the spectrum of the Christian church. And yet when it is carefully examined in the light of all the relevant data of history and the information available from other parts of Scripture, it is quite clearly an accurate prediction of the time of Christ's coming advent and a preview of the thrilling final act of the drama of human history before that advent. Daniel 9:24 reads: `Seventy weeks have been determined for your people and your holy city [i.e., for the nation Israel and for Jerusalem].' The word for `week' is sabuac, which is derived from seba` the word for `seven.' Its normal plural is feminine in form: sebu`ot. Only in this chapter of Daniel does it appear in the masculine plural sabu`im. (The only other occurrence is in the combination sebu`e sebu`ot ['heptads of weeks'] in Ezek. 21:28 [21:23 English text]). Therefore, it is strongly suggestive of the idea `heptad' (a series or combination of seven), rather than a `week' in the sense of a series of seven days. There is no doubt that in this case we are presented with seventy sevens of years rather than of days. This leads to a total of 490 years." (Archer, G.L., 1982, "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, p.289).

"If, then, the decree of 457 granted to Ezra himself is taken as the terminus a quo for the commencement of the 69 heptads, or 483 years, we come out to the precise year of the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah (or Christ): 483 minus 457 comes out to A.D. 26. But since a year is gained in passing from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1 (there being no such year as zero), it actually comes out to A.D. 27. It is generally agreed that Christ was crucified in A.D. 30, after a ministry of a little more than three years. This means His baptism and initial ministry must have taken place in A.D. 27. A most remarkable exactitude in the fulfillment of such an ancient prophecy. Only God could have predicted the coming of His Son with such amazing precision; it defies all rationalistic explanation." (Archer, 1982, pp.290-291).

"[Dn 9:25-26] Verse 25 is crucial: `From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One [massiah], the ruler, comes, there will be seven sevens,' and sixty-two `sevens.' ` It should be observed that only sixty-nine heptads are listed here, broken into two segments. The first segment of seven amounts to forty-nine years, during which the city of Jerusalem is to be `rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.' ... we note that v.25 specifies the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem with streets and moats, which will be completed within forty-nine years of the terminus a quo. ...If, then, the terminus a quo for the decree in v.25 be reckoned as 457 B.C. (the date of Ezra's return to Jerusalem), then we may compute the first seven heptads as running from 457 to 408, within which time the rebuilding of the walls, streets, and moats was completed. Then from 408 we count off the sixty-two heptads also mentioned in v.25 and come out to A.D. 26 (408 is 26 less than 434). But actually we come out to A.D. 27, since a year is gained in our reckoning as we pass directly from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1 (without any year zero in between). If Christ was crucified on 14 Abib A.D. 30, as is generally believed ... this would come out to a remarkably exact fulfillment of the terms of v.25. Christ's public ministry, from the time of his baptism in the Jordan till his death and resurrection at Jerusalem, must have taken up about three years. The 483 years from the issuing of the decree of Artaxerxes came to an end in A.D. 27, the year of the `coming' of Messiah as Ruler (nasi'). It was indeed `after the sixty-two `sevens' `-three years after-that `the Anointed One' was `cut off.'" (Archer, G.L., 1985, "Daniel," in Gaebelein, F.E., ed., "The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Daniel and the Minor Prophets," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, Vol. 7, pp.113-114).

"The KJV, however, rendered this verse [Dn 9:25], `Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.' Using the date of 457 B.C.E. as our starting point, as suggested by some scholars, and putting the two sets of weeks together (7 x 7 + 7 x 62), we would arrive at a total of 483 years, ending in 27 C.E.-the very year that Jesus began his public ministry.[The reason there are only 483 years from 457 B.C.E.. to 27 C.E. (instead of 484 years) is because there is no `zero year.' In other words, we count directly from 1 B.C.E.. to 1 C.E.] What an incredibly accurate prophecy this would be!" (Brown, M.L., 2003, "Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus: Messianic Prophecy Objections," Vol. 3, Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Third printing, 2006, p.102, 220).

"The one combination which coincides with known history throughout starts with the decree of Artaxerxes in his seventh year, 457 B.C. A period of seven weeks or forty-nine years came to a close about 408 B.C., and the reformation under Ezra and Nehemiah was conducted during this period and characterized this period as a whole. When this reform ceased to be the dominating feature of God's kingdom is unknown, but Nehemiah's successor [Bagoas], who was a Persian and naturally not a maintainer of the exclusiveness of Jehovah's religion, was in office in 411 B.C., before the close of the seventh week." (Davis, J.D., 1924, "A Dictionary of the Bible," [1898], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth Edition, Fifteenth Printing, 1966, p.163).

"The Seventy Weeks The Captivity, which was then drawing to a closes had lasted 70 years. Daniel is here told by the angel that it would yet be `70 weeks' till the coming of the Messiah (24). The `70 weeks' is generally understood to mean 70 weeks of years, that is as 70 sevens of years, or seven times 70 years, that is 490 years. As if the angel were saying, The Captivity has been 70 years; the period between the Captivity and the Coming of the Messiah will be seven times that long. Seven, and cycles of seven, sometimes have symbolic meanings; yet the actual facts of this prophecy are most amazing, as follows: The date from which the 70 weeks was to be counted was the decree to rebuild Jerusalem (25). There were three decrees issued by Persian kings for this purpose (536 B.C., 457 B.C., 444 B.C., see under Ezra). The principal one of these was 457 B.C. The 70 weeks is subdivided into 7 weeks, 62 weeks, and 1 week (25, 27). It is difficult to see the application of the `7 weeks'; but the 69 weeks (including the 7) equal 483 days, that is, on the year-day theory (Ezekiel 4:6), which is the commonly accepted interpretation, 483 years. This 483 years is the period between the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the coming of the `Anointed One' (25). The decree to rebuild Jerusalem, as noted above, was 457 B.C. Adding 483 years to 457 B.C. brings us to A.D. 26, the very year that Jesus was baptized and began his public ministry. A most remarkable fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy, even to the year. Further, within 3 ½ years Jesus was crucified, that is, `in the midst of the one week' `the Anointed One' was `cut off,' `purged away sin and brought in everlasting righteousness' (24, 26, 27). Thus Daniel foretold not only the Time at which the Messiah would appear, but also the Duration of his Public Ministry, and his Atoning Death for Human Sin. Some think that God's chronology was suspended at the death of Christ, to remain so while Israel is scattered, and that the last half of the `one week' belongs to the time of the End." (Halley, H.H., 1965, "Halley's Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary," [1927], Oliphants: London, Twenty-fourth edition, p.349).

