NOTHINGNESS,
What is the probability that the universe as we now know it happened by chance rather than by design?
You have no idea. You lack the data with which to make a probability based argument.
One persistent analogy supporting this hypothesis is the famous 'monkey argument,' supposedly introduce by A.S. Eddington, suggesting that an army of monkeys pounding on typewriters might eventually write all the books in the British Museum if given enough time. (Huxley's version had monkeys eventually typing the works of Shakespeare.)
However, this analogy quickly falls apart when you think of it more logically. Every time a monkey strts typng, he is at ground zero, so even if a word or two results from his random pecking, the possiblity that a complete book-let alone an entire universe-could result is statistically ludicrous.
It would have to be regarded as a 'miracle." Even if, on a given day a monkey picking at the keys happened to type a few words, that would not mean the monkey was on a roll and that simply given enough time it would come up with a Shakespearean play.
What is this an argument for?
To make the statement above analogous with natural selection, the monkeys would retain a correct letters rather than discard them. In this way they
would get Bob Shakespeare's works in the end. Consider the following.
1806
The chances of randomly generating the four numbers sequentially right off the bat is 10^4, or 10 thousand to one. All things being equal, we would have to generate those numbers 10 thousand times before we got it right. However, the chances of getting any one right is only 10:1, if we retain a correct number & only reroll the wrong ones, then we would get 1806 after only 10 rolls of the dice (on average). This is how NS works, it retains the "good" mutations, discards & rerolls the rest. See the Hall 1982 citation last post.
However, this analogy quickly falls apart when you think of it more logically. Every time a monkey strts typng, he is at ground zero, so even if a word or two results from his random pecking, the possiblity that a complete book-let alone an entire universe-could result is statistically ludicrous.
I just walked outside & noted the first cars registration that went past. It was X567 P3Y. The odds of that occurring are 26*10*10*10*26*10*26 = 175,760,000 : 1 You'll never guess what? The next car had a registration of W777 Q7W. The odds of those two cars coming past with those registrations are 175,760,000^2 =
30,891,577,600,000,000 : 1 !
But so what? Two cars
were going to pass me, & the odds of any given combination is always going to be astronomical. You see your problem, had you predicted the universe as being the way it is, then you'd have a point, but after the event statistics without predictions are meaningless.
Howerver, Darwin intuitively anticipated the possibility that this kind of biochemical complexity could dramatically challenge the idea of natural selection as a complete explanation for the origins of the living world. In his Origin of Species he wrote, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ eisted which could not possibly have formed by numberous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
And that has yet to happen. And the evidence that they did continues to grow.
1)If gravity were just 10(33rd power) times weaker than electromagnetism instead of 10(39th power), stars would burn a million times faster, making it impossible for them to produce heavy elements necessary for life.
The rest of your post continues to make the same after the event probablistic arguments that I counter above. If a universe is going to occur, even a very different one to ours, then you are going to be able to make exactly the same after-the-event arguments you make here, & they would be equally meaningless.
So, do you have any evidence that supports your "divine" hypothesis that doesn't fall into any given logical pit? I cited Barry Hall's
lac operon which represents astronomical odds of occurring using your logic, but is just a matter of time with random mutation & natural selection.
Mark
There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't
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