A "Natural Levitation" Book Like That Famous Biology Book

Let us imagine a writer named Scamson who writes a book trying to sell the far-fetched thesis that people can jump to the top of tall skyscrapers, very tall buildings such as exist in New York City. The only way in which someone could defend such a claim would be to use sophistry and trickery. But we can imagine some shady tricks the author might use to seem to give a little weight to his far-fetched claim. One trick would be to make a slippery use of vague language. 

The author could try to make much use of the vague phrase "natural variations." The author could vaguely say that there are natural variations in human abilities, and give examples such as the fact that some people can run faster than others, and some people can lift more weight than others.  The author could say that variations in jumping ability are another example of such "natural variations."  We can imagine some of the language that might be used:

"A fundamental fact of life is that there are natural variations in ability. Some people can run much faster than others. Some people can sing much better than others. Some people are much stronger than others. So while it may seem incredible that some people can make the kind of jumps needed to jump to the top of tall skyscrapers, such an idea does not seem so hard to believe when we consider that some people can jump much higher than other people."

Such words would be an example of sophistry based on vague language. It is true that there are variations in human ability, but such variations are relatively small. Some people can run 50% faster than most people, and some people can jump 50% higher than most people. But there are no humans than can run 500% faster than most people, and no humans that can jump 500% higher than most humans. If we force the writer to speak exactly, and state by how much jumping and running abilities vary,  the writer could never get away with suggesting that better jumping ability can help explain how people could jump to the top of tall skyscrapers. But as long as the writer is allowed to use vague language, he might be successful in insinuating that better jumping ability can help explain jumping to the top of skyscrapers. 

Another sleazy trick the author could employ would be to try to suggest that jumping to the top of skyscrapers isn't all that hard, because the jumper can make use of intermediate steps. We can some of the language that might be used. 

"It may be claimed that the jumping to the top of tall skyscrapers is too hard, because there would have to be jumps going too high up into the air. But it should be remembered that setbacks and step-like structural features often appear in skyscrapers. So it would not be necessary for the jumper to jump all the way from the ground to the top. He could first jump from the ground to some flat surface part of the way to the top, and could then jump from that surface to some other surface a little higher up, and so forth. Through such a gradual progression, never making too high a jump, the jumper could jump all the way from the ground to the top of the skyscraper." 

We can imagine how the author might back up such misleading reasoning with some carefully selected "cherry-picked" photos. Such photos might show skyscrapers that could be scaled relatively easily by a jumper. So the book might have quite a few photos showing towers like this one:

With such photos and by making certain claims, the author might try to insinuate that skyscrapers typically have a structure that allows someone to scale them by jumping. This would be an example of faulty generalization or faulty insinuation. The vast majority of skyscrapers do not have any structure that allows someone to scale them by jumping.  For example, in the Manhattan skyline shown below, we see quite a few skyscrapers, none of which could be scaled by jumping:

The tricks mentioned above would probably not be sufficient to get the author to persuade much of anyone that people can jump to the top of skyscrapers. But the author might persuade a lot more if he could come up with some misleading but powerful-sounding term to describe his theory. It might be a masterstroke of misleading labeling if the author were to use the term "natural levitation" to describe his theory.  So the title of the book might be something like "How to Jump to the Top of Very Tall Buildings Using Natural Levitation."

It would not at all be honest for him to use such a term, for his theory would not at all involve any real levitation.  But if the author used the term "natural levitation" in his title and used the term very often in his book, he might convince many more people.  There might be very many people who might think something like, "Well, I first thought your idea was kind of crazy, but when I heard that term 'natural levitation' it sounded more reasonable; I guess if nature can levitate things, then it can raise people up the outer sides of very  tall buildings." 

The hypothetical Scamson author I have described is very much analogous to Charles Darwin, and Scamson's book very much resembles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,  or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Both books involve the same type of fallacious reasoning, and the same type of misleading labeling. 

Just as Scamson made a vague mention of variations in jumping ability, without telling us the specific fact that jumping ability in humans does not vary by more than about 100%, Darwin relied very heavily on a vague mention of natural variations in organisms.  He vaguely told us that some animals are born with variations, the kind of claim that might lead many to think that maybe some organisms are born with useful visible inheritable innovations, such as maybe one third of a new organ, or one third of a new limb.  If Darwin had spoken accurately on this topic, he would have told us that the variations in natural organisms are either birth defects or merely minor variations such as slight differences in color, strength, size or speed. 

The reality is that no one has ever observed any inheritable visible complex structural innovations originating in any organism. It never happens that some organism gets an inheritable visible complex structural innovation originating as a result of mere natural variation, being the first member of its species to have such a variation. So, for example, if a species does not have a wing, it could never happen that one member of that species would be born with a wing, or even half a wing or a third of a wing, and that such an innovation would be passed on to its descendants. To give another example, if a species does not have a particular useful organ, it will never occur that one member of the species may be born with such an organ, or even a third or a half of such an organ, and pass on such a useful innovation to its descendants. 

Natural variation does occur, but it has only been observed to a minor degree that is much less than the kind of variation that would make possible macroevolution, the natural appearance of dramatic new structural innovations in organisms. Such a truth was never told by Darwin, whose very vague mentions of natural variation (and misleading insinuations about it) led his readers to imagine all kinds of phantasmagorical examples of natural variation of a type that humans have never observed. 

We can imagine another example of a man using vague language to create a misleading impression, an example similar to Darwin speaking vaguely about natural variations, and Scamson speaking about variations in jumping ability. Knowing that his income has varied by 10% over the past five years, a manual laborer such as a moving company laborer might try to make his financial prospects look more appealing by vaguely referring to such variation, and speaking like this:

"An important fact is that my income is subject to variations, and my income is not the same each year. Given such variations, it could well be that within a few years I will have an income variation under which I earn  a billion dollars a year." 

Just as Scamson made use of faulty generalization, cherry-picking some very rare easy-to-scale skyscrapers, and trying to insinuate that such easy-to-scale tall buildings are typical skyscrapers, Darwin made use of faulty generalization. He tried very hard to cherry-pick  some rare cases in which nature could have reached a very complex and impressive result through a series of gradual changes that each would produce a benefit.  He failed to tell us that for every such case that might be found in nature, there are more than a hundred cases in which a very complex and impressive result in nature could never be achieved through a series of gradual changes that would each  produce a benefit. As we have learned more and more about the enormous levels of organization and functional complexity at all levels of all organisms, it appears more and more that even the supposedly easy-to-achieve cases cherry-picked by Darwin mostly have previously unimagined depths of organization and functional complexity, meaning that they actually would have been incredibly hard or impossible to naturally arise through any means that Darwin imagined.   

Since Darwin's time we have learned that humans have more than  20,000 different types of protein molecules, each of which is a separate complex invention seemingly impossible to reach through any gradual set of steps, each producing a benefit.  If you change only a small percentage of the amino acids in a protein molecule, the molecule will no longer be able to fold, and will no longer be functionally useful.  Our bodies contain many thousands of different complex inventions that could not have been reached through some "each step gives a reward" process; and so it is for most organisms. The animal kingdom contains more than a billion different types of protein molecules, each its own different type of complex invention apparently impossible to achieve through Darwinian gradualist processes. 