"shabua`. A period of seven, a week, the Feast of Weeks. This term occurs twenty times in the or, always indicating a period of seven. Indeed, the word obviously comes to us from sheba' (q.v.) and could literally be translated always as `seven-period.' In Deut 16:9, shabu'a represents a period of seven days (literally `seven seven-periods you-shall-number-to-you'). The context in verses 9, 10, and 16 demands the time to be in terms of `days.' No serious expositor has ever argued for `years' here. It might be noted that in Deut 16:9 in the spelling of the plural, the central vowel letter-the waw-is omitted (shabu`ot), as it is also at times in the singular (e.g. Gen 29:27, shebua`) where in an unpointed text it would then be spelled identically to seven, sheba', in the feminine. While in Deut 16:9, discussed above, shabu'a represents a period of seven days, in Dan 9:24,25,26,27 it denotes a period of seven years in each of its appearances in these four verses. This is proven by the context wherein Daniel recognizes that the seventy-year period of captivity is almost over. The land had been fallow for seventy years and thus repaid the Lord the seventy sabbatical years owed to him for the prior seventy periods of seven years (Dan 9:2; Jer 25:12; cf. II Chr 36:21!). Just as Daniel is in prayer concerning this matter, the angel Gabriel appears and informs him that Israel's restoration will not be complete until she goes through another seventy periods-of-seven, shabua' (Dan 9:24ff)! Note also the apparent reference in Dan 12:11 to half of Daniel's last seventy (9:27); it is 1290 days, approximately three and a half years. Thus here it means years. shabua` is also used as a technical term in Deut 16:10,16 where it denotes the Feast of Weeks (hag shabu`ot), i.e. the Feast of Seven-Periods." (Harris, R.L., Archer, G.L. & Waltke, B.K., eds, "Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament," Moody Press: Chicago IL, 1980, Twelfth Printing, 1992, Vol. II, p.899. Emphasis original).

"Despite Cyrus' support and command, the first return in 538, under Shenazar, son of the former King Jehoiakim, was a failure, for the poor Jews who had been left behind, the am ha-arez, resisted it, and in conjunction with Samaritans, Edomites and Arabs, prevented the settlers building walls. A second effort, with the full backing of Cyrus' son Darius, was made in 520 BC, under an official leader Zeurubbabel, whose authority as a descendant of David was reinforced by his appointment as Persian Governor of Judah. ... Work on the Temple began immediately... . In 458 BC it was reinforced by a third wave, led by Ezra, a priest and scribe of great learning and authority, who tried and failed to sort out the legal problems caused by heterodoxy, intermarriage and disputed ownership of land. Finally, in 445 BC, Ezra was joined by a powerful contingent headed by a leading Jew and prominent Persian official called Nehemiah, who was given the governorship of Judah and the authority to build it into an independent political unit within the empire. This fourth wave at last succeeded in stabilizing the settlement, chiefly because Nehemiah, a man of action as well as a diplomat and statesman, rebuilt with commendable speed the walls of Jerusalem and so created a secure enclave from which the work of resettlement could be directed. .... The rebuilt city was smaller than Solomon's, it was poor and to begin with it was sparsely populated. ... The years 400-200 BC are the lost centuries of Jewish history. There were no great events or calamities they chose to record. Perhaps they were happy. The Jews certainly seem to have liked the Persians the best of all their rulers. They never revolted against them; on the contrary, Jewish mercenaries helped the Persians to put down Egyptian rebellion." (Johnson, P., 1987, "A History of the Jews," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, pp.86-87).

"The `seventy `sevens' are usually understood to be `weeks' of years (the word `seven' can also mean `week'; cf. NIV note), but the usual feminine form for `week,' which occurs elsewhere in the OT, is not used here. Moreover, in accordance with the use found elsewhere in this book, what Daniel means by these seventy `heptads' is seventy units of seven years, or `seventy' times `seven' years (i.e., 490 years). These years have been `decreed' by God's predetermined plan for the ages and are now being announced to Daniel in one of the most amazing disclosures into the future to be found in the OT. But note that the `heptads' are for Daniel's people of Israel and for their capital city, Jerusalem." (Kaiser, W.C., Jr., 1995, "The Messiah in the Old Testament," Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, p.202).

"The terminus a quo for the commencement of these sixty nine weeks of years is stated to be from the going forth of the word (or decree) to restore and build Jerusalem (ver 25). This may refer to the divine decree, or one of three historical edicts: (1) decree of King Cyrus in 538 B.C. (Ezra -4); (2) the order of Artaxerxes to Ezra in 457 B.C. (which apparently involved authority to erect the walls of Jerusalem, cf. Ezra 7.6, 7; 9.9); (3) the order to Nehemiah in 445 B.C. to carry through the rebuilding of the walls (which Ezra had not been able to accomplish). Of these choices, (1) must be ruled out as coming nowhere to the time of Christ's ministry; (3) coming out too late, unless lunar years are used the computation. Only (2) comes out right according to regular solar years, for it yields the result as A.D. 27, or the commencement of Christ's ministry. Ezra and Nehemiah render an account of the rebuilding of Jerusalem in forty-nine years and troublous times. Then follow the sixty-two weeks, after which Messiah was cut off for sin." (Lindsell, H., ed., 1964, "Harper Study Bible," Revised Standard Version, Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, Nineteenth printing, 1983, pp.1312-1313).

