The Big Bang and the Big Question: A Universe without God?

Aish ^ | Lawrence Kelemen

[azhenfud]

"Proper conditions for life exist everywhere in the universe."

That "everywhere" has yet to be been found, RW. But so far, the number of other found life support systems is zero.

[Physicist]

Last I checked, coal or a salt dome isn't life.

No, but they are subject to the same laws of probability you outlined. Life or not, why doesn't the same analysis work?

I didn't say these were the chances no chemical reaction could take place

Your equations say that.

Yes, actually, that is what everybody is saying.

No, that's just the strawman they bash about on creationist websites. Randomness plays a role in evolution, but it's biased selection that does the work.

Please tell me of another method you have come accross to make life. Maybe it's just me, but I'm only certain of one method to form life.

Oh, no you don't. You can't talk about the probability that life happened in this way, and pretend that that's the probability that life happened at all. Until you can provably enumerate all the myriad ways, you have no basis for making that calculation. I have no idea what all the ways are to make life, so I don't claim to be able even to make an estimate.

No, actually, it isn't "killing all possible arguements', because that number applies not just to Earth, but to the entire universe.

That universe we now know to be infinite. Put that into your calculations, or they're wrong.

Your arguement is that "Life just wants to be".

Nowhere did I make that argument.

[RightWhale]

That "everywhere" has yet to be been found

Well, we better get our program in gear. There's a lot of territory to check out, and we have hardly begun. Expect to find life inside every rocky planet.

[f.Christian]

No, that's just the strawman they bash about on creationist websites. Randomness plays a role in evolution, but it's biased selection that does the work.

'biased selection' that does the work of evolution ?

Maybe biased imaginary perception !

[azhenfud]

The God Hypothesis:
Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe
by Michael A. Corey