Just as Scamson resorted to the deceptive trick of using the term "natural levitation" for his idea of people jumping to the top of skyscrapers (an act that does not actually involve levitation), Darwin resorted to the deceptive trick of using the phrase "natural selection" to describe what involved no actual selection. The word "selection" refers to when a conscious agent makes a particular choice.  The so-called "natural selection" imagined by Darwin did not actually involve any selection, for this random variation and survival-of-the-fittest effect  does not involve any choices made by conscious agents. Every time someone uses the phrase "natural selection" to describe merely Darwinian processes, that person is like someone calling an equilateral triangle a circle. 

Despite all of its slick tricks, a book like Scamson's book on "natural levitation" would probably not be successful. This is because there is no natural constituency with a predisposition or desire to believe in the idea that people can reach the top of tall buildings by jumping up their outer sides. But Darwin was much luckier. When he wrote his main works there were many people with a very strong desire to believe in any scientist claiming to have a natural theory of biological origins. Using the modern phrase "we got this," which means "we have mastered this," I have called such people the yearning-to-say-we-got-this guys. 

Some of the yearning-to-say-we-got-this guys were scientists and professors eager to crown themselves with glory by annointing themselves as grand Lords of Explanation who understood the great mystery of biological origins.  There were also very many atheists or agnostics eager to accept any theory of natural biological origins, as a kind of analgesic to relieve their annoyance about people talking about the enormous organization and seemingly purposeful fine-tuning of biological organisms.  With so many yearning-to-say-we-got-this guys eager to hail as a triumph any modern theory of natural biological origins, Darwin was able to win fawning accolades from the customer base of his pre-existing constituency, despite all the glaring flaws in his logic and the weakness of his evidence. 

Alternate Explanations (Some Paranormal) for "Past Life Recollections"

What is called past life regression is a technique wherein a therapist puts someone in a hypnotic trance or a state of deep relaxation, and then asks the person to tell about a past life that occurred before the person's current life. Very many people will give accounts suggesting a previous life. Skeptics say this is not really evidence for reincarnation, but just an example of suggestibility. It is well known that people can be extremely suggestible under hypnosis. 

But there may be some reasons for thinking that more than just imagination may be involved in such "past life accounts." Psychologist Helen Wambach used hypnotic regression techniques on more than 1000 people, and collected data sheets on the statements made.  A series of common questions were asked, mostly relating to details about that could be checked, such as the type of home and the type of eating utensils used.  Wambach said that when the data sheets were checked against historical realities, very few discrepancies were found.  She said she found that only 11 out of 1088 accounts had "clear evidence" of historical or factual discrepancies (such as someone claiming he had played a piano at a time before the piano was invented). 

Reading Wambach's book Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis, I have some concerns about her technique. Her technique was apparently to ask leading questions such as "It is now the year 1700, what do you see?"  That kind of question will create an expectation that the hypnotized subject is supposed to provide some story of a past life. A better technique would be to ask neutral questions that do not suggest some belief in reincarnation. An example might be to first ask: "What year were you born?" and then to ask "Do you recall anything that happened to you before that year?"  On page 96 she tells us that she told people before being hypnotized that "their subconscious would have control over their experience of the past life recall," thereby creating the idea that some past life recall was expected from the hypnotized people. 

We know that under hypnosis people are extremely suggestible. A nineteenth century work describes this aspect of hypnotism, describing some hypnotized subjects:

"When they drank water, and were told that it was milk, coffee, rum, whisky, or wormwood, they tasted it as such. Nay, after drinking it as whisky, they were told that they were drunk, and in a minute or two became, in every particular, very drunk indeed. The expression of the face was perfectly that of intoxication, and they could not walk a step without staggering or falling. They were easily made, by suggestion, to fancy themselves any other persons, and acted in character. They shot, fished, swam, lectured, and exhibited every feeling suggested to them. They were as easily made to suppose a stick to be a gun, a rod, a sword, nay, a serpent ; or a chair to be a tiger or a bear. From these animals they fled with extreme terror. They were made to see, hear, and feel a dreadful storm, and to creep for shelter under a table or a chair, supposed by them to be a house."

Since people are so very suggestible under hypnosis, it could be that people telling stories of past lives are merely responding to the suggestion of their hypnotist, in a way similar to the cases listed above. 

Another type of possible evidence for reincarnation consists of young children who start to say they have memories of a previous life. Typically the child will claim to remember details of the life of a person who died not long before the child was born. There have been many cases in which information on the  claimed "previous life" was obtained, and a close match was found between the child's statements and the details of the corresponding person's life and death.  Researcher who have published investigations of many such cases include Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker. 

On a web page discussing the research of Jim Tucker, we have the following interesting set of numbers:

Median age at the time of the previous person's death: 28.
Percent of the children claiming they died a violent or unnatural death: 70%.
Percent of the children saying they had the same gender in a previous life: 90%.
Median time between the claimed death and the child's birth: 16 months. 

The previous figure differs from a figure cited by Wambach, who gives a figure of about 50 years between past lives. 

Does the evidence above show the likelihood that reincarnation occurs? Perhaps not, partially because there are alternate explanations why such things might happen even if no one is being reincarnated.  If you are a materialist, you are very limited in the alternate explanations you can give. But there is no reason why we have to limit ourselves to material explanations. We can imagine paranormal explanations or spiritual explanations other than actual reincarnation. 

One explanation is that souls survive death, and that when a young child gives stories of what he calls his previous life, such information is telepathically coming from another person who had such a life.  Such person may exist as a disembodied spirit in some realm of the dead.  There could be some reason why very young children could be more likely to be targets of such telepathic communication.  One possible reason might be that very young children have not been trained by society to dismiss the paranormal as impossible. 

A similar explanation could explain accounts given in past life regressions.  For quite a few years the trance medium Leonora Piper would seem to speak in the voice of dead persons, stating information that such persons could have known, but she could not have known.  Such cases may suggest that during a hypnotic trance there can be some extrasensory communication between the dead and the living.  If that is true, then such communication could be the source of many or most of the accounts given in past-life regressions.  

So if you are put in a hypnotic trance, and say that you recall living as Wilbur Dalton in the nineteenth century, it may not be that you actually were Wilbur Dalton in the nineteenth century. It may be that you are picking up through ESP some recollections sent to you by Wilbur Dalton, who may be currently living in some heavenly realm of the dead. 

There's another possible paranormal explanation for past life recollections. It could be that the memories of each person's life are stored in some information system that persists indefinitely. Such an information system has sometimes been called the Akashic records. Without believing all the claims that have been made about such Akashic records, we can postulate some paranormal information repository that accumulates information on each person's life, information on a person's experiences.  It could be that during hypnotic regression, people are able to fleetingly access such a repository.  So you may remember being Wilbur Dalton in the nineteenth century, not because you were Wilbur Dalton in the nineteenth century, but because you were somehow able to tap in to some mysterious repository that includes details of his experiences. 