"The term also corresponds. Unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks [v.25], i. e. the first 483 years of the period, the last 7 being parted off. But 483 years from the beginning of B.C. 457 were completed at the beginning of 27 A.D. which (since the Nativity was 4 years earlier than our era) would coincide with His Baptism, `being about 30 years of age,' when the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Him manifested Him to be the Anointed with the Holy Ghost, the Christ. Further still, the whole period of 70 weeks is divided into three successive periods, 7, 62, 1 ... But, in the prophecy of the 70 weeks, the portions also can be traced. The words are; From the going forth of a commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks; street and wall' shall be restored and builded; and in strait of times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off. [vv.25-26] Obviously, unless there had been a meaning in this division, it would have stood, ` shall be threescore and nine weeks,' `not, shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks.' For every word in this condensed prophecy has its place and meaning, and the division would be unmeaning, unless something were assigned to this first portion. The text does assign it. It says, the street shall be restored and be builded; and that, in troublous times. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah give the explanation. Ezra came to Jerusalem, B.C. 457; he labored in restoring the Jewish polity, within and without, for 13 years before Nehemiah was sent by Artaxerxes, B.C. 444. [Neh 2:1ff] ... We have any how for the period of the two great restorers of the Jewish polity, Ezra and Nehemiah conjointly, a time somewhat exceeding 45 years; so that we know that the restoration was completed in the latter part of the 7th week of years, and it is probable that it was not closed until the end of it. In regard to the strait of times, amid which this restoration was to take place, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are the commentary. Up to the completion of the walls, there was one succession of vexations on the part of the enemies of the Jews." (Pusey, E.B., 1885, "Daniel the Prophet: Nine Lectures, Delivered in the Divinity School of the University of Oxford. With Copious Notes." Funk & Wagnalls: New York NY, pp.189-191).

"Most likely it was Ezra the Scribe who issued the word to restore and to build Jerusalem in the spring of 457 B.C. .... This is the terminus a quo of the passage. Counting from that date seven sevens and sixty two sevens of years would elapse before the appearance of Messiah-Prince. Seven sevens of years are equal to 49 years; sixty-two sevens is equal to 434 years. ... Subtracting 483 years from the starting point of 457 B.C. the year A.D. 27 is reached. In the modern system of counting years there is no year zero. Hence the year A.D. 27 must be reduced by one for chronological accuracy. According to Daniel, Messiah-Prince would appear in A.D. 26. It is surely more than a coincidence that the baptism of Jesus occurred in A.D. 26.[Finegan (HBC, pp. 259-69) dates the baptism of Jesus to November, A.D. 26.] At that time John introduced him to the nation as their Messiah, the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world." (Smith, J.E. , 1993, "What the Bible Teaches About the Promised Messiah: An In-depth Study of 73 Key Old Testament Prophesies About the Messiah," Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, p.386).

"Traditional Interpretation. This view is represented by E. B. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, an excellent commentary which has been reprinted in the Barnes Notes series. Pusey starts counting the seventy sevens from 458 B.C., the decree of Artaxerxes to Ezra. The first forty-nine years, which include the work of Nehemiah, terminate in 409 B.C. The anointed one is Christ who was baptized in A.D. 26 and immediately thereafter began his Messianic ministry. He was cut off by his death on the cross. The prince who is to come in judgment on Jerusalem is Christ or Titus who acts as an agent for Christ. The covenant to be made firm is Christ's new testament. The Old Testament sacrificial system ended in the midst of the seventieth week when Christ died on the cross (A.D. 30). The seventieth seven ends with the stoning of Stephen, Jewish rejection of the New Testament, and the call of Paul (A.D. 33)." (Smith, 1993, p.390).

"[Dn 9:24]. ... Seventy sevens]-lit., sevens seventy. the word sevens-usually translated weeks-is placed first for the sake of emphasis. It constitutes the great theme of the passage. For the same reason, the numeral here follows the noun, and does not precede it, as is usually the case. The thought of the author may then be paraphrased, `Sevens--and in fact seventy of them are decreed, etc.' The word sevens here occurs in the m.pl. [masculine plural], whereas it generally has a f.pl. [feminine plural] ... What led Dan. to employ the m. [masculine] instead of the f. [feminine] however, is not clear unless it was for the deliberate purpose of calling attention to the fact that the word sevens is employed in an unusual sense. .... It seems obvious that ordinary weeks of 7 days are not intended." (Young, E.J., 1972, "A Commentary on Daniel," [1949], Banner of Truth: Edinburgh, British edition, Reprinted, 1978, pp.195-196).

Re: Fred Hoyle about the 747, the tornado and the junkyard

AN

Thanks for your message. As is my usual policy when I receive a private message on evolution, I will answer it via my blog,

[Above: Boeing 747 assembly at Everett, near Seattle: USA Today]

CreationEvolutionDesign, minus your personal identifying information. Your words are bold to distinguish them from my comments.

----- Original Message -----
From: AN
To: Stephen E. Jones
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 3:42 AM
Subject: RE: origin of life #2- a question

>... My question concerns the famous statement of Sir Fred Hoyle about the 747, the tornado, and the junkyard. I have the page from your site with the exact quote from "The Intelligent Universe".

Here is the relevant part of that quote by Hoyle:

"If you stir up simple nonorganic molecules like water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense energy ... some of the molecules reassemble themselves into amino acids ... demonstrated ... by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The ... building blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method. .... A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." (Hoyle, F., "The Intelligent Universe," Michael Joseph: London, 1983, pp.18-19).

