What are the odds?

[Family Man]

We're probably all familiar with Fred Hoyle's estimation of the odds of the universe being what it is to be 1:10 to the 40000th power, or that of a 747 spontaneously coming together in a junkyard in a windstorm. Sounds impressive until you start thinking about it.

For example, consider the odds of you existing at this exact moment in time with your exact gene combination. What are the odds? We'll let's start by ruling out such things as the odds that your parents would meet and have sex the day that you were conceived. The fact is that in any fertilization, there are millions of sperms competing to fertilize the one egg your mother provided. For ease of calculation, let's put the odds at a million to one.

But wait, you need to consider the odds that your parents would have their exact gene combination. The odds are now a million X a million X a million or 10 to the eighteenth power. Then about about your grandparents? Now the odds are 10 to the 42nd power. In fact, it takes only going back 16 generations before it is clear that the odds that you could possibly exist is worse than Hoyle's estimate of the odds of the universe -- and that using generous assumptions.

Of course, no one would claim that God must have necessarily picked out the exact egg and sperm to create you and all of your ancestors. Natural forces are enough to explain this, despite of the "odds". And that's where arguments like Hoyle's strike me as bogus. Because we are ignorant of the forces involved in how the universe was made, there may have been a good reason why the universe become the way it is -- despite the odds. It is simply an argument from ignorance.

[Infidelettante]

And the odds don't mean a thing after the horses have passed the finish line. In other words, figuring the odds that the universe wouldn’t exist is nonsense.

JT

[-X-]

i'd say that the odds the universe exists the way it is are 1:1.

it could have happened no other way. the only thing we can speculate now on is what will happen in the universe's future.

look at any horse race in hindsight, it could not have happened any other way, regardless of the odds. now, the more times a particular horse wins a race (or loses, for that matter) the odds of that horse winning (or losing) again change. true odds should not change, they should be the same. but they don't, because there are variables. therefore, it is not the thing we are asking the odds of, it is the odds the variables will change what we think will happen to it. :D

[Yannis (J'ohn)]

The possibility of any combination of three dice results (e.g. 1,2,3 or 5,6,4, and so on) is 0,00463%. According to that makeshift rule that people use in such cases, casting three dice should never produce any results. ;)

SBS :)

[graymouser]

There are several fun things about teleological arguments that make what sounds like the strongest argument for God turn out to be the weakest. For instance:

1. Given 100,000,000,000-squared star systems (there are about a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion stars each), which are pretty likely from a big hot expansion, with activity for billions of years, that one planet should have turned out a reasonably interesting living thing should surprise no one. The universe is on a sufficiently grand scale to overcome any odds.

2. If it's unlikely that this big hot universe should come out randomly, how much less likely is it that a perfect being should somehow exist?

2a. While we're at it, if the big hot universe with intelligent life on (at least) one little planet orbiting one little star is so unlikely it had to be designed, why isn't God so unlikely he had to be designed too? I mean, God's supposed to be perfect, unlike us.

3. Why assume that this universe was anything but the luck of the draw? As I understand it, in the time shortly after the beginning of spacetime expansion, just about anything could've come out - and given the right conditions, I guess different life could've existed instead of us.

4. Why are we so special that we must've been designed? All theism is deeply rooted in the narcissistic desire for humans to be something more than primates who evolved rational capacities. I think humanity is actually pretty great for that, but don't see it requiring some big God fellow to make it happen.

-Wayne