Leading Cardinal Redefines Church's View on Evolution

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The New York Times
By [CORNELIA DEAN](http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CORNELIA DEAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CORNELIA DEAN&inline=nyt-per) and [LAURIE GOODSTEIN](http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=LAURIE GOODSTEIN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=LAURIE GOODSTEIN&inline=nyt-per)
Published: July 9, 2005

An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.

The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday, writing, “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not.”
In a telephone interview from a monastery in Austria, where he was on retreat, the cardinal said that his essay had not been approved by the Vatican, but that two or three weeks before Pope Benedict XVI’s election in April, he spoke with the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, about the church’s position on evolution. “I said I would like to have a more explicit statement about that, and he encouraged me to go on,” said Cardinal Schönborn.

He said that he had been “angry” for years about writers and theologians, many Catholics, who he said had “misrepresented” the church’s position as endorsing the idea of evolution as a random process.

Opponents of Darwinian evolution said they were gratified by Cardinal Schönborn’s essay. But scientists and science teachers reacted with confusion, dismay and even anger. Some said they feared the cardinal’s sentiments would cause religious scientists to question their faiths.

Cardinal Schönborn, who is on the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, said the office had no plans to issue new guidance to teachers in Catholic schools on evolution. But he said he believed students in Catholic schools, and all schools, should be taught that evolution is just one of many theories. Many Catholic schools teach Darwinian evolution, in which accidental mutation and natural selection of the fittest organisms drive the history of life, as part of their science curriculum.

Darwinian evolution is the foundation of modern biology. While researchers may debate details of how the mechanism of evolution plays out, there is no credible scientific challenge to the underlying theory.

American Catholics and conservative evangelical Christians have been a potent united front in opposing abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia, but had parted company on the death penalty and the teaching of evolution. Cardinal Schönborn’s essay and comments are an indication that the church may now enter the debate over evolution more forcefully on the side of those who oppose the teaching of evolution alone.

One of the strongest advocates of teaching alternatives to evolution is the Discovery Institute in Seattle, which promotes the idea, termed intelligent design, that the variety and complexity of life on earth cannot be explained except through the intervention of a designer of some sort.

Mark Ryland, a vice president of the institute, said in an interview that he had urged the cardinal to write the essay. Both Mr. Ryland and Cardinal Schönborn said that an essay in May in The Times about the compatibility of religion and evolutionary theory by Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, suggested to them that it was time to clarify the church’s position on evolution.

The cardinal’s essay, a direct response to Dr. Krauss’s article, was submitted to The Times by a Virginia public relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, which also represents the Discovery Institute.

…cont’d…
 
…cont’d…

Mr. Ryland, who said he knew the cardinal through the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, where he is chancellor and Mr. Ryland is on the board, said supporters of intelligent design were “very excited” that a church leader had taken a position opposing Darwinian evolution. “It clarified that in some sense the Catholics aren’t fine with it,” he said.

Bruce Chapman, the institute’s president, said the cardinal’s essay “helps blunt the claims” that the church “has spoken on Darwinian evolution in a way that’s supportive.”

But some biologists and others said they read the essay as abandoning longstanding church support for evolutionary biology.

“How did the Discovery Institute talking points wind up in Vienna?” wondered Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, which advocates the teaching of evolution. “It really did look quite a bit as if Cardinal Schönborn had been reading their Web pages.”

Mr. Ryland said the cardinal was well versed on these issues and had written the essay on his own.

Dr. Francis Collins, who headed the official American effort to decipher the human genome, and who describes himself as a Christian, though not a Catholic, said Cardinal Schönborn’s essay looked like “a step in the wrong direction” and said he feared that it “may represent some backpedaling from what scientifically is a very compelling conclusion, especially now that we have the ability to study DNA.”

“There is a deep and growing chasm between the scientific and the spiritual world views,” he went on. “To the extent that the cardinal’s essay makes believing scientists less and less comfortable inhabiting the middle ground, it is unfortunate. It makes me uneasy.”

“Unguided,” “unplanned,” “random” and “natural” are all adjectives that biologists might apply to the process of evolution, said Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of biology at Brown and a Catholic. But even so, he said, evolution “can fall within God’s providential plan.” He added: “Science cannot rule it out. Science cannot speak on this.”

Dr. Miller, whose book “Finding Darwin’s God” describes his reconciliation of evolutionary theory with Christian faith, said the essay seemed to equate belief in evolution with disbelief in God. That is alarming, he said. “It may have the effect of convincing Catholics that evolution is something they should reject.”