The first instance that I am aware of Hoyle's use of that metaphor was reported in the science journal Nature in 1981:

"Hoyle said last week that ... the origin of life ... the information content of the higher forms of life is represented by the number 10^{40 000} - representing the specificity with which some 2,000 genes, each of which might be chosen from 10²⁰ nucleotide sequences of the appropriate length .... The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that `a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'. " (Hoyle, F., in "Hoyle on evolution," Nature, Vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p.105).

The above quote is a bit confusing because it conflates "the origin of life" with "the higher forms of life."

This conflation originates with Hoyle, because his 1 in "10^{40 000}" chance of "2,000 genes" of "10²⁰ nucleotide ... length" arising spontaneously refers to the "about two thousand" "enzymes ... across the whole of biology" and "the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial" in an "organic soup":

"... enzymes are a large class of molecule that for the most part runs across the whole of biology, without there being any hint of their mode of origin. ... Enzymes are polypeptides (proteins) .... their function. ... is determined by the particular sequence of amino acids in the polypeptide structure. .. There are ... twenty distinct amino acids ... and these simply must be in the correct position in the polypeptide structure. ... The chance of obtaining a suitable backbone can hardly be greater than one part in 10¹⁵, and the chance of obtaining the appropriate active site can hardly be greater than one part in 10⁵. .... The two small probabilities ...have to be multiplied, when they yield a chance of one part in 10²⁰ of obtaining the required enzyme in a functioning form. .... there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10²⁰)²⁰⁰⁰ = 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability .... this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court." (Hoyle & Wickramasinghe, "Evolution from Space," 1981, pp.19-21).

But Hoyle is right in requiring an explanation of where all the enzymes or proteins that exist "across the whole of biology" came from, given that the probability of even one small enzyme/protein of 100 amino acids arranged in a necessarily specific sequence would be 20¹⁰⁰ = ~10¹³⁰, when there are ~10⁸⁰ protons in the entire universe:

"... for a relatively small protein of 100 amino acids, selection of this correct sequence had to be made by chance from 10¹³⁰ alternative choices. ... The probability of such a chance occurrence leading to the formation of one of the smallest protein molecules is unimaginably small. Within the boundary conditions of time and space which we are considering, it is effectively zero." (Brooks, "Origins of Life," 1985, pp.84-85).

".. why the random self-assembly of proteins seems a non-starter. .... Proteins ... are very specific amino acid sequences ... the number of alternative permutations ... of amino acids is super-astronomical. A small protein may typically contain 100 amino acids of 20 varieties. There are about 10¹³⁰ ... different arrangements of the amino acids in a molecule of this length. .... Getting a useful configuration of amino acids from the squillions of useless combinations ... [would be] like trying to track down a site on the internet without a search engine." (Davies, "The Fifth Miracle," 1998, p.61).

"... the entire mass of the universe, expressed as a multiple of the mass of the hydrogen atom, amounts to about 10⁸⁰ units. ... Even the smallest catalytically active protein molecules of the living cell consist of at least a hundred amino acid residues, and they thus already possess more than 10¹³⁰ sequence alternatives ... ... a primitive organism has about the same chance of arising by pure chance ... as a general textbook of biochemistry has of arising by the random mixing of a sufficient number of letters." (Kuppers, "Information and the Origin of Life," 1986, p.60).

But minimal cell experiments have shown that the simplest (albeit parasitic) living organism requires "between 250 and 350 different proteins to carry out its most basic operations" but "this bare form of life cannot survive long without a source of sugars, nucleotides, amino acids, and fatty acids":

"Theoretical and experimental studies designed to discover the bare minimum number of gene products [proteins and RNAs] necessary for life all show significant agreement. Life seems to require between 250 and 350 different proteins to carry out its most basic operations. That this bare form of life cannot survive long without a source of sugars, nucleotides, amino acids, and fatty acids is worth noting." (Rana, F.R. & Ross, H.N., "Origins of Life: Biblical And Evolutionary Models Face Off," Navpress: Colorado Springs CO, 2004, pp.162-163).

Between "250 and 350 different proteins" is bad enough for a spontaneous naturalistic origin of life, but the "microbial database" shows that the "smallest known genomes and capable of living independently in the environment ... requires a minimum genome size of about 1,500 to 1,900 gene products":

"Genome Size ... The data indicate that the microbes possessing the smallest known genomes ... seems to suggest that, to exist independently, life requires a minimum genome size of about 1,500 to 1,900 gene products. ... all microbial genomes that fall below 1,500 belong to parasites." (Rana & Ross, Ibid, 2004, pp.161-162).

The late Prof. Colin Patterson acknowledged that:

"the ... free-living bacterium, Methanococcus, which has 1.7 million base-pairs and about 1700 genes, [is] perhaps close to the minimum necessary for independent life." (Patterson, "Evolution,"1999, p.23).

>In Dawkins book (God Delusion) on Pg. 117, he mentions this statement of Hoyle's and implies that it was referring to natural selection and evolution.

Here is the relevant part of that quote by Richard Dawkins:

"Fred Hoyle was a brilliant physicist and cosmologist, but his Boeing 747 misunderstanding, and other mistakes in biology ... suggest that he needed to have his consciousness raised by some good exposure to the world of natural selection. At an intellectual level, I suppose he understood natural selection. But perhaps you need to be steeped in natural selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before you can truly appreciate its power." (Dawkins, R., "The God Delusion," Bantam Press: London, 2006, p.117).

This is Dawkins at his deceptive best (or worst). Dawkins had not shown that it was Hoyle's "Boeing 747 misunderstanding," nor that it had anything to do with "natural selection" (see below). And Dawkins admits of Hoyle that "At an intellectual level ... he understood natural selection" but one "need[s] to be steeped in natural selection" to "truly appreciate its power." Hoyle would no doubt respond that Dawkins has so "steeped" himself "in natural selection" that he cannot "truly appreciate" natural selection's lack of "power"!