GOD'S EXISTENCE is not required by the premises of quantum mechanics or general relativity, the great theories of twentieth-century physics --but then again, it is not contravened by their conclusions either. What else can we do but watch and wait?
The agnostic straddle. It is hardly a posture calculated to set the blood racing. In the early 1970s Jacques Monod and Steven Weinberg thus declared themselves in favor of atheism, each man eager to communicate his discovery that the universe is without plan or purpose. Any number of philosophers have embraced their platform, often clambering onto it by brute force. Were God to exist, Thomas Nagel remarked, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed.
A great many ordinary men and women have found both atheism and agnosticism dispiriting--evidence, perhaps, of their remarkable capacity for intellectual ingratitude. The fact remains that the intellectual's pendulum has swung along rather a tight little arc for much of the twentieth century: atheism, the agnostic straddle, atheism, the agnostic straddle.
The revival of natural theology in the past twenty-five years has enabled that pendulum to achieve an unexpected amplitude, its tip moving beyond atheism and the agnostic straddle to something like religious awe, if not religious faith.
It has been largely the consolidation of theoretical cosmology that has powered the upward swing. Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe seemed to be expanding in every direction electrified the community of cosmologists in the late 1920s, and cosmologists were again electrified when it became clear that these facts followed from Einstein's general theory of relativity. Thereafter, their excitement diminished, if only because the idea that the universe was expanding suggested inexorably that it was expanding from an origin of some sort, a big bang, as the astronomer Fred Hoyle sniffed contemptuously.
In 1963 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson inadvertently noticed the background microwave radiation predicted by Big Bang cosmology; when Robert Dicke confirmed the significance of their observation, competing steady-state theories of creation descended at once into desuetude. And thereafter a speculative story became a credible secular myth.
But if credible, the myth was also incomplete. The universe, cosmologists affirmed, erupted into existence fifteen billion years ago. Details were available, some going back to the first three minutes of creation. Well and good. But the metaphoric assimilation of the Big Bang to the general run of eruptions conveyed an entirely misleading sense of similarity. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place in space and time; the Big Bang marks the spot at which time and space taper to a singularity and then vanish altogether.
It follows that the universe came into existence from nothing whatsoever, and for no good reason that anyone could discern, least of all cosmologists. Even the most ardent village atheist became uneasily aware that Big Bang cosmology and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis shared a family resemblance too obvious profitably to be denied.
Thereafter, natural theology, long thought dead of inanition, began appearing at any number of colloquia in mathematical physics, often welcomed by the same physicists who had recently been heard reading its funeral obsequies aloud. In "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe," Michael A. Corey is concerned to convey their news without worrying overmuch about the details. His message is simple. There is a God, a figure at once omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and necessary. Science has established his existence.
How very embarrassing that this should have been overlooked.
AT THE very heart of revived natural theology are what the physicist Brandon Carter called "anthropic coincidences." Certain structural features of the universe, Carter argued, seemed finally tuned to permit the emergence of life. This is a declaration, to be sure, that suggests far more than it asserts. Structural features? Finely tuned? Permit? When the metaphors are squeezed dry, what more is at issue beyond the observation that life is a contingent affair? This is not a thesis in dispute.
Still, it often happens that commonplace observations, when sharpened, prompt questions that they had long concealed. The laws of physics draw a connection between the nature of certain material objects and their behavior. Falling from a great height, an astrophysicist no less than an airplane accelerates toward the center of the earth. Newton's law of gravitational attraction provides an account of this tendency in terms of mass and distance (or heft and separation). In order to gain traction on the real world, the law requires a fixed constant, a number that remains unchanged as mass and distance vary. Such is Newton's universal gravitational constant.
There are many comparable constants throughout mathematical physics, and they appear to have no very obvious mathematical properties. They are what they are. But if arbitrary, they are also crucial. Were they to vary from the values that they have, this happy universe--such is the claim--would be too small or too large or too gaseous or otherwise too flaccid to sustain life. And these are circumstances that, if true, plainly require an explanation.
Carter was a capable physicist; instead of being chuckled over and dismissed by a handful of specialists, the paper that he wrote in 1974 was widely read, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, Steven Weinberg, Robert Jastrow, and John Gribbin all contributing to the general chatter. Very few physicists took the inferential trail to its conclusion in faith; what is notable is that any of them took the trail at all.
THE ASTRONOMER Fred Hoyle is a case in point, his atheism in the end corrected by his pleased astonishment at his own existence. Living systems are based on carbon, he observed, and carbon is formed within stars by a process of nucleosynthesis. (The theory of nucleosynthesis is, indeed, partly his creation.) Two helium atoms fuse to form a beryllium intermediate, which then fuses again with another helium atom to form carbon. The process is unstable because beryllium intermediates are short-lived.
In 1953 Edwin Salpeter discovered that the resonance between helium and intermediate beryllium atoms, like the relation between an opera singer and the glass she shatters, is precisely tuned to facilitate beryllium production. Hoyle then discovered a second nuclear resonance, this one acting between beryllium and helium, and finely tuned as well.
Without carbon, no life. And without specific nuclear resonance levels, no carbon. And yet there he was, Hoyle affirmed, carbon based to the core. Nature, he said in a remark widely quoted, seems to be "a put-up job."
INFERENCES now have a tendency to go off like a string of firecrackers, some of them wet. Hoyle had himself discovered the scenario that made carbon synthesis possible. He thus assigned to what he called a "Supercalculating Intellect" powers that resembled his own. Mindful, perhaps, of the ancient wisdom that God alone knows who God is, he did not go further. Corey is, on the other hand, quite certain that Hoyle's Supercalculating Intellect is, in fact, a transcendental deity--the Deity, to afford Him a promotion in punctuation.
And Corey is certain, moreover, that he quite knows His motives. The Deity, in setting nuclear resonance levels, undertook his affairs "in order to create carbon based life forms."
