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Friday, May 30, 2003
In the vast Library there are no two identical books
Town Hall columnist Dennis Prager considers God and monkeys and infinity:
Thomas Huxley ("Darwin's bulldog") is said to have come up with the most famous defense of the atheist belief that life was created by chance, not God. In a debate at Oxford, he is reported to have stated that if enough monkeys randomly pressed typewriter keys for a long enough time, sooner or later Psalm 23 would emerge.
Not all atheists use this argument, but it accurately represents the atheist belief that with enough time and enough solar systems, you'll get you, me, and Bach's cello suites.
This belief has always struck me as implausible. The argument that infinitely complex intelligence came about by itself, unguided by any intelligence, can only be deemed convincing by those who have a vested interest (intellectual, emotional, psychological) in atheism.
I fully acknowledge the great challenge to theism -- the rampant and seemingly random unfairness built into human life. But no intellectually honest atheist should deny the great challenge to atheism -- the existence of design and intelligence. The belief that Bach's music randomly evolved from a paramecium should strike anyone as so fantastic as to be absurd, even more absurd than the belief that a monkey could monkey Shakespeare. The finite number of years in the universe's existence and the finite number of planets would not come close to producing a few sentences, let alone Psalm 23 or a Shakespeare play.
But a just reported English University experiment has convinced me that the number of monkeys and the amount of time are irrelevant. Psalm 23, let alone Hamlet, would never be written. Why? Because the monkeys probably wouldn't do any typing.
According to news reports, instructors at Plymouth University put six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys in a room with a computer and keyboards for four weeks. Though one of the monkeys frequently typed the letter "s", the other monkeys ignored the keyboard, preferring to play with one another and with the ropes and toys placed there. When they did pay attention to the keyboard, one smashed it with a stone and the others repeatedly urinated and defecated on it.
The instructors hastened to note the study was not scientific, given the short duration of time and the small number of monkeys, but some of us find this "study" to be a hilarious vindication of our view of the "enough monkeys for enough time" argument for random creation.
It's quite obvious that Prager has missed Huxley's point by focusing on the monkeys, but then it's not suprising when you consider that this is a man who can dismiss the idea of monkeys typing for an infinite amount of time, and states: "The argument that infinitely complex intelligence came about by itself, unguided by any intelligence, can only be deemed convincing by those who have a vested interest", yet has no problem accepting the concept of some sort of hairy unseen judgemental creator who has dabbled in world creation for an infinite amount of time. A concept that can only seem convincing to someone who has dedicated their life to the unseen 'hand in the sky', no questions asked.
But Prager's column did get me to thinking about a few other things. First off, if you were able to put a bunch (a tribe? a pod? a convention?) of monkeys into a room, typing for an indefinite amount of time: what would they produce? The general consensus among primatologists is that you would end up with this.
More importantly, and seriously now folks, Prager's column reminded me of J.L. Borges' The Library of Babel which I invite you to read because, although it contains only 2,690 words, it considers infinity wonderfully.
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