In fact Hoyle, being a mathematician, completely re-worked out from scratch the fundamental mathematics of Neo-Darwinism and found that "the Darwinian theory ... does not work at broader taxonomic levels; it cannot explain the major steps in evolution":

"As it became clear that the Darwinian theory could not be broadly correct, a question still remained, however, for I found it difficult to accept that the theory could be wholly incorrect. ... The issue was a mathematical one ... .... Eventually therefore, I decided to tackle this mathematics myself working de novo ... Although my results were all arrived at independently, some-perhaps most-have been obtained before. Their arrangement, however, is I believe original. ... And the outcome of this essay? Well as common sense would suggest, the Darwinian theory is correct in the small but not in the large. ... the theory works at the level of varieties and species ... the theory does not work at broader taxonomic levels; it cannot explain the major steps in evolution." (Hoyle, F., "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, pp.5-6, 10).

>It seemed clear to me that Hoyle was referring to origin of the first living organism,

Yes. Earlier in his book Dawkins cites "Hoyle's ... image of the Boeing 747 and the scrapyard" as referring to "the probability of life originating on Earth":

"The name comes from Fred Hoyle's amusing image of the Boeing 747 and the scrapyard. ... Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. ... This, in a nutshell, is the creationist's favourite argument - an argument that could be made only by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection ..." (Dawkins, 2006, Ibid, p.113).

Note Dawkins' self-contradiction, that Hoyle, "doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection," yet four pages later Hoyle, "At an intellectual level ... understood natural selection"!

>and Dawkins is clearly misleading his readers to blunt what he knows is a devastating attack on a "naturalistic" origin of life.

Agreed. But Dawkins forgets that as he once admitted, that in:

"... the problem of how life originated on Earth. .... we cannot escape the need to postulate a single-step chance event in the origin of cumulative selection itself ... cumulative selection cannot work unless there is some minimal machinery of replication and replicator power, and the only machinery of replication that we know seems too complicated to have come into existence by means of anything less than many generations of cumulative selection!." (Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker," 1986, pp.139-141)

Dawkins then answered his own question:

"... how much luck are we allowed to assume in a theory of the origin of life on Earth? ... when both DNA and its protein-based replication machinery spontaneously chanced to come into existence. We can allow ourselves ...such an extravagant theory ... provided that the odds against this coincidence occurring on a planet do not exceed 100 billion billion to one." (Dawkins, Ibid, 1986, pp.143,146).

But unfortunately for Dawkins, "1 in 100 billion billion" is only 1 in 10²⁰ (i.e. 10²*10⁹*10⁹ = 10²⁺⁹⁺⁹). That is not enough for the chance assembly of a specific chain of 15 (20¹⁵ = ~10^19.5) amino acids, i.e. not even enough for one protein!

>Dawkins by his own admission understands that all origin of life theories are nothing more than speculation. Do you think I understood it correctly?

I cannot see where in the quote you refer to from page 117 of his "The God Delusion," that Dawkins admits that "all origin of life theories are nothing more than speculation." However, elsewhere in his writings Dawkins effectively does admit that:

"The account of the origin of life that I shall give is necessarily speculative; by definition, nobody was around to see what happened." (Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene," 1989, pp.14-15).

"So, can we come up with any speculations about relatively probable ways in which cumulative selection might have got its start? .... We can hope for nothing more than speculation when the events we are talking about took place four billion years ago ... in a world that must have been radically different from that which we know today." (Dawkins, Ibid, 1986, p.147).

"But how did the whole process start? .... Most, though not all, of the informed speculation begins in what has been called the primeval soup .... Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow ... a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying...." (Dawkins, "Climbing Mount Improbable," 1996, p.259).

"Life may be common in the universe, but we are also at liberty to speculate that it is exceedingly rare. It therefore follows that the kind of event we are seeking, when we speculate about the origin of life, could be a very very improbable event ... my intuition is still that the arising of life on a planet is not all that unexpected an event" (Dawkins, Ibid, 1996, p.261).

>I did not see this particular quote on your site, but it's cute so I'm sending it to you. In an article found on American Scientist Online ["The Beginnings of Life on Earth"] Nobel Prize winner Dr. Christian DeDuve writes "how this momentous event [origin of life] happened is still highly conjectural, though no longer purely speculative.."
>
>I found the statement to be slightly confusing so I looked up "conjecture" on WordNet, an online dictionary and found the following: noun: a hypothesis that has been formed by speculation (syn-speculation) verb: to believe on uncertain or tentative grounds (syn.- speculate)
>
>I guess what he really meant was that it's highly speculative, though no longer purely conjectural.

Thanks for the link. My take is that Christian de Duve, like Dawkins, is another dogmatic materialist extremist. So what is not "speculative" to him is that the origin of life must have been materialistic and naturalistic. What is "conjectural" to De Duve is which particular "spontaneously by natural processes" way it happened. This is evident in de Duve's dogmatic requirement that "life arose spontaneously by natural processes" is "a necessary assumption "and "Any hint of teleology must be avoided":

"... life arose spontaneously by natural processes-a necessary assumption if we wish to remain within the realm of science .... An important rule in this exercise is to reconstruct the earliest events in life's history without assuming they proceeded with the benefit of foresight. .... Each must stand on its own and cannot be viewed as a preparation for things to come. Any hint of teleology must be avoided." (de Duve, "The Beginnings of Life on Earth," 1995, p.428)

In other words, de Duve and his materialistic-naturalistic ilk would rather believe a false explanation of the origin of life that avoided "teleology," than a true explanation that "proceeded with the benefit of foresight" by God!

[...]

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
My other blogs: TheShroudofTurin & Jesus is Jehovah!