Did He indeed? It is by no means obvious. For all we know, the Deity's concern may have lain with the pleasurable intricacies of nucleosynthesis, the emergence of life proving, like so many other things, an inadvertent consequence of his tinkering. For that matter, what sense does it make to invoke the Deity's long term goals, when it is His existence that is at issue? If nothing else, natural theology would seem to be a trickier business than physicists may have imagined.
AS IT HAPPENS, the gravamen of Corey's argument lies less with what the Deity may have had in mind and more with the obstacles He presumably needed to overcome. "The cumulative effect of this fine tuning," Corey argues, "is that, against all the odds, carbon was able to be manufactured in sufficient quantities inside stellar interiors to make our lives possible." That is the heart of the matter: against all the odds. And the obvious question that follows: Just how do we know this?
Corey does not address the question specifically, but he offers an answer nonetheless. It is, in fact, the answer Hoyle provides as well. They both suppose that something like an imaginary lottery (or roulette wheel) governs the distribution of values to the nuclear resonance levels of beryllium or helium. The wheel is spun. And thereafter the right resonance levels appear. The odds now reflect the pattern familiar in any probabilistic process--one specified outcome weighed against all the rest. If nuclear resonance levels are, in fact, unique, their emergence on the scene would have the satisfying aspect of a miracle.
It is a miracle, of course, whose luster is apt to dim considerably if other nuclear resonance levels might have done the job and thus won the lottery. And this is precisely what we do not know. The nuclear resonance levels specified by Hoyle are sufficient for the production of carbon. The evidence is all around us. It is entirely less clear that they are necessary as well. Corey and Hoyle make the argument that they are necessary because, if changed slightly, nucleosynthesis would stop. "Overall, it is safe to say"--Corey is speaking, Hoyle nodding--"that given the utter precision displayed by these nuclear resonances with respect to the synthesis of carbon, not even one of them could have been slightly different without destroying their precious carbon yield." This is true, but inconclusive. Mountain peaks are isolated but not unique. Corey and Hoyle may well be right in their conclusions. It is their argument that does not inspire confidence.
THE TROUBLE is not merely a matter of the logical niceties. Revived natural theology has staked its claims on probability. There is nothing amiss in this. Like the rest of us, physicists calculate the odds when they cannot calculate anything better. The model to which they appeal may be an imaginary lottery, roulette wheel, or even a flipped coin, but imaginary is the governing word. Whatever the model, it corresponds to no plausible physical mechanism. The situation is very different in molecular biology, which is one reason criticism of neo-Darwinism very often has biting power. When biologists speculate on the origins of life, they have in mind a scenario in which various chemicals slosh around randomly in some clearly defined physical medium. What does the sloshing with respect to nuclear resonance?
Or with respect to anything else? Current dogma suggests that many of the constants of mathematical physics were fixed from the first, and so constitute a part of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Corey does not demur; it is a conclusion that he endorses. What then is left of the anthropic claim that the fundamental constants have the value that they do despite "all odds"? In the beginning there was no time, no place, no lottery at all.
MATHEMATICAL physics currently trades in four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces governing the nucleus and radioactive decay. In general relativity and quantum mechanics, it contains two great but incompatible theories. This is clearly an embarrassment of riches. If possible, unification of these forces and theories is desirable. And not only unification, but unification in the form of a complete and consistent theoretical structure.
Such a theory, thoughtful physicists imagine, might serve to show that the anthropic coincidences are an illusion in that they are not coincidences at all. The point is familiar. Egyptian engineers working under the pharaohs knew that the angles of a triangle sum to more or less one hundred and eighty degrees. The number appears as a free parameter in their theories, something given by experience and experiment. The Greeks, on the other hand, could prove what the Egyptians could only calculate. No one would today think to ask why the interior angles of a Euclidean triangle sum to precisely one hundred and eighty degrees. The question is closed because the answer is necessary.
THE GRAND HOPE of modern mathematical physicists is that something similar will happen in modern mathematical physics. The Standard Model of particle physics contains a great many numerical slots that must be filled in by hand. This is never counted as a satisfaction, but a more powerful physical theory might show how those numerical slots are naturally filled, their particular values determined ultimately by the theory's fundamental principles. If this proves so, the anthropic coincidences will lose their power to vex and confound.
Nonetheless, the creation of a complete and consistent physical theory will not put an end to revived natural theology. Questions once asked about the fundamental constants of mathematical physics are bound to reappear as questions about the nature of its laws. The constants of mathematical physics may make possible the existence of life, but the laws of mathematical physics make possible the existence of matter. They have, those laws, an overwhelmingly specific character. Other laws, under which not much exists, are at least imaginable. What explanation can mathematical physics itself provide for the fact that the laws of nature are arranged as they are and that they have the form that they do? It is hardly an unreasonable question.
Steven Weinberg has suggested that a final theory must be logically isolated in the sense that any perturbation of its essential features would destroy the theory's coherence. Logical isolation is by no means a clear concept, and it is one of the ironies of modern mathematical physics that the logical properties of the great physical theories are no less mysterious than the physical properties of the universe they are meant to explain. Let us leave the details to those who cherish them.
The tactic is clear enough. The laws of a final theory determine its parameters; its logical structure determines its laws. No further transcendental inference is required, if only because that final theory explains itself.
This is very elegant. It is also entirely unpersuasive. A theory that is logically isolated is not necessarily a theory that is logically unique. Other theories may be possible, some governing imaginary worlds in which light alone exists, others worlds in which there is nothing whatsoever. The world in which we find ourselves is one in which galaxies wink and matter fills the cup of creation. What brings about the happy circumstance that the laws making this possible are precisely the laws making it real? The old familiar circle.
ALL THIS leaves us where we so often find ourselves. We are confronted with certain open questions. We do not know the answers, but what is worse, we have no clear idea--no idea whatsoever--of how they might be answered. But perhaps that is where we should be left: in the dark, tortured by confusing hints, intimations of immortality, and a sense that, dear God, we really do not yet understand.