Dr. Collins and other scientists said they could understand why a cleric might want to make the case that, as Dr. Collins put it, “evolution is the mechanism by which human beings came into existence, but God had something to do with that, too.” Dr. Collins said that view, theistic evolution, “is shared with a very large number of biologists who also believe in God, including me.”

But it does not encompass the idea that the workings of evolution required the direct intervention of a supernatural agent, as intelligent design would have it.

In his essay, Cardinal Schönborn asserted that he was not trying to break new ground but to correct the idea, “often invoked,” that the church accepts or at least acquiesces to the theory of evolution.

He referred to widely cited remarks by Pope John Paul II, who, in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, noted that the scientific case for evolution was growing stronger and that the theory was “more than a hypothesis.”

In December, Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, chairman of the Committee on Science and Human Values of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, cited those remarks in writing to the nation’s bishops that “the Church does not need to fear the teaching of evolution as long as it is understood as a scientific account of the physical origins and development of the universe.” But in his essay, Cardinal Schönborn dismissed John Paul’s statement as “rather vague and unimportant.”

Francisco Ayala, a professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest, called this assessment “an insult” to the late pope and said the cardinal seemed to be drawing a line between the theory of evolution and religious faith, and “seeing a conflict that does not exist.”

Dr. Miller said he was already hearing from people worried about the cardinal’s essay. “People are saying, does the church really believe this?” He said he would not speculate. “John Paul II made it very clear that he regarded scientific rationality as a gift from God,” Dr. Miller said, adding, “There are more than 100 cardinals and they often have conflicting opinions.”
 
Why did you start a new thread? See Schonborn on evolution and design topic…anyway.

The Cardinal’s statement may cause some confusion. The statement last summer from the International Theological Commission, endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger has this:

“In freely willing to create and conserve the universe, God wills to activate and to sustain in act all those secondary causes whose activity contributes to the unfolding of the natural order which he intends to produce. Through the activity of natural causes, God causes to arise those conditions required for the emergence and support of living organisms, and, furthermore, for their reproduction and differentiation. Although there is scientific debate about the degree of purposiveness or design operative and empirically observable in these developments, they have de facto favored the emergence and flourishing of life. Catholic theologians can see in such reasoning support for the affirmation entailed by faith in divine creation and divine providence. In the providential design of creation, the triune God intended not only to make a place for human beings in the universe but also, and ultimately, to make room for them in his own trinitarian life. Furthermore, operating as real, though secondary causes, human beings contribute to the reshaping and transformation of the universe.” (paragraph 68, “Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God”)

I.E. God as Creator works through natural, secondary causes. God of course is the primary cause, the “cause of causes.”

Next –

“A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.” (“Human Persons Created in the Image of God”, document published July 2004, paragraph 69)

I.E. A truly natural process can fall within God’s plan for creation.

Furthermore, macroevolution or common descent is called “virtually certain” in paragraph 63, along with the universe at approx 15 billion years old, the earth at 4.5 billion, and “physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago”, etc.

If Cardinal Schonborn’s main point is that Catholics cannot hold to metaphysical naturalism, that God is not behind the evolution of life, well of course. If he is saying that “design” is scientifically detectable (rather than taken by faith, which I understand as the theistic evolution position), that’s another issue and yeah he seems to be aligning himself with the “Intelligent Design” (ID) camp. I don’t want to argue with the Cardinal, but let ID make its case to the scientific community, as biological evolution has done and been accepted for the past 150 years.

Phil P
 
More from the International Theological Commission statement:

Paragraph 62 – “The place of human beings in the history of this evolving universe, as it has been charted by modern sciences, can only be seen in its complete reality in the light of faith, as a personal history of the engagement of the triune God with creaturely persons.”

Summary: the place of human beings in the plan of God in this evolving universe can only be seen ultimately by faith, i.e. it cannot be demonstrated by science.

Paragraph 63 – “Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution.”

Summary: Macroevolution or common descent is called virtually certain, and the converging evidence from many sciences shows us some theory of evolution is required, while debate continues over the mechanisms.

Paragraph 67 – “Since the Big Bang theory does not in fact exclude the possibility of an antecedent stage of matter, it can be noted that the theory appears to provide merely indirect support for the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo which as such can only be known by faith.”

Summary: Creation by God ex nihilo through the Big Bang can only be known by faith, i.e. it cannot be demonstrated by science, except indirectly.

Paragraph 68 – “With respect to the evolution of conditions favorable to the emergence of life, Catholic tradition affirms that, as universal transcendent cause, God is the cause not only of existence but also the cause of causes. God’s action does not displace or supplant the activity of creaturely causes, but enables them to act according to their natures and, nonetheless, to bring about the ends he intends.”

