What Are the Chances?
The Sword Cuts Two Ways
Occasionally updated and edited.
Copyright © 2010
One of the most compelling arguments made by advocates of intelligent design is the question of probability. Dr. Hugh Ross notes that the fine tuning of the universe is so precise that it would be mathematically impossible for life to exist by natural processes.
It's compelling, but not conclusive.
Like the proverbial blind man grasping the elephant's tail and concluding the beast must be something akin to a rope, those who abandon objective analysis for tunnel-vision thinking risk being persuaded by the "fat chance" theory or, as they prefer to call it, the anthropocentric universe theory.
Let's back away from the elephant's rear end and have a look at the whole critter.
Statistically impossible?
Dr. Ross and his like-minded peers use the concept of parameters to create their conclusion. The parameters for life to exist include oxygen, water and a myriad of other physical collusions. In the end he adds dozens of parameters. He then calculates the odds.
Using mere numbers to draw pre-conclusions regarding probability can be applied to most anything. Consider, for example, the incredible odds that someone my age wearing sweat pants and a Band Aid on his foot would be sitting at a HP computer at this precise moment in time at this exact location as determined by latitude and longitude. Using Dr. Ross's logic we could add trillions of other parameters then draw the pre-conclusion that I'm not here. So how, then, did this post come to be? Apparently a supernatural entity wrote it.
Chances of your existence
We can also build a Ross-like argument by colluding parameters essential to my existence. Had my father been killed in WW II, I would not be here and you would not be reading this post. Had my mother not conceived me in 1952, I would not exist. Had she not conceived me at that precise moment, I would not exist. Add their grandparents and ancestors for hundreds of past generations, and the odds of my existence grow minutely slim. Consider that all of my ancestors had, of necessity, survived innumerable opportunities of demise and we can make the argument that my existence is so unlikely that it must have been divinely ordered. Multiply those odds by the current and past population of the earth; then by all living beings from the simple single-cell to the most complex and the numbers are far beyond calculating.
Is there a divine designer orchestrating all this?
Natural Processes
Every nano second countless trillions of natural processes occur throughout the universe. The number of processes is so immense that it is literally unfathomable.
It is impossible, of course, to observe all processes. But the billions of processes we can observe -- with the naked eye, a telescope or a microscope -- all have a singular commonality: They are all natural. No one has ever observed a supernatural process.
The odds of a supernatural process or event occurring, based upon past and present observation, is zero to countless trillions. The supernatural is mathematically impossible. To believe in the supernatural one must rely on future observation.
May 1, 2010