[RightWhale]

Steven Weinberg has suggested that a final theory must be logically isolated in the sense that any perturbation of its essential features would destroy the theory's coherence.

I wouldn't know which points are important in this dialog, so I will comment on this one. Anyone who builds a world view on a hypothesis and expects to find it intact after historical exposure is asking too much considering that the hypothesis itself will be changed even in his own mind by tomorrow.

[Dimensio]

So, praytell, who are these, other than Jesus Christ, who live morally pristine lives?

Perhaps someone who had been in a coma since birth could be considered to have lived a "morally pristine" life, as they would not have been able to do anything that Christians consider "sin". Likewise, anyone who is in a coma probably can't do anything "sinful" beyond the point at which they entered a coma.

[kkindt]

"I have not seen convincing evidence to persuade me"

Each of us has plenty of evidence in existence to persuade us. Not seeing evidence can be a sign not of a lack of evidence but of a heart that doesn't want to see it, can't it? When so many very intelligent people do see the evidence and so many very intelligent people do not see the evidence isn't it just possible the issue is not the lack of evidence but the lack of a heart that wants to see. Someone once said "they have eyes that see but do not see"

[Loose_Cannon1]

No, but they are subject to the same laws of probability you outlined. Life or not, why doesn't the same analysis work?

Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend? Life is different from nonlife. Organic is different from non-organic. The conditions that create coal or salt dome are not even CLOSE to the conditions that create life. Coal was here millions of years before we were. And this doesn't even take into consideration COMPLEX life--which coal or salt dome isn't even CLOSE to achieving last I checked, COAL hasn't come up with a way to communicate or travel on it's own.

Your equations say that.

No, actually my equations say life is far more unlikely to happen. Coal or salt-dome might have had a slight chance in coming to be, but it's not life, save for a few people on this board. Maybe it's me, but why can't you comprehend that a lump of coal is infinitely simpler--and therefore more likely, then a wiggling bacteria?? The difference is amazingly obvious.