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"This generalized proposition-that processes of chance and natural law led to living organisms emerging on Earth from the relatively simple organic molecules in 'primordial soups'-is valid only if there is a finite probability of the correct assembly of molecules occurring within the time-scale envisaged. Here there is another great problem. In the above example for a relatively small protein of 100 amino acids, selection of this correct sequence had to be made by chance from 10¹³⁰ alternative choices. The operation of pure chance would mean that within a maximum of about 500 million years (or somewhat less), the organic molecules in the 'primordial soup' might have to undergo 10¹³⁰ trial assemblies to hit on the correct sequence. The probability of such a chance occurrence leading to the formation of one of the smallest protein molecules is unimaginably small. Within the boundary conditions of time and space which we are considering, it is effectively zero." (Brooks, J., "Origins of Life," Lion: Tring, Hertfordshire UK, 1985, pp.84-85).

"There is a more fundamental reason why the random self-assembly of proteins seems a non-starter. This has to do not with the formation of the chemical bonds as such, but with the particular order in which the amino acids link together. Proteins do not consist of any old peptide chains; they are very specific amino acid sequences that have specialized chemical properties needed for life. However, the number of alternative permutations available to a mixture of amino acids is super-astronomical. A small protein may typically contain 100 amino acids of 20 varieties. There are about 10¹³⁰ (which is I followed by a 130 zeros) different arrangements of the amino acids in a molecule of this length. Hitting the right one by accident would be no mean feat. Getting a useful configuration of amino acids from the squillions of useless combinations on offer can be thought of as a mammoth information retrieval problem, like trying to track down a site on the internet without a search engine." (Davies, P.C.W., "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life," Penguin: Ringwood Vic, Australia, 1998, p.61).

"The account of the origin of life that I shall give is necessarily speculative; by definition, nobody was around to see what happened. ... The simplified account I shall give is probably not too far from the truth. We do not know what chemical raw materials were abundant on earth before the coming of life, but among the plausible possibilities are water, carbon dioxide, methane, and ammonia ... Chemists have tried to imitate the chemical conditions of the young earth. They have put these simple substances in a flask and supplied a source of energy such as ultraviolet light or electric sparks-artificial simulation of primordial lightning. After a few weeks of this, something interesting is usually found inside the flask: a weak brown soup containing a large number of molecules more complex than the ones originally put in. In particular, amino acids have been found-the building blocks of proteins ... More recently, laboratory simulations of the chemical conditions of earth before the coming of life have yielded organic substances called purines and pyrimidines. These are building blocks of the genetic molecule, DNA itself. Processes analogous to these must have given rise to the 'primeval soup' which biologists and chemists believe constituted the seas some three to four thousand million years ago. The organic substances became locally concentrated, perhaps in drying scum round the shores, or in tiny suspended droplets. Under the further influence of energy such as ultraviolet light from the sun, they combined into larger molecules. ... At some point a particularly remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We will call it the Replicator. It ... had the extraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself." (Dawkins, R., "The Selfish Gene," [1976], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, New edition, 1989, pp.14-15. Emphasis original).

"This example is the problem of how life originated on Earth. .... Cumulative selection is the key to all our modern explanations of life. ... but it had to get started, and we cannot escape the need to postulate a single-step chance event in the origin of cumulative selection itself. ... And that vital first step was a difficult one because, at its heart, there lies what seems to be a paradox. The replication processes that we know seem to need complicated machinery to work. ... . The theory of the blind watchmaker is extremely powerful given that we are allowed to assume replication and hence cumulative selection. But if replication needs complex machinery, since the only way we know for complex machinery ultimately to come into existence is cumulative selection, we have a problem. ... So, cumulative selection can manufacture complexity while single-step selection cannot. But cumulative selection cannot work unless there is some minimal machinery of replication and replicator power, and the only machinery of replication that we know seems too complicated to have come into existence by means of anything less than many generations of cumulative selection!." (Dawkins, R., "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design," W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, pp.139-141).

"Our question was, how much luck are we allowed to assume in a theory of the origin of life on Earth? ... . Therefore we have at our disposal, if we want to use it, odds of 1 in 100 billion billion as an upper limit (or 1 in however many available planets we think there are) to spend in our theory of the origin of life. This is the maximum amount of luck we are allowed to postulate in our theory. Suppose we want to suggest, for instance, that life began when both DNA and its protein-based replication machinery spontaneously chanced to come into existence. We can allow ourselves the luxury of such an extravagant theory provided that the odds against this coincidence occurring on a planet do not exceed 100 billion billion to one." (Dawkins, 1986, pp.143,146) .

"If the theory that DNA and its copying machinery arose spontaneously is so improbable that it obliges us to assume that life is very rare in the universe, and may even be unique to Earth, our first resort is to try to find a more probable theory. So, can we come up with any speculations about relatively probable ways in which cumulative selection might have got its start? The word 'speculate' has pejorative overtones, but these are quite uncalled for here. We can hope for nothing more than speculation when the events we are talking about took place four billion years ago and took place, moreover, in a world that must have been radically different from that which we know today." (Dawkins, 1986, p.147).

"But how did the whole process start? To answer that, we have to go back a very long time, more than 3,000 million years, probably as long as 4,000 million years. In those days the world was very different. There was no life, no biology, only physics and chemistry, and the details of the Earth's chemistry were very different. Most, though not all, of the informed speculation begins in what has been called the primeval soup, a weak broth of simple organic chemicals in the sea. Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying - a replicator." (Dawkins, R., "Climbing Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996, p.259).

