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Hoyle on Origin of Life

Famous British mathematician/astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle, realized the improbability of life forming just by physics and chemistry on earth and so initially thought it could have formed somewhere else in the universe and been seeded on earth from there. However, he apparently later realized that even if the whole universe were an experiment for all its supposed evolutionary age, life would not form. He is quoted as saying,

“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 naughts after it ... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”

—Sir Fred Hoyle, as quoted by Lee Elliot Major, “Big enough to bury Darwin”. Guardian (UK) education supplement, Thursday August 23, 2001; http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/physicalscience/story/0,9836,541468,00.html

Note: For some calculations on the probability of life forming by physics and chemistry alone (‘no intelligence allowed’), see Answering another uninformed atheist: Galileo, Miller–Urey, probability. Note that these calculations use assumptions that are more ridiculously in favour of the naturalistic origin of life than Hoyle’s—hence the better odds, albeit still wildly impossible.