Posted on 08/29/2018 8:14:37 AM PDT by Salvation
I was alerted to a fascinating article by Ali Binazir, who sets forth mathematically the probably that each of us exists. It turns out that when taking into account the astonishing number of possibilities of parents meeting, grandparents meeting before them, and so on going back generations, and then adding the vast number of sperm and ova in possible combinations over decades of the marital act in all those generations, the odds of me existing just as I do are about 1 in 102,685,000. That’s a number so huge it hurts to think about it.
To say that we are contingent beings is a vast understatement. To say that someone or something is contingent is to say that the existence of same is not inevitable but rather can only come about based on a number of previous things being true in a chain of being or causality. I would not exist if my parents had not existed and then met. Further, they would not have existed if their parents had not existed and met, and so on. Thus, my existence depends on a vast number of “meetings” going just right; if they hadn’t I would never have been born.
Consider some of the contingencies and requirements for your existence as set forth by Mr. Binazir. Some of the numbers are approximations, but generally they are on the conservative side. I am only publishing a small number of his musings, but you can read his full article here: What Are the Chances of You Being Born?.
The following analysis, paraphrased at some points, is taken directly from Mr. Binazir’s article:
The probability of father meeting mother is 1 in 20,000. The chances of them talking to one another is 1 in 10. The chances of that turning into another meeting is about 1 in 10. The chances of that turning into a long-term relationship is about 1 in 10. The chances of that lasting long enough to result in offspring is 1 in 2.
Now let’s get down to some of the biological details: each sperm and each egg is genetically unique because of the process of meiosis; you are the result of the fusion of one particular egg with one particular sperm. A fertile woman has about 100,000 viable eggs while a man will produce about 12 trillion sperm over the course of his reproductive lifetime.
However, your existence presupposes another supremely unlikely chain of events. Namely, that every one of your ancestors lived to reproductive age, going back about 150,000 generations to the origin of man.
Remember the sperm-meeting-egg argument for the creation of you, since each gamete is unique? The right sperm also had to meet the right egg to create your grandparents; otherwise they’d be different people and so would their children, who would then have had children who were similar to you but not quite you. This is also true of your grandparents’ parents, and their parents, and so on back to the beginning of human time. That means that in every step of your lineage, the exact the right sperm had to fertilize the exact right egg such that you would ultimately be created.
To complete the analysis: (102,640,000) (1045,000) (40,000,000) = 4 x 102,685,007 ≈ 102,685,000.
Thus, the probability of your existing at all is about 1 in 102,685,000.
You may quibble with some of the Binazir’s assumptions above. I would certainly add in (sadly) that there is the possibility of abortion or miscarriage, but even a simple analysis yields an astonishingly small probability.
One of my brothers made his own calculation regarding one of Binazir’s assumptions and came up with a figure that would make the probability of existence even smaller:
My numbers are more simplistic, but assuming 100,000 eggs/woman & 12 trillion sperm/man creates 1.2 x 10^18 combinations for every man/woman pairing (i.e., significantly more combinations than the 400 trillion or 4 x 10^14 mentioned in the article). If you assume there are 3 billion women and 3 billion men alive today, that means 3 x 10^14 eggs and 3.6 x 10^22 sperm are currently on the planet, for a total of 1.1 x 10^37 possible pairings. If you assume the current population is 1% of the history of humanity, the total number of combinations increases to 1.1 x 10^39.
Not only are you and I contingent, we are highly improbable! Yet here we are. Mirabile visu (Wondrous to behold)!
Theologically, of course, we are no accident; we do not exist by happenstance. God has always known us, intended us, loved us, and planned for us. Scripture says,
Yes, you’re here all right, and math can barely account for your existence, so tiny are the odds; but God has overseen every detail and knew you long before you were born. In fact, He has been preparing a place for each of us in the kingdom, from before the creation of the world. Not only has He always known us; he has known everything each of us would do, for every one of our days has been written in His book before one of them ever came to be.
The great mystery of our existence stretches back in time into the very heart and mind of God who has always known and loved us, has prepared for us and made a way for us. You are wonderfully and fearfully made, and God has done a marvelous thing. You’re not just one in a million, you’re one in a 102,685,000.
This video makes a moving point, but it attributes our existence to luck. You are not here by luck; you are here by the grace and will of God.
Monsignor Pope Ping!
this is very flawed analysis
liberal-like, I might say
Yes, but the probability of the golf ball, once hit from the tee, landing on any particular blade of grass is extremely low. But the golf ball does land on some particular blade of grass.
Thank you, Salvation!
How about the probability that dirt, water, and some chemicals come to life on their own?
Zero.
Those of us who work in extremely large numbers are often very religious or at least believe in God. Simply because we know how improbable our existence ... is.
With a pinch of "magic", it apparently has happened at least once.
Human life is the only possible outcome for this universe.
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-anthropic-principle-2698848
CC
No, it’s quite a real phenomenon. It can be analyzed differently by simply saying that if one of your mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers . . . got pregnant a month before she actually did - or a month later - the unique DNA associated with you as an individual would not be instanced in the human that you are. It would be someone else, but not you. And not just you, obviously, but the further back you took that, the more it would affect humanity.So if you somehow time-traveled back to before the Civil war and freed the slaves, say, there would indeed be descendants of those slaves - and of everyone else - now just as today but none of us would be those particular people.
So your personal existence, and mine, were contingent on slavery - and everything else that happened 200 years ago - happening exactly as they did. It’s the butterfly effect, actually . . .
Obviously.
What’s the “magic”?
Here I am!
Ever read Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder?” I need to reread it with an eye toward the last election.
I’ve been called “impossible” a couple of times.