Summary: God the Primary or Transcendent Cause is behind all secondary, natural causes (including biological evolution and the origin of the universe).

Paragraph 69 – “Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality.”

However, this is not so. I.E. Natural selection and random genetic variation can allow a place for divine causality, which is the response to this later in the paragraph:

“But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation.”

Summary: I repeat – even a truly natural process can fall within God’s overall creation plan.

And finally: “In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist…”

Amen. But I call this “Theistic Evolution” (or God-guided evolution) not “Intelligent Design” (ID) where you get whales, horses, people or “bacterial flagellum” from scratch. Again, I don’t want to argue with Cardinal Schonborn, but I don’t think he’s repudiating all these points from the International Theological Commission statement endorsed by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) last summer.

Further, read Cardinal Ratzinger’s own commentary on Genesis 1-3 where he says evolution and creation should be seen as complementary, not in opposition, and that much in Genesis should not be interpreted literally, and was not meant to teach us science.

Phil P
 
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PhilVaz:
Why did you start a new thread? See Schonborn on evolution and design topic…anyway.
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the editorial did not make the front page of the New York Times. THIS story did. It shouldn’t be buried in some preexisting thread…plus, I didn’t know there was one! 😛
 
Sweetchuck,

By “redefines” I assume you mean “makes clear again” rather than “changes.” Or perhaps that was the newspaper’s headline.

I didn’t see anything in the article that indicated that the good Cardinal had said anything the Church hasn’t said before, repeatedly. Certainly God created us from the dust of the earth, and it looks pretty clear that He took several billion years and used the process of evolution to do it. (Not that He had to take that much time, but simply that He did.) Where the Church parts company from modern scientific philosophy is that the scientific philosophers say the process was random–which presupposes that it happened by itself–while the Church insists that God’s hand was on it.
  • Liberian
 
The world could learn so much by revisiting what happened in the case of Galileo, because I fear it is happening again although in a less dramatic way.

In the case of Galileo, the Church did not condemn the heliocentric theory of the Universe. That question had already been asked and answered with Copernicus.

What the Church condemned was Galileo’s insistence that not only did the Copernican theory explain the empirical facts better, but that it was in fact the depiction of reality itself, and therefore the Bible was obviously in error.

St. Robert Bellarmine asked Galileo to stick to the scientific facts, and to stop encroaching on the province of theologians. If in fact the heliocentric theory explains facts better, then it is up to theologians to deal with the consequences, to consider how we must understand the contrary claims in scripture (some say Bellarmine was equally concerned that Protestants not be enflamed by Galileo’s theory, but that’s another story).

In any event, today’s scientists claim that evolution not only explains natural facts, but that* the religious understanding of creation must therefore be in error*.

It is true that fundamentalists set themselves up in opposition to evolution, but evolutionist fanatics are no less guilty of implying that their view is somehow refutes religious claims about reality. This was Galileo’s error, and the Church’s answer is the same: Your theory is interesting, and do pursue it, but quit speaking above your pay grade.
 
sweet << the editorial did not make the front page of the New York Times. THIS story did. It shouldn’t be buried in some preexisting thread…plus, I didn’t know there was one! >>

Well look around next time. 😃 I quoted the original editorial by Schonborn. Beat you to it. It was still on the first page of threads in Apologetics forum. But anyway…

Here are the “controversial” parts of the July 7 NY Times editorial:

Schonborn seems to make the claim that divine “design” is scientifically detectable which is a main claim of the ID movement.

Schonborn: “Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”

and

Schonborn: “…faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real.”

Note the references to “design in biology” and “design found in modern science.” I think that’s what Dembski and Behe are noticing. But Schonborn of course is not a biologist or scientist. He might be treading outside science and into philosophy here.

And he does make very positive comments about modern science and evolution, and the relationship of faith and science in the Catechism (see paragraphs 159, 283-284), he refers to “many scientific studies” giving us much knowledge on the age of the cosmos, the development of life, and the appearance of man. The International Theological Commission statement was even more explicit here (paragraphs 62-70, see posts above). “Many scientific studies” can only refer to mainstream evolutionary science, the Catechism is not referring to Creation Research Institute, Answers In Genesis, Dr. Dino, the Kolbe Center for Creation, or even the Discovery Institute, in case you were wondering, since they haven’t done any scientific studies the past 100 years like evolutionary biologists and other scientists have. :rolleyes:

Theistic Evolution says the design is real, but accepted by faith (which is the position I see in the International Theological Commission statement), while Intelligent Design says the design is real, and can be detected by science. I think that’s the main difference.

