The Infinite Monkey Theorem, formalised by Émile Borel in 1913, states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely produce any given text. The probability of typing any specific sequence in a finite time is vanishingly small, but given infinite time, it approaches certainty.
The theorem is often misused in debates about creation and evolution. Creationists invoke it to argue that complex life could not arise by chance — but this misunderstands both the theorem and evolution. Natural selection is not random; it is a cumulative process that preserves beneficial changes. The monkey types randomly; evolution does not.
For freethinkers, the theorem is a useful reminder that human intuitions about probability are unreliable, and that the vastness of time and space makes improbable events not merely possible but inevitable.