Such an idea may not seem so improbable when we consider extraordinary cases involving what is called psychometry.  There have been many documented cases where some psychic seemed to be able to tell all kinds of information related to some object when being shown the object. So, for example, a psychic such as Mrs. Morel when given some piece of jewelry to see for the first time would be be able to tell accurate details about the object's owner and the owner's experiences, people she had never met.  You can try to explain evidence for psychometery by postulating that sometimes memories get stored in objects. But a better explanation may be that the object simply serves as a kind of prompt allowing the psychic to retrieve information from some paranormal repository of information perhaps storing information related to the lives and experiences of all those who have lived. If such a repository exists, it could be the source of some of the information accessed in past life regressions and past life recollections. 

It was abundantly documented during the nineteenth century that some hypnotized subjects would display astonishing powers of clairvoyance (see here and  here and here and here and here  for examples). They would describe in the most accurate detail places known only to some other person in the room.  Such a thing was called "traveling clairvoyance," and was rather similar to the "remote viewing" of the twentieth century, although it seemed to work far more powerfully. If such a "traveling clairvoyance" can be unlocked in a hypnotized subject to allow him to see far away in space, it could be that such a subject (with unleashed psychic powers) could also mentally travel in time, to peer into the experiences of some person who lived before (but not a person who the seer ever was in a previous life).  

The evidence for paranormal occurrences under hypnosis is extremely vast. A typical psychology textbook discussing hypnosis will discuss only a small subset of the phenomena that have been observed under hypnosis, typically only the least interesting phenomena.  A deep study of hypnotic phenomena will lead you to think that hypnosis can be the doorway to unfathomable powers of the human mind.  If that is true, then there are many strange possibilities that might explain reports of past-lives during hypnosis, some of them being possibilities that do involve reincarnation. 

Bruce Greyson (an MD who is one of the leading researchers of near-death experiences) tells us of an interesting case in which three family members all claimed to be the reincarnation of the same person.  You can read about the case on page 6 of the link here.  We read the following:

"She [Rhonda Mead] also identified pieces of jewelry and other objects of Susan Albert’s as hers, and mentioned by name her great-grandmother’s dog, who had died before she was born. Furthermore, she had an oddly shaped scar on her right arm that resembled a tattoo her great-grandmother had on that arm, and she expressed likes and dislikes that were the same as Susan Albert’s. Around the same time of Rhonda’s birth, two other baby girls, Sheila and Susan Richards, were born to the extended family, both of whom also claimed to have been Susan Albert in their past life. Antonia Mills has investigated other cases of multiple children who claim to remember the same person among several of the Pacific Northwest tribes, and Ian Stevenson has noted such cases among the Inuit in Alaska and among the Igbo in Nigeria.  In other cases, a child will remember the past lives of two people who lived at the same time. And in some cases, the person whose life the child remembers died after the child was born. Such cases raise questions about how to interpret the children’s knowledge of someone else’s life."

Such cases may support the idea that "past-life recollections" may come from a person who did not actually live the life recalled. Because of a wealth of possibilities, it is hard to know exactly what is going on during past life regressions and past life recollections.  Such things may or may not be evidence for reincarnation.  In some cases they may be evidence for survival after death, but not clearly evidence for reincarnation. 

There is one type of protocol I would like to see done when using hypnosis relevant to reincarnation. We might call this a replication-seeking protocol. It would go like this:

(1) Put a person under hypnotic regression, and ask him to tell about his past lives.
(2) Record in a video all of the statements made.
(3) Bring the person out of the trance, and do not tell him about what he said, and do not show him the video. People normally do not recall (at least while they are not under hypnosis) what they said under hypnosis. 
(4) Months later put the same person under hypnotic regression, and ask him him to tell about his past lives, without mentioning anything the person said six months earlier.
(5) Record in a video all of the statements made.
(6) Compare the statements made in the first video with the statements made in the second video, to see whether they are consistent with each other, or whether they conflict with each other. 

 If there was no match, it would be evidence that an actual past life was not being recalled. For example, if John X. said in his first hypnotic session that in his previous life he was a fat baker in St. Louis, and said in his second hypnotic session that in his previous life he was a thin farmer in China, that would be evidence that he was not actually recalling a past life he had.  (By "his previous life" I mean here whatever earthly life he lived, if any, directly before this life, and do not mean "any previous life." For example, if John X. was born in 1960, and he says in Hypnotic Session 1 that in 1959 he was a fat baker in St. Louis, but says in Hypnotic Session 2 that in 1959 he was a thin farmer in China, those two stories conflict with each other, and would suggest that neither story is true. ) 

I am aware of only one case with a good information repetition across multiple hypnotic "past-life regressions." I read a claim that in the famous Bridey Murphy case, the person under hypnosis repeated "much of the information unchanged."  Looking up the book "The Search for Bridey Murphy" on www.archive.org, I do see some repetition of name, town and occupation information in each of three hypnotic sessions. The book provides transcripts of the hypnotic sessions. For example:

• In the first hypnotic session on November 29, 1952 the subject first identifies herself as Friday Murphy (page 112), says she lives in the town of Cork, and says her father is named Duncan Murphy and her mother is named Kathleen. She identifies her father as a barrister (page 113). Later (page 114) she states her name as Bridey Murphy.
• In the second hypnotic session on December 18,1952 (page 136) the subject identifies herself as Bridey Murphy living in Cork,  She says her mother's name is Kathleen and her father's name is Duncan (page 135), and she identifies her father as a barrister (page 137). 
• In the third hypnotic session on January 22, 1953 (page 154) the subject identifies herself as Bridey, her mother as Kathleen, and her father as Duncan, with a job as a barrister in the town of Cork. 

This good repetition places the Bridey Murphy case above reported past life regressions in which we have no data on repetition of claims between different sessions. However, the repetition does not prove that the hypnotized subject really was Bridey Murphy in a previous life.  It could be the subject imagined Bridey Murphy in the first session (or telepathically communicated with the spirit of a deceased Bridey Murphy in the first session), and then simply remembered in the second and third sessions what she had said in that first session. 

A book by William Gregory MD stated this (using the word "sleeper" for a hypnotized person, and "sleep" for a hypnotic trance):

"As a general rule, but not a rule without some exceptions, the sleeper does not remember, after waking, what he may have seen, felt, tasted, smelled, heard, spoken, or done, during his sleep ; but when next put to sleep, he recollects perfectly all that has occurred, not only in the last sleep, but in all former sleeps, and, as in the ordinary state, with greater or less accuracy, although usually very accurately indeed."

So the repetition of a past-life claim in multiple hypnotic sessions does not show a past life really occurred. But a complete lack of repetition between the narrative details of multiple "past life regressions" might be used to discredit the claim that a past life is really being recalled. 

Accounts of near-death experiences tend to conflict with claims that people undergo multiple lifetimes on Earth. One of the most common features of near-death experiences is a report of encountering one or more deceased relatives in some afterlife realm.  Such reports may conflict with claims that souls are reincarnated soon after death. But there is always the possibility that earthly reincarnation is an option granted to a soul that survives death, an option that most surviving souls do not use, or only use rarely. 

Accounts by mediums also tend to conflict with claims that people undergo multiple lifetimes on Earth. Such seers typically report a deceased person as being available for communication, not unavailable because the person had reincarnated as someone else.  In a nineteenth century work a medium or clairvoyant is asked about the nature of the afterlife. When asked "Do we, after a certain time, inhabit again the earth ?" the simple answer of "No" was given. 

