Explaining the fact that we exist

[Ravenshire]

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!

(emphasis is mine)

Winning the lottery is against staggeringly long odds. Isn't it too much of a coincidence that we have a lottery winner every couple months, sometimes even multiple wiiners in the same jackpot?

There are over seven billion people on the planet. If it's a one in a billion chance of getting an extremely rare disease/disorder/odd DNA sequence/whatever, there are seven people right now with that particular rare disease/disorder/odd DNA sequence/whatever. Long odds mean dick when you're talking about the time scales and the size of the universe. Everywhere we look on this planet, we find life. Everywhere else we've looked, not so much. Long odds against? Maybe, maybe not, we've barely started to look. But, we're here and while there's no evidence of other life anywhere that we've been able to detect, that doesn't mean they're not.

So, let's look at those odds. Let's say that life only gets one chance every million years to get started somewhere in the universe. Now, let's say that life only gets a chance on 1/10 of 1 percent of every possible planet. That means that life had 14,000 chances on billions of worlds. Let's further lengthen those odds and say it's only 1 billion worlds. That's still 14 trillion chances. Unless you want to claim that the odds of life forming are significantly worse than 1 in 14 trillion, the argument for gawd "because life is too unlikely" is pure bullshit. Remember how frequently the lottery is won against odds of 1 in 292,201,338.

We're here, regardless of how good or bad the odds are. Evidence for gawd(s), not so much.

In short, once the universe got started, no matter how it got started, life somewhere, sometime, was all but inevitable. We are that all but inevitability.