Some have asserted over time that a million monkeys typing on keyboards for 10 billion years can generate a Shakespearean play thus helping to explain that life can, indeed, be created by random chance.
Not so fast. Let’s run the numbers.
MIT-trained Dr. Gerald Schroeder assessed the probability of monkeys typing a Shakespearean sonnet – 14 lines and 488 characters. A sonnet is significantly shorter than a full blown Shakespeare play.
His calculation, starting with an observation of 6 monkeys typing for one month, showed that it would take 10690 attempts to type that sonnet in its entirety purely by chance. He got there by assessing the probability of typing the correct letter across all 488 characters in the sonnet. That is 26 x 26 x 26 x 26 … for all 488 characters. That results in 26 to the 488th power or 26488 which translates into 10690.
To put this in other terms, there are 1080 particles in the entire universe – that’s counting every proton, neutron, electron, and so forth. If each particle could be converted into a computer chip that runs 1 million trials per second and that set of 1080 particles ran trials since the beginning of time then you’d get 1090 attempts at creating the Shakespeare sonnet. I’m not quite sure how Schroeder got that number; I get 10105 when I do the math. Regardless, both numbers are far short of the 10690 attempts required.
Antony Flew, once a renowned atheist, cited Schroeder’s argument and agreed concluding in his book There Is A God that the Monkey Theorem is “a load of rubbish.” Here’s an article on Schroeder’s math and Flew’s position: https://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/one_flew_out_of_the_atheists_nest/
Here’s a video presenting this set of arguments more visually:
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