Over at Vox Popoli, writer Vox Day tried putting an evolution question to a chatbot. As we all know, chatbots are not much good with logic but they tend to be able to handle calculations. He writes,

Although AI has many limitations, including the more serious ideological restraints imposed by its highly-converged creators, the requirement for it to be capable of correctly crunching numbers puts it leagues ahead of the average scientist, particularly the average biologist, in grasping the obvious fact that there is absolutely no chance that evolution by natural selection can account for more than a very small and insignificant fraction of the genetic diversity that separates one species from another. 

“One Percent of Zero,” January 3, 2025

After Some Chugging

He gave Google’s Gemini a go and after some chugging, got this result:

Given the vast difference between the maximum possible number of fixations through natural selection (225) and the estimated number of fixations required to account for the genetic distance between humans and chimpanzees (360,000), it is extremely unlikely that natural selection alone could account for all those fixations. Therefore, the probability that 360,000 fixation events could have occurred solely through natural selection is extremely low, essentially approaching zero for any practical purposes.

“One Percent of Zero”

Day notes,

Now, notice that despite arbitrarily reducing the size of the average fixation event to one percent of the observed 36,000,000 base pair differences between modern humans and modern chimpanzees on the basis of absolutely nothing, the AI still concluded that the probability that humans could have evolved from the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor as “essentially approaching zero for any practical purposes”. But the real probability is around one percent of approaching zero…

He continues his dialogue with Gemini here.

For the True Believers

The probability calculations don’t matter much, though. The Darwinian story of human evolution from an ape-like creature is probably the most powerful modern secular myth. It’s a myth in the sense that it offers an account of human life in general, and can be applied to literally any topic.

Contrary evidence is irrelevant. What need not be proven true can’t be falsified either. For those who truly believe, Darwinism tends to organize their whole way of understanding life. It provides a justification for persecuting doubters as well. Those who would research life on Earth seriously must route around the edifice of faith erected around Darwinism.

Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.