Spontaneous Generation and Perpetual Motion Machines

“The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers … [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance.”

Hubert Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 257.

Note: In these calculations, Yockey generously granted that the raw materials were available in a primeval soup. But in the previous chapter, Yockey showed there was much evidence that a primeval soup never existed, so is an act of faith. See Primeval soup—Failed Paradigm