Some of the points I have made here are reasons for doubting much of the testimony in the book Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens by Harvard psychologist John E. Mack.  Very much of the testimony of that book is testimony extracted under hypnotic regression.  But much of that testimony could be spontaneous imagination produced after suggestive questions by the hypnotist (Mack). It's very hard to tell, because Mack does not provide any transcripts of the hypnotic regression sessions. So we don't know how much the people were responding to leading questions. Mack also seems to give no sign that he checked for a repetition of recalled details by the same person under two different hypnotic sessions. We have no way of checking for repetition because of a lack of hypnotic session transcripts. So we should be skeptical when we read a statement like this on page 610:

"With conscious recall Arthur had not been able to make out details of an actual vehicle, but now [under hypnosis] he remembered something like ribs, a hatch, and seams, and the vehicle seemed to be made of a 'really shiny, light metal, like metal when it's superheated.' " 

Mack emphasizes that his reputed abductees have considerable similarities in their stories of abduction by extraterrestrials. But there is a way of explaining a large degree of similarity in such stories under hypnosis by the same person, without assuming abductions by extraterrestrials. It is abundantly claimed in the literature of hypnosis that powers such as telepathy and clairvoyance may be greatly increased when someone is hypnotized.  Now let us suppose a hypnotist such as Mack might have had a kind of model in his mind of what to expect when someone describes an extraterrestrial abduction.  Then, though a combination of suggestion and telepathy, it might be that hypnotized people might tend to give similar answers when asked by Mack questions such as "Tell us what happened during your extraterrestrial abduction." They might tend to pick up telepathically ideas about extraterrestrial abduction in the mind of their own hypnotist. 

Postscript: In his interesting book "Life Before Life," Richard M. Eyre discusses the concept of a spiritual pre-existence of souls, not here on Earth, but in some transcendent or heavenly realm, or some other dimension. On page 32, Eyre makes the interesting point that so-called past lives recollections may be the result of information acquired during a soul's pre-existence.  

Here is a hypothetical example:

(1) Long before having an earthly life,  John X. exists for 500 years in some heaven. 

(2) In such a heaven John X. talks to Peter Y. who died in 1950, and went to the same heaven. 

(3)  The earthly life of John X. then begins in 1960. 

(4) Around 1970 John X. is aware of things that happened to Peter Y., who he never met on Earth. 

John X. knowing such details about the life of Peter Y. might be taken for evidence that John X. was once Peter Y. But under the scenario above, we have a very different explanation of how John X. learned such details about the life of Peter Y. 

Visions of the Entranced "Spirit Seers"

What the average person knows about hypnotic phenomena and trance phenomena is only a small fraction of the astonishing phenomena that have been observed in hypnotized and entranced subjects. Nowadays the average person may have merely heard about these things:

• Some people who are hypnotized may recall details of some past experience they could not recall when not hypnotized. 
• Some people who are hypnotized and asked about a past life they had before their birth may describe some events that may be a description of a past life (or possibly just imaginative narratives arising from a power of suggestive). 
• Some people under hypnosis may believe suggestions of their hypnotist. For example, if told by his hypnotist that a cool stick of wood is very hot, a hypnotized person may report feeling burned if the stick of wood is placed on his hand. 
• Some people may be hypnotized and given a post-hypnotic suggestion that will cause them to act in some particular way when they come out of their hypnotic state. For example, under hypnosis, someone may be told to cough whenever hearing his name. After being awoken from hypnosis, the person may then cough when his name is spoken. 

But such phenomena are by no means the most remarkable things reported in hypnotized or entranced subjects.  What you read about hypnosis in recent psychology books or science web sites is only a small fraction of hypnotic phenomena and trance phenomena.  The diagram below illustrates the situation. What you read about hypnosis in places like psychology textbooks or Scientific American or the New York Times is only a small fraction of hypnotic phenomena and trance phenomena, almost always the least interesting cases.  Our mainstream news sources don't want you to learn about the harder-to-explain things that have occurred under hypnosis and trances, things that tend to be inconsistent with the dogmatic claims of many materialist professors. 

Some of the more remarkable hypnotic phenomena (but not by any means the most remarkable) include things like these reported by Ian Stevenson MD in a chapter of one of his books:

• When a hypnotized man was told his heart rate was increasing, it increased from 78 beats a minute to 135 beats a minute. 
• "LeCron (1969) obtained breast growth in all but 3 of 20 women to whom he gave hypnotic suggestions that this would happen."
• "Since the last quarter of the 19th century hypnotists have reported the production of blisters on the skin through hypnotic suggestions."
• 14 patients with warts on both sides of the body were given hypnotic suggestions the warts would disappear on one side, and in 9 out of the 10 deeply hypnotized patients the warts disppeared on only the suggested side. 
• "Beilis (1966) inadvertently produced a sunbumlike reaction in the skin of a woman to whom he gave the suggestion, during a procedure for hypnotic induction, that she imagine herself at a beach on a sunny day."
• After recalling under hypnosis a severe belt whipping his father inflicted on his buttocks, a patient inexplicably developed blue marks on his buttocks. 
• "Smirnoff (1912) produced blisters with hypnotic suggestions in an unusually short time. In one experiment a blister developed within 30 minutes, and in a second one it developed after about 2 hours. Smirnoff was particularly pleased with his second experiment, when, he stated, the 'whole process took place under our eyes.'  He had two other persons present as witnesses."

As remarkable as such phenomena are, they are still not at all the most astonishing things reported in hypnotized subjects. Other astonishing phenomena include  the following (which can be read about here):

• The astonishing effect of complete insensitivity to pain under hypnosis, so that major surgery could be performed while a subject was under hypnosis, with him reporting no pain even though no anesthestic had been used. 
• Astonishing subconscious time-keeping abilities,  so that a post-hypnotic suggestion could come into effect exactly after the elapsing of a specified time such as 30 hours or 100 hours.
• Exaltation of speaking abilities, so that a subject under hypnosis might speak with an intellectual brilliance he would never display under normal consciousness.

Even more remarkable phenomena have very many times been reported after hypnotized subjects were guided to achieve a kind of rapport with some other person.  The phrase that appears in the literature again and again is the French phrase en rapport. Many times  the nineteenth century literature would refer to some strange process by which a hypnotized subject would be guided to have a kind of temporary psychic closeness with some person, a state that would be referred to as being en rapport with the other person. We repeatedly read in the literature accounts of the following:

• Once a hypnotized person had been "placed en rapport" with some other person, a stranger to him, the hypnotized person might describe in great detail accuracy the pains and symptoms of that person. 
• Once a hypnotized person had been "placed en rapport" with some other person, a stranger to him,  the hypnotized person might describe in detail internal medical problems of that person, just as if the hypnotized person could see inside the body with something rather like X-ray vision. 
• Once a hypnotized person had been "placed en rapport" with some other person, there could occur a kind of "traveling clairvoyance" in which the other person might vaguely describe walking to his home and inside his home, and the hypnotized person might very accurately describe all kinds of physical details of the home and the road leading to it that the person had never mentioned. 
• Hypnotized subjects could countless times tell what was inside sealed containers, and display other feats of clairvoyance such as tell what someone was doing behind a closed door. 