"Life may be common in the universe, but we are also at liberty to speculate that it is exceedingly rare. It therefore follows that the kind of event we are seeking, when we speculate about the origin of life, could be a very very improbable event: not the kind of event that we can expect to duplicate in the laboratory and not the kind of event that a chemist will deem `plausible'. This is an interesting paradox ...We could be actively seeking a theory with the specific property that, when we find it, we shall judge it highly implausible! Looking at the matter in one way, we might even be positively worried if a chemist manages to support a theory of the origin of life which, using ordinary standards of probability, we judge to be plausible. On the other hand life seems to have arisen during the first half billion of the Earth's 4.5 billion years; we've been here for eight parts in nine of the Earth's age and my intuition is still that the arising of life on a planet is not all that unexpected an event." (Dawkins, 1996, p.261).

"The name comes from Fred Hoyle's amusing image of the Boeing 747 and the scrapyard. I am not sure whether Hoyle ever wrote it down himself, but it was attributed to him by his close colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe and is presumably authentic. Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. Others have borrowed the metaphor to refer to the later evolution of complex living bodies, where it has a spurious plausibility. The odds against assembling a fully functioning horse, beetle or ostrich by randomly shuffling its parts are up there in 747 territory. This, in a nutshell, is the creationist's favourite argument - an argument that could be made only by somebody who doesn't understand the first thing about natural selection: somebody who thinks natural selection is a theory of chance whereas - in the relevant sense of chance - it is the opposite." (Dawkins, R., "The God Delusion," Bantam Press: London, 2006, p.113).

"It is surprising how necessary such consciousness-raising is, even in the minds of excellent scientists in fields other than biology. Fred Hoyle was a brilliant physicist and cosmologist, but his Boeing 747 misunderstanding, and other mistakes in biology such as his attempt to dismiss the fossil Archaeopteryx as a hoax, suggest that he needed to have his consciousness raised by some good exposure to the world of natural selection. At an intellectual level, I suppose he understood natural selection. But perhaps you need to be steeped in natural selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before you can truly appreciate its power." (Dawkins, 2006, p.117).

"It is now generally agreed that if life arose spontaneously by natural processes-a necessary assumption if we wish to remain within the realm of science-it must have arisen fairly quickly, more in a matter of millennia or centuries, perhaps even less, than in millions of years. Even if life came from elsewhere, we would still have to account for its first development. Thus we might as well assume that life started on earth. How this momentous event happened is still highly conjectural, though no longer purely speculative. The clues come from the earth, from outer space, from laboratory experiments, and, especially, from life itself. The history of life on earth is written in the cells and molecules of existing organisms. Thanks to the advances of cell biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, scientists are becoming increasingly adept at reading the text. An important rule in this exercise is to reconstruct the earliest events in life's history without assuming they proceeded with the benefit of foresight. Every step must be accounted for in terms of antecedent and concomitant events. Each must stand on its own and cannot be viewed as a preparation for things to come. Any hint of teleology must be avoided." (de Duve, C., "The Beginnings of Life on Earth," American Scientist, Vol. 83, September-October 1995, pp.428-437).

"Hoyle said last week that, although content in the mid-1960s to give the supposed connection between the microwave background radiation and the big bang a `good run for its money' he had now lost patience with this approach. Two of his reasons involve the origin of life-the calculated time since the origin of the Universe of 10,000 million years or so is not enough to account for the evolution of living forms, while adiabatic expansion of the Universe would have been inimical to the evolution of highly ordered forms. But Hoyle also said that new evidence in support of the big-bang hypothesis was emerging only slowly. Yet `when people are on the right track, new facts emerge quickly', Hoyle said he would change his view if it turned out that neutrinos have a mass of between 20 and 30 electron volts. The essence of his argument last week was that the information content of the higher forms of life is represented by the number 10^{40 000} - representing the specificity with which some 2,000 genes, each of which might be chosen from 10²⁰ nucleotide sequences of the appropriate length, might be defined. Evolutionary processes would, Hoyle said, require several Hubble times to yield such a result. The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that `a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'. Hoyle acknowledged that steady-state theories of cosmologies, of which he was one of the chief exponents in the 1950s, are not now tenable because of the evidence for evolutionary galactic and stellar processes. But the big-bang view is similarly not tenable because of the way in which it implies the degradation of information. Of adherents of biological evolution, Hoyle said he was at a loss to understand `biologists' widespread compulsion to deny what seems to me to be obvious'. (Hoyle, F., in "Hoyle on evolution," Nature, Vol. 294, 12 November 1981, p.105).

"The popular idea that life could have arisen spontaneously on Earth dates back to experiments that caught the public imagination earlier this century. If you stir up simple nonorganic molecules like water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense energy, ultraviolet light for instance, some of the molecules reassemble themselves into amino acids, a result demonstrated about thirty years ago by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The amino acids, the individual building blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method. No evidence for this huge jump in complexity has ever been found, nor in my opinion will it be. Nevertheless, many scientists have made this leap-from the formation of individual amino acids to the random formation of whole chains of amino acids like enzymes-in spite of the obviously huge odds against such an event having ever taken place on the Earth, and this quite unjustified conclusion has stuck. In a popular lecture I once unflatteringly described the thinking of these scientists as a `junkyard mentality'. As this reference became widely and not quite accurately quoted I will repeat it here. A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." (Hoyle, F., "The Intelligent Universe," Michael Joseph: London, 1983, pp.18-19).