Randomness plays a role in evolution, but it's biased selection that does the work.

No, actually it's randomness that begins life, and that's what I'm talking about. The calculations I gave you was for one of the simplest creatures on Earth. The chances of the simplest and first signs of life evolving to someone like yourself are almost infinitely greater, if you take into account all the probabilities at any point that something could go wrong-Asteroid, Super Volcano's, meteors, etc. etc. Please, pay attention.

You can't talk about the probability that life happened in this way, and pretend that that's the probability that life happened at all. Until you can provably enumerate all the myriad ways, you have no basis for making that calculation.

ROFL!! You people are too funny. If life COULD evolve any other way, as you have supposed, why don't we see evidence anywhere else? Asteroids, Meteors, other planets, etc. Heck, why don't we see it anywhere here on Earth. Biologically speaking life happen only ONCE, here on Earth. Genetically speaking, we can trace life back to one single source, some 3.8 billion years ago. If, as you suppose, there is a basis for OTHER life forms, made of entirely different processes, why don't we see it here.

No, YOU do the calculations, and YOU figure out if it's YOUR theory. If you have knowledge on how other life forms could come about, then by means share it with the Noble Prize committee.

ROFL!! I guess what's so funny about you, is that you're so ARROGANT to think this is an original idea. That somehow, in between slouching off to flip burgers at the nearby Denny's, you've come up with the secret on how life might have formed elsewhere.

Again, I know of only ONE possible way for life to exist in the universe. If you know or think you know of another way, don't waste your time convincing me of it, ROFL!!, run it over to Cambridge University, Harvard or Stanford. I guarantee you a Noble Prize will be awarded to you!!!

No, the possibilities are YOUR problem, not mine. ROFL!!

Put that into your calculations, or they're wrong.

But all the MATTER in the Universe, ISN'T Infinite. Keep saying it is, and you'll look ignorant.

Besides of all the matter IN the universe, very, very few of them can make life. and the chances of them all coming together, in such a fantastically complex way.

If you would like to know how scientists calculate the mass of the Universe, go here: http://science.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=question221.htm&url=http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980114d.html

Nowhere did I make that argument.

ROFL!! You are hilarious!! You're NOT making the assumption that life "Just wants To Be", by implying, without scientific reason of course, that life could have begun differently then it did here on Earth? You're not implying that fighting huge amounts of almost impossible odds, life just popped up one day some 3.8 billion years ago?

IF, as you have proposed, life is possible without the impossible odds I've proposed here, then we should see it in different forms everywhere else. On different planets, in meteors, asteroids, etc. Heck, if life is so viable in the universe, it should be overflowing with aliens.

You are the results of decades of science fiction movies, books and TV shows pelting you everyday that life must exist elsewhere, but your logic is flawed. You forget--or never learned--that life is fragile, so nearly impossible to come together, and in a universe so hostile to it--it can't possibly exist anywhere else.

If you're so convinced life COULD exist, from anything else, YOU do the calculations and prove me wrong. Don't be so lazy.

[Dimensio]

Each of us has plenty of evidence in existence to persuade us.

I am unable to completely understand this sentence. Of what are you speaking?

Not seeing evidence can be a sign not of a lack of evidence but of a heart that doesn't want to see it, can't it?

Given that I use my eyes to see things and not my heart, I cannot agree. If you are referring to an unwilling mindset, then I can agree on that point. Of course, it's also possible that those who claim to have "seen" said evidence really just thought that they saw what they wanted to see.

When so many very intelligent people do see the evidence and so many very intelligent people do not see the evidence isn't it just possible the issue is not the lack of evidence but the lack of a heart that wants to see.

The heart is a muscle that moves blood as the central part of the circulatory system. It is unable to "see" anything.

Someone once said "they have eyes that see but do not see"

Was that "someone" referring to anything specific? That is a very vague phrase. It could refer to blind people, or it might be a reference to people who are able to see but who are wearing blindfolds. It might even be referring to a specific object that is beyond the sight of the subjects -- such as outside of their ability to view it or not reflecting light of an appropriate wavelength to be visible to the human eye.

