Why do people believe what they believe?

Ah, the old improbable probability problem ...The errors in this are multifold and pervasive

• The calculation is a mathematical model of reality and not the reality itself. When a model fails to replicate reality it is not reality that is at fault but the mathematical model. When a hurricane prediction program crashes because it can't model the first hurricane on record in the South Atlantic, the meteorologists don't go out to the hurricane and say "you can't be here, our model does not allow you to be here" ... they fix the model by looking for and taking out the failed assumptions (ie - that all hurricanes are north of the equator).
• The probability of winning a lottery by any one ticket is extremely low, but the probability that the lottery will be won is extremely high. How do you reconcile these two very disparate probabilities? By knowing that any one of the millions of tickets is a valid winner if picked. To show that this is not the case for the calculations mentioned (ie -- in order to say "1 out of") you have to show that no other combination works of all the other probabilities. This has not been done.
• The calculation fails to account for the known pre-existing molecules used in the formation of life that are found throughout the universe, and this failure means the calculation with creation-all-at-once including these molecules is unnecessarily extended downward.
• The calculation fails to account for combinations of groups of such molecules in smorgas board fashion instead of in assembly line fashion all at once all from nothing. And, all the "failed" experiments are still available to be cut and reassembled into new experiments without having to go through the preliminaries. It fails to account for actual combination process as used in natural assembly of large organic compounds. This failure means that all the ways to reach the final necessary combination are not included and thus it unnecessarily excludes possible combination methods.
• The calculation fails to account for the fact that the first life need not be as complicated as a modern cell, that the minimum configuration is much simpler as shown by the LUCA studies. This failure means that the calculation is unnecessarily extended upward.
• The improbability of a thing occurring is not proof of impossibility of it occurring. It could well be that this is the only planet in all the universe that has life on it because it is a very improbably event. And if you divide the surface of the planet into all the different types of environments and do the same for all the other planets and moons and asteroids in the solar system alone you will have billionsXbillions of little experimental crucibles for carrying out experiments and if that is carried out over several billion year periods (4.55 billion year old earth, in a 13.7+ billion year old universe) with multiple "experiments" in a {day?week?month?} time period, and do the same for all the billions of stellar systems throughout the universe it does not take long to create an equally mind boggling number that reduces 1e14billion to a definite probability. I'm at 1e36 already ...

Care to play another game?
{{this was copied from Abiogenesis thread message #74}}There is no point at which improbable becomes impossible.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

It is like the Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) admonition: (one version of many)
"when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"And as far as I can see no effort has been expended on eliminating the impossibles.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}