The other parts of the editorial that God is the primary cause or guider of evolution, and that “neo-Darwinism” or “neo-Darwinian evolution” being interpreted as metaphysical naturalism which is not compatible with Catholic teaching, is of course non-controversial it seems to me. Of course that’s true. Theistic evolution is true, not atheistic evolution.

Phil P
 
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Liberian:
Sweetchuck,

By “redefines” I assume you mean “makes clear again” rather than “changes.” Or perhaps that was the newspaper’s headline.
  • Liberian
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that was the newspaper’s headline. I certainly would not say anything was redefined at all. If I were the headline writer, I would have used the word “clarifies” instead. These ignorant journalists know nothing of ecclesiology.
 
PhilVaz and SweetChuck,

I’m not a moderator so I can’t insist on this, and I haven’t been around here very long (despite my somehow being named a senior member), but I must ask you please not to bicker over who got to what first and whether this should or should not have been made a separate thread. I repeat, I have absolutely no authority to tell you to quit, but I am asking you. If you wish to continue, please first answer for me the question of how this glorifies God.
  • Liberian
 
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Liberian:
PhilVaz and SweetChuck,

I’m not a moderator so I can’t insist on this, and I haven’t been around here very long (despite my somehow being named a senior member), but I must ask you please not to bicker over who got to what first and whether this should or should not have been made a separate thread. I repeat, I have absolutely no authority to tell you to quit, but I am asking you. If you wish to continue, please first answer for me the question of how this glorifies God.
  • Liberian
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That’s a good point. But I wasn’t bickering. I was just responding saying I didn’t know there already was a thread, PLUS, this is not a duplicate thread. This article is news in and of itself, that the New York Times blew this out of proportion, took it out of context, and put it on their front page as if the Catholic Church altered her beliefs in a rash and definitive way, and I thought people might want to react here. I guess I should have posted it on “In The News” as it would have been better received there, but this seemed like a theological topic, and I thought it should be here.

I don’t care who starts what thread. I’m a longtime messageboarder, going on probably 5 years now (not here), I could care less who starts what thread, I care only that there IS a thread and that there is discussion. There were many threads about Terri Schiavo and Justice O’Connor. There can be two about two separate, yet related, articles. That happens all the time.

Back to the issue at hand, does anybody have a problem with the New York Times article? Thoughts?
 
I think PhilVaz has it right. We, as Christians, recognize the fact that the universe is as God wanted it. (I will not use “design” for “creation”, however, as it demotes it from a unique act possible only for God, to something inferior creatures do)

The problem with the “intelligent design” campaign, is that it wants to take a theological truth, and somehow graft it onto science. The Wedge Document makes it very clear that the goal is to make it intellectually impossible to do science and be an atheist. Hopeless task. Science is too weak a method to handle the supernatural.

The good cardinal may have innocently fallen into that wording, or he may have been prompted. I don’t know.
 
What this really comes down to is that atheists need Drawinian evolution as their creation myth. That’s why they get so hostile and excited whenever anyone questions it. I can never get a straight answer to any of the questions I raise. They go on and on about mutation and natural selection and finch beaks even after I’ve told them that I accept that some degree of evolution must result from those processes.

Here are the problems with the theory as I see it:
  1. The first living cell from which all life is descended must have come into being from a random combination of the chemicals present in the environment at the time. This accidental undirected process must have in one generation (and not evolved over many generations) produced an organism capable of not only sustaining its life but also reproducing itself. Such a thing is amazingly complex and way beyond anything 21st century human engineering can do. The closest we have come is to “intelligently design” primitive amino acids from non-organic chemicals. That was done by scientists in 1950’s and the fact that nothing has been attempted since seems to indicate that it was a dead end. At any rate, if we were able to create life from non-organic material, it would still be by “intelligent design”, i.e. ours. To illustrate the impossibility of chemicals falling together to produce the first living cell, let’s look at the probability of accidentally spelling the 6-letter word “Darwin”: drawing from a closed set of 26 variables (the letters in the alphabet) as opposed to all the possible chemicals, temperatures etc that could be present in the evironment, the probabilty of spelling Darwin by accident is about 1 in 310,000,000. In human biology the possibility of a young healthy couple conceiving is one in four even if the woman is ovulating and the man releases 250,000,000 sperm! So what is the chance of the first cell surviving long enough to reproduce itself even if it beats all the odds (one in infinity) and comes to life in the first place?
  2. If the first cell does survive and reproduce itself, is there enough time over the several billion years that life is supposed to have existed on earth for it to evolve into us and the higher animals? Surely with our modern computers, they know how fast organisms evolve and can calculate whether this is at all possible. Wouldn’t that put an end to the argument one way or another?
 