You can read many accounts of such cases by reading the posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 

It is important for any careful student of this topic to be aware of the shifting terminology that has been used regarding hypnotism. Hypnotism is more than two hundred years old (many people think it has existed for thousands of years).  The first major known use of something like hypnotism occurred in late eighteenth century Europe.  Franz Mesmer began a medical treatment program that was called animal magnetism or simply magnetism or Mesmerism.  His program consisted mainly of a form of hypnotism along with various superfluous theoretical claims about a "magnetic fluid" in bodies. One of Mesmer's disciples (Armand-Marc-Jacques Chastanet, the Marquis de Puységur) experimented and discovered that it was possible to induce in subjects a hypnotic state between sleep and normal consciousness, a state he called "artificial somnambulism."

In the first half of the nineteenth century very dramatic results were produced in hypnotized subjects.  But to research the very extensive literature on this topic (much of it written by doctors) on sites such as www.archive.org, you must use search phrases more than just "hypnotism."  The word "hypnotism" only came into existence in 1843. Before then there were many books written about hypnotic phenomena, but instead of using the word "hypnotism" they use terms such as Mesmerism, animal magnetism, "magnetic sleep," and somnambulism.  In some cases the word "magnetism" is used to mean "animal magnetism," which is basically "early hypnotism." The modern word "hypnotism" was introduced in 1843 by James Braid, who tried to present a stripped-down description of hypnotic phenomena that would be acceptable to those not wishing to ponder the more astonishing things being reported when people were hypnotized. 

The items in my previous bullet lists are very remarkable, but they are not the most remarkable phenomena reported under hypnosis or  trances.  The most remarkable phenomena reported are the following:

• It was reported by multiple authors that under hypnosis or in a trance some subjects would be able to obtain in a clairvoyant manner details about a spirit world and life after death. 
• It was reported by multiple authors that under hypnosis or in a trance some subjects would be able to obtain in a clairvoyant manner details about the appearance and characteristics of deceased people, details that could be verified by the spouses or relatives of such people.  

Below is a quote from a nineteenth century work, in which the writer describes a very high state of mentality under hypnosis (the writer uses the word  "magnetic" to mean "hypnotic"):

"In the clearest and highest magnetic condition, there is neither seeing, hearing, nor feeling; they are superseded by something more than all three together — an unerring perception, and the truest penetration into our own life and nature. And the more simple and the nearer nature the man is in his waking state, who falls into this condition, the more entirely does his spirit liberate itself from soul and body, and the deeper and truer is his self-seeing.

But this state has also its various degrees and differences, as will be hereafter shewn; and it is in the highest condition of the inner life that no deception is possible — especially in that moment when the spirit, finding itself released from the soul, the very innermost centre is illuminated as by a flash of lightning. ' From that moment' says a clear-seer, ' everything resolves itself into an unbounded sea of light, in which from infinite bliss I seem to be dissolved myself. Every form presents itself to me in this light — which far exceeds that of the sun— in the most defined and accurate point of view. I comprehend everything much more easily and clearly, the depths of nature are opened to me, and my view of the past and the future, both as regards tim6 and space, is like viewing the present ; and is more per- fect and defined in proportion to the degree of development the condition has reached.' "

The quote above is from an 1845 work by the physician Justinus Kerner, a work describing the case of Frederica Hauffe, a visionary born in 1801.  When a young girl, she apparently saw an apparition. After marrying as a young woman, she began to experience odd symptoms.  We read the following very strange account:

"At one time, she spoke for three days only in verse; and at another, she saw for the same period nothing but a ball of fire, that ran through her whole body as if on thin bright threads. Then for three days she felt as if water was falling on her head, drop by drop ; and it was at this time that she first saw her own image. She saw it clad in white, seated on a stool, whilst she was lying in bed. She contemplated the vision for some time, and would have cried out, but could not. At length she made herself heard, and on the entrance of her husband it disappeared."

After reading the equally strange account here, and after reading about her starting hypnotic therapy with a doctor, we are told that Frederica began to see spirits. We read this: 

"It was about this period that, for the first time, she began to see another person behind the one she was looking at. Thus, behind her youngest sister she saw her deceased brother, Henry ; and behind a female friend, she saw the ghostly form of an old woman, whom she had known in her childhood at Lowenstein."

On the same page and the next page we read this interesting account of visionary prowess:

"For long intervals she was only in a half-waking state ; though she would walk out in the snow and rain, and preferred being in the cold. She was extremely susceptible to all sorts of spiritual influences : prophetic dreams, divinations, and prophetic visions in glass and mirrors, gave evidence of her inner-life. Thus, in a glass of water that stood upon the table, she saw some persons, who, half an hour afterwards, entered the room. She also saw, in the same manner, a carriage travelling on the road to B--- , which was not visible from where she was. She described the vehicle, the persons that were in it, the horses, &c. ; and in half an hour afterwards this equipage arrived at the house. At this time she seemed also endued with the second sight. One morning, on leaving the room during the visit of her physician, she saw a coffin standing in the hall, which impeded her way ; in it lay the body of her paternal grandfather. She returned, and bade her parents and physician come out and see it ; but they could see nothing, nor, at that time, she either. On the following morning the coffin, with the body in it, was standing by her bedside. Six weeks afterwards the grandfather died, having been in perfect health until a few days of his death."

Frederica then began to suffer increasingly severe medical problems, losing an unhealthy amount of weight.  She improved after some treatment, but was at one point was in a state rather between life and death. We read this:

"From her eyes there shone a really spiritual light, of which every one who saw her became immediately sensible ; and, whilst in this state, she was more a spirit than a being of mortal mould. Should we compare her to a human being, we should rather say that she was in the state of one who, hovering between life and death, belonged rather to the world he was about to visit, than the one he was going to leave."

On the same page and the next one we read that she had out-of-body experiences (like many others):

"She was frequently in that state in which persons, who, like her, have had the faculty of ghost-seeing, perceive their own spirit out of their body, which only enfolds it as a thin gauze. She often saw herself out of her body, and sometimes double. She said, ' It often appears to me that I am out of my body, and then I hover over it, and think of it ; but this is not a pleasant feeling, because I recognize my body.' "

We later read of Frederica exhibiting a phenomenon well-documented by numerous other writers, the phenomenon of "transposition of the senses," in which someone under hypnosis or someone in a trance may seem to read with some body part other than the eyes, or hear with some part other than the ears.  We read this:

"Many curious experiments, of the same sort, all tended to the conviction, that writings or drawings, placed on the pit of her sto- mach, produced sensible effects, according to their nature. Good news of her child made her laugh — ill news made her sad ; the name of a person who was her enemy awakened anger ; and the name of Napoleon excited martial ideas, and she sang a march. Strange as these results are, repeated experiments confirmed them ; and, however difficult to believe, they are absolute facts."

On page 77 we read the following interesting passage, that may be important in explaining the phenomenon of "phantom pain," under which someone can still seem to feel pain from an amputated limb:

"When she saw people who had lost a limb, she still saw the limb attached to the body...From this interesting phenomenon, we may, perhaps, explain the sensations of persons, who still have feeling in a limb that has been amputated."

