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One of the claims frequently repeated on BBC's documentary is that minute changes combined over time to bring about major transformations, and that this is how evolution, which looks to be impossible at first sight, actually happens.
At the root of this argument, which is one of BBC's and other evolutionists' fundamental refuges, lies the assumption that time is a force that can do the impossible. According to this view, it is impossible for a chemical mixture to randomly produce amino acids, proteins, DNA, RNA, and other cell components, and thus a living cell—or, alternatively, for a reptile to turn into a bird—in a short space of time. As time goes on, however, for instance over millions of years, the impossible suddenly becomes possible.
Evolutionists describe this time factor as "the accumulation of advantageous coincidences." In other words, a structure will gain a positive feature by means of an advantageous coincidence, another such coincidence will be added to it a few thousand years later, yet another one will happen a few thousand years after that, and at the end, over the course of millions of years, these advantageous coincidences will combine to bring about a major and positive transformation.
Many people may accept this logic without examining it too closely. Yet, it contains a simple but fundamental error. This lies in the concept of "advantageous coincidences being added on to one another." The fact is that there is no mechanism in nature that might be expected to select advantageous coincidences and hold on to them in order to add them to one another.
We can clarify what this means with an example that evolutionists also resort to. Some scientists say that the possibility of a protein being synthesized by chance is "less than the probability of a monkey typing out the history of mankind without any mistakes."2
Yet evolutionists still hide behind the idea of time in the face of such inconsistencies. This is the kind of claim they make: "Every time the monkey touches the keyboard it has a one-in-26 chance of hitting the right key. Once it has pressed the right key, this is chosen as the right letter by natural selection. The errors it will commit over the next letter are again chosen by natural selection. In this way, over a period lasting millions of years, a monkey can indeed write a history of mankind."
This is the logic that underlies all the time-related claims made by evolutionists.
The fact is, however, that, as we have already stated, there is a simple error in this position: There is no mechanism in nature to identify and select which of the keys pressed by the monkey is the right one! There is no consciousness which can say, "OK. This letter is right, let's hold on to it and move on to the next stage."
Moreover, neither is there any monkey to touch the keys in nature. That requires consciousness. The evolutionists' argument must be that natural effects such as wind, rain, and earthquakes cause the typewriter keys to move.
When we examine the scenario that the cell and all living structures have come about by chance in this more realistic light, we see that we are actually dealing with nonsense. The idea that a single cell emerged by chance—that is, that the millions of tiny coincidences that form the building blocks of the cell occurred at random in an ordered sequence—can be compared to the claim that a giant city emerging solely by natural means, with no constructive force behind it. Rain, earth, and heat would have to combine by chance to form millions of bricks. Then these bricks would have to line up side by side and one on top of the other, under the effects of such things as wind, flood, and earthquake, to make houses, roads, and pavements, as a result of which a whole giant city would eventually emerge by chance.
If someone suggested such a thing to you, you would seriously doubt that person's sanity. Would anything change if that person then suggested that this happened not in a short space of time but over millions of years?
Of course not. Nonsense is nonsense, and the impossible is impossible, no matter how long a time it is allowed for it. That is why the BBC's invocation of "time" as a savior does not actually validate its claims.