"In particular, the enzymes are a large class of molecule that for the most part runs across the whole of biology, without there being any hint of their mode of origin. There are about two thousand of them. Enzymes are polypeptides (proteins) that specialize in speeding up biological reactions, which they do with far greater efficiency than man-made catalysts. They act both to build up and to break down a wide range of biosubstances. The surface shapes of enzymes are critical to their function. ... Surface shape is determined by the particular sequence of amino acids in the polypeptide structure. One can think of getting the surface shape right in two stages of approximation. There are some ten to twenty distinct amino acids which determine the basic backbone of the enzyme and these simply must be in the correct position in the polypeptide structure. The rest of the amino acids, usually numbering a hundred or more, then control the finer details of the surface shape. There are also the active sites that eventually promote the biochemical reactions in question, and these too must be correct in their atomic forms and locations. Consider now the chance that in a random ordering of the twenty different amino acids which make up the polypeptides it just happens that the different kinds fall into the order appropriate to a particular enzyme. The chance of obtaining a suitable backbone can hardly be greater than one part in 10¹⁵, and the chance of obtaining the appropriate active site can hardly be greater than one part in 10⁵. Because the fine details of the surface shape can be varied we shall take the conservative line of not 'piling on the agony' by including any further small probability for the rest of the enzyme. The two small probabilities we are including are quite enough. They have to be multiplied, when they yield a chance of one part in 10²⁰ of obtaining the required enzyme in a functioning form. By itself, this small probability could be faced, because one must contemplate not just a single shot at obtaining the enzyme, but a very large number of trials such as are supposed to have occurred in an organic soup early in the history of the Earth. The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10²⁰)²⁰⁰⁰ = 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court." (Hoyle, F. & Wickramasinghe, N.C., "Evolution from Space," Paladin: London, 1981, Reprinted, 1983, pp.19-21).

"In this way, amino acids can become linked together into long chains, named polypeptides or proteins. A chain of 100 links would be considered rather short in biology. Yet with 20 possible choices for R at each link, the total number of chains with 100 links is 20¹⁰⁰, or 10¹³⁰, to the nearest order of magnitude. The longest protein chains run to about 2000 links, for which the number of possibilities is 20²⁰⁰⁰, or about l0²⁶⁰⁰, truly a big number. Journalists like to use the phrase `astronomical numbers' for what they considered to be immensely large, but these numbers are 'super-astronomical' in their largeness. Big numbers in astronomy usually have about 40 zeros, as have those in physics. Even the ratio of the largest distances in astronomy to the smallest lengths in physics has only about 60 zeros." (Hoyle, F. & Wickramasinghe, N.C., "Our Place in the Cosmos: The Unfinished Revolution," Phoenix: London, 1993, Reprinted, 1996, pp.151-152).

"Even in the simple case of a bacterium, the genome consists of some 4 x 10⁶ nucleotides, and the number of combinatorially possible sequences is 4⁴ million = 10^2.4 million The expectation probability for the nucleotide sequence of a bacterium is thus so slight that not even the entire space of the universe would be enough to make the random synthesis of a bacterial genome probable. For example, the entire mass of the universe, expressed as a multiple of the mass of the hydrogen atom, amounts to about 10⁸⁰ units. Even if all the matter in space consisted of DNA molecules of the structural complexity of the bacterial genome, with random sequences, then the chances of finding among them a bacterial genome or something resembling one would still be completely negligible. It can naturally be objected that our statistical arguments are based upon the assumption of an entity with the complexity of a bacterial genome, while the historical process of the origin of life possibly took place by way of simpler forms of life. However, an appropriate analysis, based on probability theory, shows that not even an optimised enzyme molecule can arise in a random synthesis. Even the smallest catalytically active protein molecules of the living cell consist of at least a hundred amino acid residues, and they thus already possess more than 10¹³⁰ sequence alternatives ... These striking numerical examples allow us to conclude with Monod that the design of a primitive organism has about the same chance of arising by pure chance, in a molecular roulette, as a general textbook of biochemistry has of arising by the random mixing of a sufficient number of letters." (Kuppers, B-O., "Information and the Origin of Life," MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1986, Reprinted, 1990, p.60).

"In July 1995 the entire DNA sequence of the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, 1.8 million base-pairs, was elucidated, followed three months later by the sequence of a second parasitic bacterium. In April 1996 the complete sequence (12 million base-pairs) of yeast was announced, and in August 1996 the first complete sequence of a free-living bacterium, Methanococcus, which has 1.7 million base-pairs and about 1700 genes, perhaps close to the minimum necessary for independent life." (Patterson, C., "Evolution," [1978], Cornell University Press: Ithaca NY, Second edition, 1999, p.23).

"Genome Size One way to explore the minimum complexity of independent life is to survey the microbial database for the smallest genome. ... The data indicate that the microbes possessing the smallest known genomes and capable of living independently in the environment are extremophilic archaea and eubacteria. ... These organisms also happen to represent what many scientists consider to be the oldest life on Earth. This crude estimate seems to suggest that, to exist independently, life requires a minimum genome size of about 1,500 to 1,900 gene products. (A gene product refers to proteins and functional RNAs, such as ribosomal and transfer RNA.) ... ... So far, as scientists have continued their sequencing efforts, all microbial genomes that fall below 1,500 belong to parasites. Organisms capable of permanent independent existence require more gene products. A minimum genome size (for independent life) of 1,500 to 1,900 gene products comports with what the geochemical and fossil evidence ... reveals about the complexity of Earth's first life. Earliest life forms displayed metabolic complexity that included:

• photosynthetic and chemoautotrophic processes
• protein synthesis
• the capacity to produce amino acids, nucleotides, fatty acids, and sugars
• the machinery to reproduce

Some 1,500 different gene products would seem the bare minimum to sustain this level of metabolic activity. For instance, the Methanococcus jannaschii genome (the first to be sequenced for the archaea domain) possesses about 1,738 gene products. This organism contains the enzymatic machinery for energy metabolism and for the biosynthesis and processing of sugars, nucleotides, amino acids, and fatty acids. In addition, the M. jannaschii genome can encode for repair systems, DNA replication, and the cell division apparatus. The genes for protein synthesis and secretion and the genes that specify the construction and activity of the cell membrane and envelope also belong as part of this organism's genome." (Rana, F.R. & Ross, H.N., "Origins of Life: Biblical And Evolutionary Models Face Off," Navpress: Colorado Springs CO, 2004, pp.161-162).