The creationists tell us that anything in biology with a probability of 10-39 or less is impossible [see God Designed My Great-Grandparents].That's a very tiny number. Let's see just what kind of probabilities we're dealing with.
Imagine four people sitting down to play a hand of bridge. They shuffle the deck and deal out 13 cards to each player. The probability that the particular hand would be dealt is very low because the total number of possible hands is 51!/13! = 53,644,737,765,488,792,839,237,440,000. Let's round this off to a probability of 0.2 × 10-28.
Assuming that there have been at least 100,000,000 bridge players and that they've played at least 2000 hands of bridge, that represents a total of 5 × 1010 separate hands of bridge. The probability that all of these particular hands would have been dealt in a particular time and place is 10-39. That's equivalent to the total number of bacteria and it's the kind of probability that makes creationists think of God.
I wonder if God plays bridge? If he does, I wonder if he ever loses since he can control the deal?1
1. Sounds like a good plot for a Mr. Deity video.
