Explaining the fact that we exist

[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.