On page 80 we read more about Frederica's "spirit seeing" capability:

"At such times as the faculty of ghost-seeing was active in her, she believed herself to be awake ; but she was then in that peculiar state we have denominated as the inner-life. Her grandmother always appeared to her in the form she bore when alive, but in different attire."

Later we read this very spooky account:

"Behind a servant girl, who lived with me, she often saw the form of a boy about twelve years old. I asked the girl if she had any relation of that age, but she said she had not. But she. told me afterwards that, on thinking of my inquiry, she remembered that her brother, who had died when he was three years old, would have been just twelve."

On pages 156-157 Frederica gives us this equally spooky account in her own words:

"Whilst the ghosts are with me, I see and hear every thing around me as usual, and can think of other subjects ; and though I can avert my eyes from them, it is difficult for me to do it — I feel in a sort of magnetic rapport with them. They appear to me like a thin cloud, that one could see through — which, however, I cannot do. I never observed that they threw any shadow. I see them more clearly by sun or moonlight than in the dark ; but whether I could see them in absolute darkness, I do not know....he appearance of the ghosts is the same as when they were alive, but colourless — rather greyish; so is their attire — like a cloud."

On page 174 the author (the physician Justinus Kerner) describes a case in which the apparition-sighting of Frederica was corroborated by others:

"I myself once saw a spectre, at the moment that 

Mrs. H 's eyes were fixed on it. To me the 

outlines were not distinct ; it looked like a pillar of 

vapour, or cloud, of the size of a man ; it stood by 

her bed-side, and she was speaking to it in a low 

voice. She told me afterwards, that it was the 

spectre of a tall, old man, who had visited her twice 

before. It is remarkable, that on his first appear- 

ance, her sister had seen it ; and also another per- 

son, who discerned it as distinctly as Mrs. H 

herself." 

Kerner states on page 175 that he visited Frederica Hauffe "at least 3000 times" and "gave myself inexpressable pains to investigate all reports, but I never could discover deception." Frederica died in 1829, still in her twenties. She reported seeing her deceased father in her last days, like many people who report seeing apparitions of relatives in their last days. Reportedly various spooky things happened at the time of her death, as reported here and here. 

The case of Frederica Hauffe bears significant resemblance to the much later (and equally interesting) case of Mollie Fancher, discussed in detail here.  Both Frederica and Mollie suffered very severe medical symptoms, both often fell into trances, and both claimed to see spirits. In the Fancher case there is abundance of good evidence for her clairvoyant abilities.  But except for the passage previously quoted, there seemed to be relatively little evidence in either the Hauffe case or the Fancher case corroborating the claims of an ability to see spirits. 

But in another case involving hypnosis, an entranced seer claimed to see the spirits of many dead people, and her descriptions were well corroborated by people who knew such dead people when they were alive.  The case I refer to is the case of Adele Magnot, described in detail in the 1851 book The Celestial Telegraph by Louis Alphonse Cahagnet. 

After discussing experiences with several entranced visionaries, on pages 51-52 Cahagnet introduces us to Adele, telling us that he would hypnotize her, and that she would not remember what occurred when she was hypnotized.  He introduces her as follows (using the word "magnetic sleep" for a hypnotic trance):

"We are now come to our best and most powerful ecstatic ; the one whose light has opened our eyes ; the one who refuses no spiritual experiment. Theology, metaphysics, psychology, she answers all in a sense tinctured with neither pride nor error. Should the materialist not obtain from her the proofs he desires, he can not accuse her of entangling the question, or of bad faith. For several years past, in her magnetic sleep, she lives with the beings of the other world ; give her but the Christian and surname of the deceased persons, no matter at what period we desire her to perceive or consult, and she sees and converses with them at will. Hitherto, she has never failed in one experiment, and we shall be astonished at her clairvoyance, and the exact details she gives of persons who have departed this life."

It is not until Volume II of The Celestial Telegraph that Cahagnet gives examples that seem to corroborate such claims.  Cahagnet discusses very many cases in which Adele was asked by some visitor to describe a deceased person Adele had never known, given only the deceased person's name.  Again and again, she immediately describes the person mentioned, to the satisfaction of the visitor who knew the deceased person.

Below are some quotes that  give an impression of this ability. All of the quotes are comments about the accuracy of a description Adele gave of a dead person she did not know, after given only the person's name by a stranger.  In many of these cases, both the name and the address of the visitor are given. 

• "Madame Lorme declares herself highly satisfied with the exactitude of these details."
• M. A____ acknowledged the exactitude of all these details." 
• J. Vermale "acknowledged as perfectly exact all the above details."
• A M. Duteil said "I acknowledge the above details as exact, excepting the age."
• "Madame D acknowledges all the details of the apparition of her husband as quite exact."
• A J. J. Rostan said, "This is true as regards the stature, age, dress, deportment, malady, and the deformity."
• General De Wagner said the description was "very exact."
• Gilot L' Etang said that "the whole is conformable to the truth."
• A Viscount D'Orsay said, "I certify that the above details are perfectly correct, and that I was greatly astonished, as well as delighted, to find once more in this description all the reminiscences left me of my mother who died thirty-three years ago."
• C. Witt said, "I certify that all the particulars given by the somnambulist [Adele] are very exact, and conformable to the truth."
• Blesson said, "Acknowledged the above details as strictly true in every respect," and later "acknowledged the above details as perfectly exact."
• A C.C. said, "Acknowledged all the above details as very exact."
• E. Osborne "acknowledged all as correct, apart the age and prediction, which time only can prove."
• Roustan stated, "This is exact."
• Fandar stated, "The indications given by our somnambulist [Adele] are very exact." 
•  Dejean de la Bastie "acknowledged the details as exact."
• Mesdames De Longueville, I. D'Heuicourt, and Ve. Bimont "signed the whole as quite exact."

Following the links above, you can read the conversations that preceded these testimonies of accuracy. They are almost all cases in which some visitor asked for Adele to see some deceased person unknown to Adele. The accurate descriptions that followed (as recorded by the author) did not involve Adele asking questions of the visitors to any appreciable degree, so the impressive results cannot be explained by any hypothesis of "cold reading."  Some of the original readers of Cahagnet's book may have explained such high accuracy as telepathy between Adele and the visitors rather than clairvoyant perceptions of souls surviving death. 

A typical example of such apparent prowess is reported on page 120 of Volume II of the book.  A Pauline Vedeaux arrives, and asks if Adele can see Pauline's deceased father. Adele gives this description of the person she had never met or heard about:

"I see a man, with gray hair not quite so tall as madame, pretty corpulent, neck short, fine open forehead ; lively eyes, expressive and mild ; countenance fresh ; nose rather large at the bottom, middling-size ; smiling mouth ; chin round : altogether a good-looking old man. His death must have been caused by the state of his blood, as I perceive it is black, thick, and circulating with difficulty. He was subject to stoppages ; he was treated for an aneurism, but it was not one; his medical adviser ought rather to have diverted the course of the blood. He must have experienced a sort of weight in the lower part of the body, and lassitude in the limbs ; also a pain in his left leg. I see him in a dark-colored riding-coat, light-colored waistcoat, coarse blue pantaloons; he wore shoes, and not boots ; for his size as a man, his hand was not large. He had a look commanding respect, was good and just. In his last moments, he was easily provoked. He was not fond of showing off' his kind feelings, preferring to keep them pent up within himself; this caused him to be looked upon as very cold, though. he was not so. His domestic happiness was often disturbed, his wife's character not being in sympathy with his own. He tells me that your son is intended for the bar, that he will be an advocate. He often comes to inspire you with good thoughts. He has appeared to you in dreams; your position will be changed in two years' time, and you will reside in Paris."