The probability limits dictate that the chances are so far beyond probable, that it is impossible- and this is just for one ‘positive mutation’- let alone the 10,000’s or more needed IF macroevolution were even a distinct possibility -
The world’s top scientists back in the 60’s met in chicago i believe it was, the wistar convention concluded evolution is scientifically, mathematically and biologically impossible- not just a ‘little impossible’ but totally impossible- They actually began the idea that irreducible complexity existed- by showing that if even one nucleotide change took place, it would destroy the whole process, yet several changes via mutation were needed in order for the process to have occurred.
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm
As you can imagine- there was fierce opposition to the findings-
And yet ... in our perspective it's a long and slow journey through a lifetime of pain, pleasure, joy, and sorrow. Cosmically speaking we're laughably insignificant. But somehow the God who created it all still cares.
yep- but if there weren’t any intelligent designers, and intelligent director, there would be no golf ball to direct towards any blade of grass to begin with- Thank goodness for intelligent designers-
Keiichi looked arould the simulation room. He asked his guide, “So where are we now?”
“We are standing inside a representation of the interior of the Pantheon in Rome. Erected in 128 AD by the Roman Empire, it held the record for the world’s largest domed building for well over a thousand years. It is still the largest unreinforced solid concrete dome in the world.”
Then something very small, practically invisible, buzzed past Keiichi’s ear. “Hey, there’s a gnat in here, I think.”
“Yes. Actually there are 92 of them.”
“Why 92?”
“Because a uranium atom has 92 electrons. This is a representation of a uranium atom, specifically uranium-238. It’s a simple Bohr model. With 92 protons and 146 neutrons it is the largest stable natural atom in the natural universe, with a half-life of over 4.5 billion years. Anything larger is made artificially in nuclear reactors, nuclear explosions, or as short-lived radioisotopes in supernova blasts.”
“I see. So where is it? The atom, I mean?”
“You’re standing inside it.”
“Huh? You mean this whole huge volume of space is..”
“Yes. This whole space represents a single atom.”
“But wait, where’s the rest of it?”
“You mean the nucleus?”
“Yeah. I don’t see it anywhere.”
“It’s up there.” She pointed. “The center of the atom.” They floated upward. “It has a diameter of 15 femtometers, making it larger than any other naturally occurring atomic nucleus. This is as big as it gets. See? It’s right over here.”
“Where? Past that little marble thing?”
“Keiichi, it is that little marble thing.”
He bent over and stared at it. He could barely see it. A bit over a centimeter wide, it was buzzing and jostling around like an angry hive of tiny bees. All 238 of them packed in such a tiny volume.
“That’s it? In this whole huge dome?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s practically empty!”
“Yep.”
“So physical matter is basically.. a whole lot of nothing?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
She poked her finger into his shoulder. “When I press my finger into you like that, it is actually the electroweak force that is causing the resistance that is stopping my finger. There is no actual physical contact anywhere, in the sense of particles getting close enough to actually touch. The nuclear forces prevent it. So in a sense I am not actually ‘touching’ you at all.”
“I see.”
“Now let’s go up to the opposite end of the scale.” Everything shifted.
They were now floating in a black expanse. “This is intergalactic space. More specifically, it is the volume of space in-between galactic superclusters. It constitutes over 99% of the volume of the observable universe.”
“A whole lot of nuthin’.”
“Yep. The universe is appallingly empty, on both scales. The physical structure of the universe is actually very frothy, sort of like soapy suds when you take a bath. The galactic superclusters are all clumped along very thin strips and point junctions that interconnect the frothy soap bubbles.”
“And the inside of all those huge soap bubbles..”
“.. is empty. As empty as it gets. For a billion light years in every direction.”
“More nuthin’.”
“Yes. Now let’s look at an intermediate scale.” Everything shifted again.
“This is a scaled representation of your sun, Sol.” Keiichi saw a tiny dot about the size of a period on a printed page. “The nearest neighboring sun would be Alpha Centauri, about 4.24 light-years away, over there.” She pointed.
“Where?”
“Let’s go see.”
They had travelled about 2 kilometers. He asked, “Here?”
“No.”
2 kilometers more. “More?” “Uh-huh.”
Again. “You’re kidding.”
This repeated a few more times.
After about 14 kilometers they finally stopped. Another tiny dot the size of a period.
She said, “If your sun was scaled up to 1 foot radius, Alpha Centauri would be over 10,000 miles away.”
Keiichi shook his head. “This is nuts. Space is so empty.”
“Yes. So let me now ask you, given what you have learned, would you consider a random meteor, a lump of rock, in the great scheme of things, to be something rather special?”
“Yeah.”
“Rare?”
“Of course.”
“Perhaps even precious?”
“Well, I sort of see what you mean... Anything at all would be pretty special given the complete emptiness surrounding us.”
“Good, remember that. Now let’s see something even more rare.” Another shift.
There were floating next to what looked like a large irregular semi-translucent sphere. Several snake-like entities were heading towards it. “This is the moment of conception. Between 100 million to a half-billion sperm cells are all swimming frantically to find this, the egg. Only one will succeed.”
“Heh. So you have better odds of winning the Power Ball lottery jackpot than a sperm has of fertilizing that egg.”
“Yes.”
“That is one lucky sperm. You know, it seems like all of the interesting things in the universe are rare. Special.”
“Yep. All life on Earth exists in a supremely thin layer, thinner than skin of an onion on the same scale. The bulk of the Earth’s mass, 99.999..% of it, is dead. See a pattern here?”
“God seems to like rarity.”
“Yes.”
“But why? Why not simply create a universe that is completely alive? Make everything living? Why is it all so empty, so dead?”
“Keiichi, that is a very good question. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. My personal theory is that it is because it makes those very few things in the vastness of the universe even more precious, even more special. But I don’t really know.”
"Who am I? Why am I here?"
-PJ
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