What are the chances of a creator/designer arising spontaneously, by chance with no creator/designer?
The mathematical probability of spontaneous order (no designer/creator)
by Fernando 40 Replies latest watchtower bible
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gone for good
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KateWild
Fernando, you make a good point. The building blocks of chemistry, amino acids and DNA are all very precise and I don't think it's probable for them to have formed without some kind of guidance.
Kate xx
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LoveUniHateExams
'The mathematical probability of spontaneous order' may be extremely small but that doesn't mean that order didn't happen spontaneously.
The mathematical probability of live arising spontaneously must be likewise tiny, but it only had to happen once.
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enigma1863
don't think it's probable for them to have formed without some kind of guidance.
Kate That guidance would be natural selection. The life forms that survived long enough to replicate are the ones we see today.
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azor
Gone for good - I agree wholeheartedly with you.
Which is more fantastical taking from the OP's scenario? A blind person laying out 100 blocks in order, or the blind person appearing out of nowhere? In other words who is gods god?
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Jonathan Drake
My response to the op is the same as I've said elsewhere.
Across infinite time the probability becomes 100%. Time is your measurement of the probability, and time (assuming it's real and not a human construct to measure existence) goes on forever into the future. Even if the components of life hadn't all mixed properly in 30 billion years it'd have just happened some other point in existence, that's assuming the 30 billion estimate is accurate.
the eventual spark of life isn't a question of what if, its only a matter of where and when. Across eternity 1 in 10^158 or whatever becomes 100% assured.
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DarioKehl
Fernando:
You do have honest & legitimate questions that most people who have recently left religion will (and should) be asking.
All of the points you've raised, believe it or not, have been studied heavily and there are hundreds of peer-reviewed journals on those topics. However, for the average person, it's hard to even know where to begin the investigation--many science journals were only available on pay sites or university libraries until a few years ago. Even now, it is hard to slug through all of the pseudoscience/creationist/conspiracy theory pages that will come up on page 1 of a Google search.
Might I suggest a link for you? I'll provide it below. But first, I want you to think about something:
Evolution involves two equally important things. The first (and usually the only one focused on by religions) is random mutation. Every publication by JWs stops there. They only focus on the exceedingly unlikely probabilities that the final observed product could have resulted "by chance."
They ignore the second (and most important) part: natural selection. There is a SELECTION process involved. In every example you gave in your OP, I want you to imagine a selective process in the system. For example, if a million monkeys were banging away on keyboards for thousands of years, they'd likely not produce the entire works of Shakespeare. But, if a selection process were introduced that saved each correct entry by all 1 million monkeys and excluded the nonsense entries based on a template, you'd have the works of Shakespeare in no time!
so, what you should be asking is, "what's the template and where did IT come from?"
that, my friend, is where your journey begins. PM me if you have any questions. But for now, take a look at the information at this link:
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Captain Obvious
Fernando, you've started a good discussion but you got the entire premise wrong. Life on earth works on earth. If the earth were any different, and life had still begun, the earth would still be perfect for those life forms. You're looking at things backwards.
Order can and does arise from disorder, we see it in nature. That's exactly how biology works... Whatever doesn't work is eliminated, what we see now is the result of automatic processes which didn't need divine guidance.
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Viviane
If anyone could provide a straightforward and understandable explanation of what they feel is wrong with the math that would be great.
The premise that we got to this world by a random progression of serial events.
For me the building blocks and laws of chemistry give evidence of substantial order.
Why?
This order too could not have arisen by chance without a designer and law maker - using exactly the same math as before.
Why? And, even if we were to grant that as true, where did this designer get HIS order, which must be even MORE complex. Now it cannot exist without a designer, and that designer can't exist without a designer, etc., etc.
You've not solved the problem, you're simply created a problem of infinite regression.
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Simon
Anyone in any universe would see the chance of their universe coming into existence exactly as it was very small.
But, that assumes that the 'end goal' is their universe. What if it isn't?
All you need is a universe to develop that will produce and support life. The only universe any being can ever ponder is one that worked. It didn't have to fit any pre-conceived design and you have no idea how many infinite universes may have existed and died before it or may exist elsewhere (hard to say "at the same time" as time itself is a property of the universe).
The trouble is that most people find thinking about infinity unbelievably confusing as it doesn't fit with the part of it we exist in. Take the universe ans space, infinity - the simplistic thought is that you can go any direction forever but that isn't what it's like, it's more like a surface of a balloon that is expanding and you can never get back to where it's been or go beyond where it currently is but there is no 'edge' that you can reach.
Same with time - there is no fixed and constant progression and no "now" in the universe. Things are happening both before and after other things and that will vary based on the observer. Our view of time only works at our scale, the same as the laws of euclidean space only has corners of triangles adding up to 180 degrees at our scale. There is no "before" the universe to us. Time only exists within it and the closer you get to the universe's beginning the harder it is to go backward any further because there was no "before" and no time without the universes existence (time linked to gravity and mass).
But if it's all to complicated to imaging, the best thing is to invent some simplistic answer that doesn't really answer anything - we call it "god".
It just raises more questions though - when did god start to exist and what are the chances of that happening? Whatever your math, it's infinitely less likely than our universe. So which is more likely to have occurred?