The origin of life is not a lottery II

In a previous post I addressed the “lottery” objection to the probabilistic argument against a naturalistic origin of life: “Just as the odds of winning the lottery are low, and yet people win the lottery all the time, so too the odds of forming life by chance may be low, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible.” I argued that unlike a lottery, the probabilistic resources available to form life are so unfathomably low that there is no reason to expect a winner in chance’s game of life. To prove my point, I compared the number of possible events in the whole history of the universe (10¹³⁹)—the probabilistic resources—to the probability of a 250 gene organism forming by chance (1:10^41,000). The odds of life forming by chance came up trillions upon trillions upon trillions of times short, and thus there is no rational basis on which to affirm that life originated by chance. What I didn’t realize then was that I had severely over-estimated the odds.

Any organism with 250 genes would have to be a parasite, meaning it cannot survive on its own; it requires a host organism to fulfill all of its metabolic functions. Since there would be no other life forms present prior to the origin of life, the first living organism would have to have been able to survive on its own, and this requires a much larger genome size:

Organisms that are able to live on their own by consuming organic material in their environment require a minimum genome size of 1300-1500 genes (if this was the first life form, however, they would quickly eat themselves into non-existence).
Organisms that are able to live on their own by making their own food via chemicals in the environment (chemoautotrophs) require a minimum genome size of 1500-1900 genes.
Organisms that are able to live on their own by making their own food via sunlight (photoautotrophs) require a minimum genome size of 2300 genes.

Based on fossil record, the first life forms could have been chemoautotrophs or photoautotrophs. To be conservative, we will assume the first life was a simple chemoautotroph with 1500 genes. Given a minimum gene size of 150 amino acids, the chances of forming such an organism are an astonishing 1:10^225,000! Writen out, 10^225,000 is:

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Remember, the number of attempts nature has had to produce such an organism is only 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a lot of tries, but it’s hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of tries necessary to give life any realistic chance of forming from non-life.

Thinking to Believe