Convert << The first living cell from which all life is descended must have come into being from a random combination of the chemicals present in the environment at the time. >>

Fine, God exploded the universe into being at the Big Bang, and created the first cell, but from there its all evolution my man. 😃

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” (Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, chapter 14, last sentence, maintained from 2nd to 6th edition)

Why the need to constantly bring up atheists in regard to evolution, there are literally billions (OK trillians) of Christians who accept the scientific evidence for macroevolution. It just so happens this is something that both atheists and theists can agree on. I don’t want to commit to a God of the gaps belief though, if science figures out how the first life got here naturally, I don’t want you abandoning your belief in God. 👍

Phil P
 
I have a big problem with the evolution debate, and here is why.

There is a lot of good evidence in favor of evolution.

There is also a lot of good evidence against it.

So some Catholics accept it, whether Christian or not.

Similarly, there is a lot of good evidence for Creation science.

There is also a lot of good evidence against it.

But it’s not equally as accepted and disavowed by Catholics. For some reason, Catholics have this huge aversion to creation science. It’s like there’s some sort of Galilleo complex and they are afraid to believe it for fear that they are repeating the [extremely overexaggerated] error the Church made with Galilleo or something.

Suddenly, just becaue we can believe evolution, creation science has become some evil work of pseudoscience. Believe me, it’s not. I’ve looked into it. I can’t say it’s true, but I can say that it has at a minimum just as much going for it as evolution does.

If someone wants to believe evolution, that’s fine, but I have a real problem when evolutionist Catholics have to attack creationist Catholics as some sort of pseudo-Protestant, anti-reason neanderthal.

(On a side note, you don’t have to be an atheist to accept it, but it is important to note that evolution is all but necessary if you want to be an atheist. In other words, you can be a good Christian and accept it, but your beliefs don’t hinge on evolution. For atheists, their beliefs stand on evolution alone. Without evolution, their beliefs crumble into dust, so I would say atheists are very intimately connected with evolution).
 
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Lazerlike42:
I have a big problem with the evolution debate, and here is why.

There is a lot of good evidence in favor of evolution.

There is also a lot of good evidence against it.
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Please let us in on this little secret. I say secret, because in my years of science, I have not come across a single piece of evidence AGAINST evolution.

Peace

Tim
 
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Lazerlike42:
…So some Catholics accept it, whether Christian or not…
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I would appreciate an explanation of this sentence. All Catholics are Christians, this seems to suggest otherwise. Did you mean something else? Thank you.
 
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Convert68:
  1. The first living cell from which all life is descended must have come into being from a random combination of the chemicals present in the environment at the time.
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Chemistry is not a random process. Different chemicals combine in very precise ways. Talk to a Chemist.
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Convert68:
This accidental undirected process must have in one generation (and not evolved over many generations) produced an organism capable of not only sustaining its life but also reproducing itself.
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You are talking about abiogenesis, the chemical processes by which life arose from non-life. This is a complex subject and not all of the details are yet known. See this site for a somewhat out-of-date article on the subject. (I am afraid I couldn’t find anything more recent that didn’t require an Organic Chemistry degree to read.)
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Convert68:
That was done by scientists in 1950’s and the fact that nothing has been attempted since seems to indicate that it was a dead end.
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The Miller-Urey experiment was far from a dead end. It started a lot of research into abiogenesis. See here for some recent Miller-Urey related research.
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Convert68:
To illustrate the impossibility of chemicals falling together to produce the first living cell, let’s look at the probability of accidentally spelling the 6-letter word “Darwin”: drawing from a closed set of 26 variables (the letters in the alphabet) as opposed to all the possible chemicals, temperatures etc that could be present in the evironment, the probabilty of spelling Darwin by accident is about 1 in 310,000,000.
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Refer to the abiogenesis article above to see why this calculation is irrelevant to the probability of abiogenesis.
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Convert68:
  1. If the first cell does survive and reproduce itself, is there enough time over the several billion years that life is supposed to have existed on earth for it to evolve into us and the higher animals? Surely with our modern computers, they know how fast organisms evolve and can calculate whether this is at all possible. Wouldn’t that put an end to the argument one way or another?
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That depends whether you allow 6,000 years or a few billion years for the process. Some work has been done along these lines for the evolution of the camera eye, see Nilsson and Pelger’s paper, abstract here.

rossum
 
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