Explaining the fact that we exist

[OttoVonKerpen]

This is a question that I wrestled with superficially when I first became an atheist. I was content with my answer to this question for a while, but after a recent discussion with a Christian friend of mine, the entire topic just became confusing to me. And, like I said in my introduction (http://atheistforums.org/thread-45867.html), I need some help when walking through difficult questions.

The question is this: "There were many transitional points in our universe's history that led to us existing. If one of them failed to produce the results that it did, we wouldn't be here, existing. Isn't it too much of a coincidence? Each transition point was against huge odds, and each of them was an extraordinary coincidence. How is it possible that we are existing against such overwhelming odds?"

I had a basic response to this like, "just because it's extremely unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen", but I am not satisfied with the answer. Can anybody lead me through the basic thought process behind why we can exist against such overwhelming odds? I have my own thoughts, but I am willing, and needing to restart my thought process. 

Thanks!

[robvalue]

The problem here is seeing us as some sort of goal. We are what happened. Any particular outcome at this stage in time would have been exceedingly unlikely. Whatever life forms may have occured would be looking back and wondering the same thing, if they were capable of such thought.

As an example, I can roll a die 1000 times and note the outcomes. What are the chances I end up with all those particular numbers, in that order? (1/6)^1000! That is so tiny! Yet I did. How is that possible? It's so unlikely, there must have been a god involved.

No. Whatever has happened, has happened. Working out how unlikely it was doesn't tell you anything more about how it came about. If we didn't happen, something else would. We're not the goal of evolution, local or cosmic. We're what happened to come out of it, at this point in time.

[GrandizerII]

This is a question that I wrestled with superficially when I first became an atheist. I was content with my answer to this question for a while, but after a recent discussion with a Christian friend of mine, the entire topic just became confusing to me. And, like I said in my introduction (http://atheistforums.org/thread-45867.html), I need some help when walking through difficult questions.

The question is this: "There were many transitional points in our universe's history that led to us existing. If one of them failed to produce the results that it did, we wouldn't be here, existing. Isn't it too much of a coincidence? Each transition point was against huge odds, and each of them was an extraordinary coincidence. How is it possible that we are existing against such overwhelming odds?"

I had a basic response to this like, "just because it's extremely unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen", but I am not satisfied with the answer. Can anybody lead me through the basic thought process behind why we can exist against such overwhelming odds? I have my own thoughts, but I am willing, and needing to restart my thought process. 

Thanks!

How do you know the odds are so overwhelming? If we postulate something like the multiverse, then perhaps the odd has been exactly 1 all along. We just happen to perceive it as extremely unlikely from our limited perspective.

[robvalue]

That's true as well. People generally pull the numbers out of their ass.

For all we know, things might not have been able to happen any differently.

[chimp3]

This is a question that I wrestled with superficially when I first became an atheist. I was content with my answer to this question for a while, but after a recent discussion with a Christian friend of mine, the entire topic just became confusing to me. And, like I said in my introduction (http://atheistforums.org/thread-45867.html), I need some help when walking through difficult questions.

The question is this: "There were many transitional points in our universe's history that led to us existing. If one of them failed to produce the results that it did, we wouldn't be here, existing. Isn't it too much of a coincidence? Each transition point was against huge odds, and each of them was an extraordinary coincidence. How is it possible that we are existing against such overwhelming odds?"

I had a basic response to this like, "just because it's extremely unlikely, doesn't mean it can't happen", but I am not satisfied with the answer. Can anybody lead me through the basic thought process behind why we can exist against such overwhelming odds? I have my own thoughts, but I am willing, and needing to restart my thought process. 

Thanks!

Think of all the humans and other life forms that did not get to exist because that evolutionary line was snipped off by war, famine, predation, disease. Count us among the lucky few.

[robvalue]

The best anyone gets out of this is an argument from incredulity anyway. "I can't imagine how all this could have happened without [my favourite magic story]." The limits of people's imaginations are no concern of mine, or of reality's.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We exist to serve cats.

