Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

by Stephen C. Meyer

Behe and Snoke used the principles of population genetics to assess the likelihood of various numbers of coordinated mutational changes occurring in a given period of time. They asked: Is it probable that there was enough time in evolutionary history to generate coordinated mutations? If so, how many coordinated mutations is it reasonable to expect in a period of time given various population sizes, mutation rates, and generation times? Then, for different combinations of these various factors, they assessed how long it would typically take to generate two or three or more coordinated mutations. They determined that generally the probability of multiple mutations arising in close (functionally relevant) coordination to each other was “prohibitively” low—it would likely take an immensely long time, typically far longer than the age of the earth.