We are told that "This lady is greatly surprised at the minuteness and truth of these details, especially those concerning her son ; from the earliest age of the latter, the grandfather used to say, 'My little grandson shall be a little advocate.' "  We are given a quote in which Pauline states, "Recognised as very exact, all these details."

On pages 161-164 of Volume 1 the author gives a series of questions and answers regarding life after death. He neglects to tell from which of his hypnotized visionaries the answers have come, but we may guess that they come from the centerpiece of his book, Adele (as they match her description of life-after-death beginning on page 52).  The depiction of life after death is a pleasant one.  We are told there is no hell, but merely "places of purification" for "great criminals." We are told that after death people typically go to a heaven, where they live in a human form. We are told that in this heaven there is "all that can be desired." When asked whether souls surviving death "after a certain time, inhabit again the earth," the answer is "No." The questions and answers below are interesting:

C 31. "On entering the heavens does the soul see God ?" " Yes." 

C 32. "In what form?" "That of a dazzling sun."

What is interesting about this answer is that it conforms with the accounts given in near-death experiences reported since 1970. In such accounts, again and again people will report encountering some transcendent or numinous reality or mind, which appears not in a human form, but as a kind of amorphous "Being of light" comparable to a "dazzling sun."  Encountering "an unusually bright light" or a "light clearly of mystical or other-worldly origin" is one of the "Greyson Scale" characteristics of a near-death experience. 

The case of Adele Magnot described above resembles that of the case of Leonora Piper, another person who in a trance state seemed to have uncanny accuracy in describing deceased persons she could not have learned about, when asked about such persons by strangers.  A complete description of the inexplicable phenomena reported under hypnosis or trances would require a very long volume.  Whenever you hold in your hands something like an 800-page psychology textbook, you should say to yourself something like, "What they discuss is merely the tip of the iceberg." If we can compare the human mind to an ocean, what you learn about such a reality in college is merely like a bay of that ocean. 

As Unlikely As an Unguided Trip to 10 Billion Planets

Modern biologists typically do a very poor job of explaining the degree of order, organization, complexity and information in living organisms, and they often act as if they were trying to conceal such realities from us.  I think this is partially because if they were to  describe such realities properly, people would be much less likely to accept the explanatory claims biologists typically make.

Let us consider protein molecules. The human genome specifies the starting structure of more than 20,000 protein molecules. Each such protein molecule has a particular function in the body, and each such protein molecule is made up of many amino acids. The median number of amino acids in a human protein molecule is about 375 amino acids. 

A very important point is that you will not get a functional protein molecule by some random combination of about 375 amino acids. To be functional, a protein molecule must have what are called folds. When the protein molecule has these folds, it can assume a three-dimensional shape that is necessary for its functionality.

For every possible protein molecule that has folding and has a useful function, there are countless trillions of quadrillions of physically possible protein molecules that do not fold and do have any useful function. Similarly, for every combination of 375 characters or letters that results in a functional computer subroutine, there are countless trillions of quadrillions of possible 375-character combinations that do not result in a functional computer subroutine. It can reasonably be estimated that for every functional protein molecule of about 300 amino acids, there are more than 10 to the two hundredth power possible combinations of 300 amino acids that would not result in a functional protein molecule.

This likelihood does not get any larger when we factor in so-called "natural selection" (a very misleading term because "selection" is a word meaning "choice," and so-called "natural selection" involves no choice). Small fractions of protein molecules are not functional, and provide no survival benefit and no “survival of the fittest” benefit. So so-called "natural selection" and survival of the fittest would never act to cause functional protein molecules to accumulate on the grounds of fractional parts being beneficial. Small fractions or halves of protein molecules are not beneficial, are not functional, and would not have the folds needed for proper function of protein molecules.

There is a way for us to visualize how unlikely it would be that a functional protein molecule would form by chance. Let us consider interstellar space. The space between stars is almost inconceivably vast. The star nearest to our sun is about 25 trillion miles away. That distance is about three billion times the diameter of the Earth.

Now, let's imagine a spaceship that was traveling around randomly, without any guidance. What is the chance that such a ship would by chance go into orbit around a planet orbiting the nearest star? Since we are dealing with three-dimensional space, the chance of such a thing would be much less than 1 in three billion.

The nearest star is about 4 light-years away, or about 25 trillion miles away. If we imagine a cubic volume of space 4 light-years in width, we have a volume of about 10⁴⁰ cubic miles. Within this volume you could fit about 10³⁶ planet Earths, a trillion trillion trillion Earths.  If we imagine a cube 4 light-years wide, each of the six faces of that cube will have a width of about 25 trillion miles, but an area (width times height) of 25 trillion miles squared, which is roughly six hundred trillion trillion miles or 10²⁶ miles. The chance of a randomly traveling spaceship coming very close to a planetary target of about 10,000 miles located anywhere near any of the six faces of such a cube is much less than 1 chance in 10²⁰. 

So, very roughly speaking, an unguided spaceship sent out in a random direction from Earth would have something like 1 chance in 10²⁰ of going into orbit around a planet revolving around the nearest star. 

Vastly underestimating the unlikelihood of a functional protein molecule forming from random amino acid combinations, we can use such a likelihood as a very rough metaphor for the chance of a random sequence of about 375 amino acids being a functional protein. It is actually vastly more unlikely that hundreds of random amino acids would be a functional protein. There are twenty types of amino acids that can be specified in any single position of DNA or in any part of the polypeptide chain that is a protein molecule before it folds.   Considering a protein of only 100 amino acids, the total number of combinations of the twenty types of amino acids (for a length of 100 amino acids) is 20 to the hundredth power, which is equal to 10 to the one-hundred and thirtieth power, exactly 1.2676506 X 10¹³⁰. Virtually none of these would correspond to functional protein molecules. 

Now, in the human genome there are more than 20,000 types of functional protein molecules. What metaphor can we use for the appearance of all of these functional protein molecules arising by chance? We can simply extend the metaphor I just used. Let us imagine an unguided spaceship without any crew and without any guidance system, randomly traveling about between the stars. Let us imagine that this unguided spaceship somehow goes into orbit around 20,000 different planets, again and again being so lucky as to reach a planet, even though no one and no system is guiding the spaceship. The chance of this happening can be very roughly calculated as being 1 in 10 multipled by itself 400,000 times, in other words, roughly 1 in  10^400,000.  You get that probability by multiplying by itself  20,000 times the previously estimated 1 chance in 10²⁰ of accidentally going into orbit around a planet when traveling about four light-years in a random direction. 