[Fake Messiah]

The question is this: "There were many transitional points in our universe's history that led to us existing. If one of them failed to produce the results that it did, we wouldn't be here, existing. Isn't it too much of a coincidence? Each transition point was against huge odds, and each of them was an extraordinary coincidence. How is it possible that we are existing against such overwhelming odds?"

That's why 99% of all animal species that ever lived is extinct by now and that's why we are so far a success. Just like once Homo erectus was a success and he lived on Earth lot longer then we do now.

But if this is also how can something so complex, like us, exist from simple compounds to complex compounds to simple organisms to complex organisms, represents a vast increase of order?

We're back at something that even last pope promoted in media, although it was debunked long time ago, but the pope pretends like it wasn't. I'm talking about French biophysicist, Pierre Lecomte du Noüy in a book named "Human Destiny", published in 1947, (the year he died) calculated the chances that the various atoms making up a typical protein molecule would manage to orient themselves in just the proper fashion by chance alone. Clearly the chance of a single protein molecule forming by chance, even in the entire lifetime of the Universe, is negligible. From the fact that protein molecules nevertheless exist, in enormous numbers and great diversity, we must conclude that God exists.

But du Noüy's thinking was very erroneous, let me explain why. Suppose you put in a container just many atoms of hydrogen and oxygen - nothing more. According to du Noüy's thinking they might arrange themselves in any of eight different combinations: OOO, OOH, OHO, HOO, OHH, HOH, HHO, HHH. And yet, in actual fact, if you start picking molecules out of a container in which atoms of oxygen have combined with atoms of hydrogen, we find that all the combinations, with negligible exceptions, are HOH!

What has happened to the laws of statistics? What has happened to randomness?!!

The answer is that Lecomte du Nolly, in his eagerness to prove the existence of God, based his argument on the assumption that atoms combine in absolutely random fashion, and they don't. They combine randomly only within the constraints of the laws of physics and chemistry. An oxygen atom will combine with no more than two other atoms, and with a hydrogen atom much more easily than with another oxygen atom. A hydrogen atom will combine with no more than one other atom. Given those rules, the only combination that forms in appreciable numbers is HOH.

Arguing similarly, you might say that while the various atoms making up protein molecules would never form a protein molecule by absolute chance-they may still do so if they combine within the constraints of their physical and chemical properties. They may combine first to form simple organic acids, then amino acids, then small peptides, and finally protein.

Just few years after du Noüy published that book (and died) in 1955, chemist Stanley Lloyd Miller had begun with a small quantity of a sterile mixture of simple substances that probably existed in Earth's primordial atmosphere. He supplied the energy derived from an electric spark and, in a mere week, obtained from the mixture several organic acids and, in addition, two of the amino-acids that occur in protein molecules.
 
Since then, other experimenters, working in similar fashion, have confirmed and vastly extended Miller's findings. Some fairly complex compounds have been formed by purely random techniques. Naturally, it is reasonable to start with compounds whose formation has already been demonstrated and use them as a new starting point. Thus, in 1958, the biochemist Sidney W. Fox heated a mixture of amino acids and obtained protein molecules.

The formation of complex compounds of the kind we associate with life is not such a low-probability affair that we have to call on God to extricate us from the puzzle of our own existence. It is, instead, a rather high probability and, indeed, almost inevitable event. Given Earth-like conditions, it is difficult to see how life can avoid coming to pass.

[robvalue]

We're talking apes who can barely get off the tiny rock we're stuck to in the middle of nowhere.

We need to get over ourselves.

[Primordial Bisque]

We exist to serve cats.

No we don't! *hauls 30 lb. bag of Meow Mix up a flight of stairs*

No, we don't. *runs back to car to grab two 10 lb. boxes of cat litter, and haul them up a flight of stairs*

No...we don't. *uses plastic scooper to pick up their poop, and then proceeds to clean and freshen their litter box*

No...we don't..... *cries*