Earth - Proof of God?

[ManMachine]

My Pastor told me something today that confirmed to me, beyond all doubts, that my Lord exists. I hope the below explanation makes sense to you too and you are to decide the truth in this.

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Out of hundreds of planets in the universe, why is the earth only one supporting life? Because someone made it that way. We have explored the whole universe and only the earth supports life. That is evidence enough for something higher than all of us.

This is what in known as a fallacy, in this particular case it contains a number of fallacious elements.

The first is what is called an 'appeal to ignorance'. This means that the statement contains a number of presented 'facts' that cannot be held to be true and rely on the ignorance of the individual to accept them as factually correct when they are not. These are,

"Out of hundreds of planets in the universe..."

We know there are trillions of planets in the universe, we can't know exactly for sure because we don't know exactly for sure how big the Universe is, but we know enough to say with some confidence the number of planets will be in the trillions and not the hundreds.

Interestingly there is another interpretation of this, that being your pastor was making reference to a specific number of planets that he has numbered in the hundreds. Without knowing what his specific terms of reference are it is impossible to establish any truth to the statement. This again relies on the ignorance of the individual of the terms of reference used in the statement.


Next, the statement continues,

"Out of Hundreds of planets in the universe, why is the earth [the] only one supporting life?"

We don't know this to be true. If we don't know how many planets there are we cannot possibly know how many of them have life and how many do not. Once again this appeals to the ignorance of the individual.

We also know that scientists have found what could be fossilised microscopic life forms in meteorite fragments. While this is not yet confirmed (to my knowledge) it would, if true, completely disprove your pastor's statement. But this is unconfirmed so we'll pass over this one for now.

The statement also relies on a fallacy called an 'appeal to authority', in that it requires you to accept it as true because you pastor said it and he is, in your eyes, a person with authority.

I don't know if your pastor is a recognised authority in astrobiology. Even if your pastor is, then you have to question his statement in view of the fact there is a lack of evidence to prove or disprove his conclusion. The only true statement that can be made is we don't know that in the universe the only place where life exists is the Earth.

The next statement is a fallacy called an 'irrelevant conclusion'. The statement continues,

"Because someone made it that way."

It is not possible to establish this as the only answer to the questioning statement not only due to the lack of verifiable fact but that it relies heavily on unquestioning acceptance of fallacious arguments.

Even if it were possible to categorically state all the preceding statements were true it would still not be the only possible answer.

The rest of the statement is simply not true. We have not explored the universe in enough detail to even know its limits let alone determine how many life-supporting planets there are and that they do not have life on them.

I can accept the likelihood that your pastor has himself heard this from someone else and is genuinely passing it on as a true statement but it simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

What you have here is an irrelevant conclusion built on fallacious statements. The entire statement is seriously flawed. You wouldn't take your car to be fixed by a dentist, it's probably best to not accept statements about astrobiology and astronomy from someone who is not an authority or does not know where to find reliable sources to look these things up.

By all means listen to what he says about your faith, but beware of grand statements like this, they can inadvertently make fools out of well-meaning people.


MM