Probability of Earth and life being how it is

ballistic

There are some things we don't know about existence and whether the Earth is a simulation or even a creation. But we can do some statistical analysis on it.

The probability of a planet like Earth existing in the Goldilocks zone and having a moon that perfectly eclipses the sun is extremely low, but it's not impossible.

The habitable zone (or Goldilocks zone) around a star is the region where a planet could potentially support liquid water on its surface.

Add to this the possibility that an intelligent civilisation has existed which builds knowledge of science to understand such concepts in an evolving universe is even more unlikely. (The moon is slowly moving away from the Earth).

The Earth's moon is unique in its ability to cause total solar eclipses.

The probability of a moon having the right size and orbital characteristics to cause total eclipses is considered low.

Why choose the Moon's eclipses as part of this? Because it is our only moon, and clearly visible to everyone on the planet. If you wanted to design a planetary system and put a "signature" out there for everyone to see (more visible than the pyramids for example), choose the moon.

By the way this is just a thought experiment.

Using AI to work out some probabilities for me, the result came in (not entirely complete) but as follows:

Let's assume the probability of a planet being in the Goldilocks zone is 1 in 100 (a rough estimate based on the size of the habitable zone relative to the total space in a star system).
Let's assume the probability of a moon causing total solar eclipses is 1 in 1000 (a rough estimate based on the complexity of the moon's orbit and size requirements).
Let's assume the probability of intelligent life developing science is 1 in 1000 (another rough estimate).
Multiplying these probabilities: 1/100 * 1/1000 * 1/1000 = 1 in 10,000,000,000 (or 1 in 10 billion).
However, this is a very rough estimate and doesn't account for the dependencies between the events.

I'm not entirely happy with AI's calculation, for example, if the moon is moving away from us, our evolution would have to start at exactly the right moment (complete with various extinctions and so on) that we came to a scientific knowledge of the solar system and eclipses right when we did. This would make the chances even more remote.

slimboyfat

The moon thing is interesting but I’m not at this point convinced it tells us anything really. If the moon didn’t happen to eclipse the sun would we miss it? It’s just one of those things that could be or could not be. I don’t think we’d be sitting on an earth without the moon thinking we really ought to have a moon that eclipses the sun but since we don’t there’s clearly no design.

I can’t get my head round the idea that the laws of nature are perfectly calibrated. (The so-called fine tuning argument) Maybe it makes sense or maybe it doesn’t, I just have no intuition on the matter. I heard an interesting take from a woman philosopher that reality is by necessity the way it is and it is not rational to talk about it possibly being otherwise. That seems as plausible to me as fine tuning, but I don’t know either way.

For me existence itself points to there being a ground of being or God along the lines of Aquinas’ five ways. Natural selection, if it’s true also indicates to me that reality is set up in such a way to produce rational creatures. (As argued by Alvin Plantinga) Again this points to there being a God. Plus the existence of consciousness, I think, is not properly explained on a physical basis and points to mental and spiritual reality beyond the physical.

For me these are good reasons for believing in God. The moon thing is interesting though and I’d be interested to know more about it. I wouldn’t trust AI for calculations however, because it still gets stuff wrong all the time and the only way to tell a wrong answer from a right answer is if you already know the answer. So it’s pretty useless.

Vanderhoven7

Good luck on this one.

Anony Mous

If the chances are 1 in 10B, then new life starts literally all the time. I think the chances are lower, somewhere in the trillions which still means 1 or more civilizations per galaxy.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Douglas Adams

Its like saying the chances to win the lottery are 1:18M and then giving everyone in the country a scratch off - more than a few people are going to win.

TonusOH

Regarding the odds of anything happening, if you stack probablities you can get outrageously long odds that would make any occurrence seem impossible. Many lotteries have odds in the hundreds of millions to one, yet people win lottery jackpots all the time, and on a few occasions more than one person will do so at the same time. There have been people who have won lotteries multiple times. We see very large odds beaten all the time, and by working backwards we could add probabilities that would put the odds in the billions or trillions to one. It doesn't really get us anywhere.

I can better understand the appeal of the arguments regarding design or fine tuning. I do not reject the possibility that there is a creator. I am confident that it isn't any of the ones people believe in. It's a long road from "there is reason to believe that a creator exists" to "it is this specific creator." We should always be aware that those are two very different statements. One is pretty easy to reason out, even if the logic is questionable. The other requires us to defend one or more premises that are contradictory, which leads to further explanations that just get more and more contradictory and confusing.

HereIam60

I know I'm out of my league here but will express. In the past I've briefly questioned: What if everything I "know" is a dream, illusion, hallucination ? Then I think, with Everyone and Everything else involved I couldn't possibly have invented or imagined all this, so it must be a shared reality. Life comes from pre-existing life, so tracing it back there must be an original Source or Energy. I can somewhat accept that a random event could initiate an evolutionary process, but what develops qualities such as caring, affectiion, love and willing self-sacrifice ?

Nor do I know if it's all overthinking, a waste of time, or good mental excercise.

ballistic

HereIam60 This is somewhat close to me current beliefs even though I didn't mention it in the question. A kind of existentialism which sounds like Eastern Philosophy where we are not separate from creation, but creating by looking, and when you look for yourself in this reality / dream, we find there is no self.

Vidqun

I was hopeless in Maths and Statistics so I prefer to break it down to basics (without resorting to stats and probabilities). A grounding for me is the principle of cause and effect. As a scientific rule: "For every action, there is an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction force" (Newton's third law). The chances are slight that perfect conditions for life as described above could come to be by accident. Even for those that believe we live in a simulation, "cause and effect" needs to apply. I see evolutionaty scientists are also grappling with this.

Sea Breeze

I am confident that it isn't any [God]... It's a long road from "there is reason to believe that a creator exists" to "it is this specific creator."

I think that if someone were to predict their own death and then claim that they would resurrect themself from the dead afterwards, then do it - that would pretty much do it for me. But, for the skeptics:

The probability of someone fulfilling all Old Testament messianic prophecies is considered astronomically low by probability calculations. A mathematician, Peter Stoner, calculated that the chance of one person fulfilling eight specific prophecies was one in 10 to the power of 17 (1 in 100 quadrillion).

Jesus is commonly believed to have fulfilled over 300 prophecies from the Old Testament, with estimates ranging from about 200 to 400 depending on the criteria used by different scholars. Notably, some sources highlight that he fulfilled 27 prophecies in a single day.

peacefulpete

Cause and effect arguments for a God simply end with special pleading in the case of God. Not just God himself but the space/dimension it which that God exists. Which came first the space/dimension in which God exists or God?

Probability of Earth and life being how it is

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