But for us to accept the orthodox story of biological origins, we must believe in something far more improbable than this. For the total number of types of functional folding protein molecules that exist in all species has been estimated to be between 10 billion and a trillion.  A paper says, "There are >1010 to 1012 different proteins in all organisms from the three domains of life (Eukarya, Bacteria, and Archaea) on Earth."  Each of these types of molecules is its own separate complex information-rich type of invention.   What would be a good metaphor for the unlikelihood of all of those types of proteins originating through unguided processes? The correct metaphor would seem to be an unguided spaceship traveling through the Milky Way galaxy, and accidentally going into orbit around 10 billion planets. The chance of this happening can be calculated as roughly 1 in 10 multiplied by itself 200,000,000,000 times, in other words, roughly 1 in 10^{200,000,000,000.} You get that probability by multiplying by itself 10 billion times the 1 chance in 10²⁰ of accidentally going into orbit around a planet when traveling in a random direction about four light-years. 

There's another analogy we can use to get a rough idea of how improbable are the series of lucky accidents imagined by Darwinian orthodoxy. We can imagine human radio astronomers getting a long intelligent-sounding radio message that was produced not by intelligent agents, but purely by chance. 

There are natural factors that result in radio waves being transmitted from far in space. Such natural factors merely produce noise. But let us imagine our astronomers getting some radio signal that was pure noise, the result of mindless natural factors, but which somehow sounded perfectly intelligent. For example, suppose the radio waves spelled out the following:

"Greetings, residents of planet Earth! We are the denizens of a beautiful life-filled planet orbiting a star twenty light-years away from your planet. We have picked up radio signals sent from your planet. We know all about your beautiful blue-green planet, the third planet in your solar system. You will be happy to learn that you are not alone in the universe. Our planet is the fifth planet in our solar system. Our planet is drier than yours, but one fifth of it is covered by water. Our gravity is lower than on your planet, and we have built towers far taller than any on your planet. Please continue listening on this radio frequency, and you will learn all about our wonderful culture, and the great progress we have made in science and technology." 

Now imagine, someone asked us to believe that this message was not actually the result of any intelligent beings, but was purely the chance product of radio signals produced by random natural processes. Imagine if someone asked you to believe that such a message was purely the accidental result of random radio blips that had against all odds closely resembled a functional message. That would be like the chance of any type of functional protein molecule arising for the first time by chance.  Since there are twenty amino acid types which can be specified in each of the vast number of  nucleotide positions of a DNA molecule,  and twenty-six characters in the English alphabet, the chance of a functional protein from a random combination of about 370 amino acids is roughly comparable to the chance of 370 random characters making a readable functional paragraph. 

Continuing the same analogy, what would be the chance of you getting the 10 billion or more types of protein molecules in the earthly biosphere, by unguided processes? It would be like the chance of a very large public library of many thousands of readable and informative books having been produced by typing monkeys rather than intelligent authors.

There is no Darwinian way out of such difficulties.  The problem is that functional protein molecules cannot arise by any "each little part adds a benefit" fashion imagined by Darwinists.  Experiments with protein molecules show that changing only a small fraction of their amino acids causes them to be non-functional. 

For example, the paper here estimates that making a random change in a single amino acid of a protein (most of which have hundreds of amino acids) will have a 34% chance of leading to a protein's "functional inactivation." Figure 1 of the paper here suggests something similar, by indicating that after about 10 random mutations (a change in only 10 of its hundreds of amino acids), the fitness of a protein molecule will drop to zero. Further evidence for such claims can be found in this paper, which discusses very many ways in which a random mutation in a gene for a protein molecule can destroy or damage the function or stability of the protein.  An "active site" of an enzyme protein is a region of the protein molecule (about 10% to 20% of the volume of the molecule) which binds and undergoes a chemical reaction with some other molecule.  The paper states, "If a mutation occurs in an active site, then it should be considered lethal since such substitution will affect critical components of the biological reaction, which, in turn, will alter the normal protein function." The paper follows that sentence with a mention of quite a few other ways in which random mutations can break protein molecules, making them nonfunctional. For example, we read that "an amino acid substitution at a critical folding position can prevent the forming of the folding nucleus, which makes the remainder of the structure rapidly condense," which is a description of how a single amino acid change (less than a 1% change in the amino acids in a protein molecule) can cause a protein molecule to no longer have the 3D shape needed for its function. As a biology textbook tells us, "Proteins are fragile, are often only on the brink of stability."

Just as planets are very rare exceptions within interstellar space (with 99.99999999999999999999999999% of such space not being planets), functional protein molecules are very rare exceptions within the total volume of amino acid combinatorial space (the "possibility space"consisting of all the possible combinations of 1000 or fewer amino acids), with 99.99999999999999999999999999% of possible amino acid combinations not resulting in functional protein molecules.  Similarly, functional very complex computer subroutines are very rare in the totality of alphabetic combinatorial space (the "possibility space" consisting of all possible combinations of 1000 or fewer characters), with 99.99999999999999999999999999% of possible character combinations not resulting in useful complex computer subroutines. 

Darwin never knew about such a difficulty, because he never knew that the basic building blocks of living things are a huge number of different types of extremely organized information-rich protein molecules, things that cannot arise though some gradual process in which each little part addition produces a benefit. Darwin knew nothing about protein molecules, and virtually nothing about the complexity of cells. 

I have not mentioned above the issue of protein complexes, the fact that a significant fraction of all protein molecules are functionally worthless by themselves, but only function properly when working as team members in protein complexes consisting of multiple types of protein molecules.  A scientific paper tells us the following:

"To become functional, proteins commonly depend on their interactions with other molecules. These molecules are known to include other proteins, which readily interact to form protein complexes. The majority of cellular processes are dependent on protein-protein interactions (PPI’s)1. An additional layer of complexity is added by the interaction of different protein complexes in so called super-complexes or metabolons."

A consideration of protein complexes and metabolons would only make the infinitesimal probabilites mentioned above many, many times more infinitesimal. 

Once biologists discovered the enormous organization and  fine-tuned functional complexity of protein molecules and cells, and the vast number of types of functional protein molecules and types of cells in the animal kingdom, each being a separate very complex information-rich invention incredibly unlikely to appear through any known natural process, such biologists should have ripped into shreds their boasts of understanding biological origins. The main reason they did not do such a thing may be  that claiming that you understand biological origins is a very addictive conceit, just like smoking opium is a very addictive pleasure. 

Postscript: The median number of amino acids in a human protein molecule is about 375.  Using ">>" to mean "much greater than," a mainstream scientific paper states this regarding a protein molecule with 300 residues (which means 300 amino acids): 

"Folding of a 300 residue sequence can be naively modeled as a random search through a space of over 10²⁸⁵ conformational states... Given this, it would take>> 10²⁰⁰ times the present age of the universe for a particular folding to occur, even assuming a sampling rate of 1 trillion conformational states per molecule per second and a volume of concentrated protein solution the size of Earth's oceans."

So as I state above, we vastly underestimate the unlikelihood  of a functional protein molecule forming from random amino acid combinations,  if we compare this unlikelihood to the chance of an unguided interstellar spaceship accidentally going into orbit around a planet in the nearest solar system.