[Physicist]

No, actually my equations say life is far more unlikely to happen. Coal or salt-dome might have had a slight chance in coming to be, but it's not life, save for a few people on this board.

Far more likely, eh? Well, let's check. I'll use your scheme, or rather, the scheme you lifted from another website, uncredited.

A large salt dome contains of order 100 cubic kilometers of salt. Salt is about 2 grams per cubic centimeter, so that's 2x10¹⁷ grams of salt.

An atom of sodium weighs typically 23 Daltons, while an atom of chlorine weighs 35 Daltons, so we're talking about 3.4x10^15 moles of salt, which is 2x10³⁹ atoms each of sodium and chlorine.

I don't have very accurate figures for the abundances of sodium and chlorine in the Earth's crust--my CRC handbook is at work--but a consensus number seems to be around 2% for Na and 1% for Cl, counting by atomic abundance, rather than by weight.

Let's start building our salt dome atom by atom, just as your ghost writer started assembling his life molecule. Taking the "tornado in a junkyard" approach, the chances that a sodium atom would show up at the right place (our starting point) is 0.02. Next we need a chlorine atom; nothing else will do. There's another factor of 0.01. It doesn't look too likely, and we only have two lousy atoms in our salt dome!

Now let's repeat the process 2x10³⁹ times. Uh, oh! Looks like our total probability for a salt dome occurring is one chance in 10^{2.4 x 1039}! That's a one with 2.4 thousand million million million million million million zeros after it.

Suddenly, a one with four million paltry zeroes after it doesn't seem so bad. And life only had to arise once; there are many salt domes on the face of the Earth. It's amazing that God even had time to create life, so busy must he have been messing about with salt.

[PatrickHenry]

It's amazing that God even had time to create life, so busy must he have been messing about with salt.

Your observation leads inevitably to the "saline principle," which is far more general than the anthropic principle.

[Physicist]

If life COULD evolve any other way, as you have supposed, why don't we see evidence anywhere else? Asteroids, Meteors, other planets, etc. Heck, why don't we see it anywhere here on Earth. Biologically speaking life happen only ONCE, here on Earth. Genetically speaking, we can trace life back to one single source, some 3.8 billion years ago. If, as you suppose, there is a basis for OTHER life forms, made of entirely different processes, why don't we see it here.

Maybe RadioAstronomer can give us some measured limits on the probability of life on other worlds, and tell us just how thoroughly we've checked our solar system.

Let's suppose that the calculation you borrowed is correct. Surely, then, we won't expect to find our kind of life anywhere but here. But if there were some other kind of life, would we see it? Only if its probability is extremely high. For example, if the probability of some hypothetical type of life (different from our own) were one in 100 million per solar system (a much higher probability than any you discussed), there'd be essentially no chance of finding such life forms in our solar system or on Earth. Even so, there'd be thousands of living worlds of that type in every galaxy.

Again, I know of only ONE possible way for life to exist in the universe.

That's the problem. You are assuming that that's the ONLY possible way for life to exist in the universe. You have to prove that assumption. I am not saying that I know there is any other way; I am saying that I don't know all the ways. No more do you. Until you do (and can prove it), you can make no calculation about the overall probability of life.

But all the MATTER in the Universe, ISN'T Infinite. Keep saying it is, and you'll look ignorant.

Four months ago, it was discovered that the geometry of space is flat on the largest scales. This means that space goes on forever, and is uniformly filled with matter. Does that mean that the universe is infinite? That's a matter of semantics; what do you mean by "universe"? Everything that exists, or everything that you can in principle communicate with and travel to? If by universe you mean "everything that exists", then the universe is infinite. If you mean "everything you can ever see or travel to", then the universe (our "Hubble volume" within the infinite space) is finite.

Given that space goes on forever and is filled with galaxies, then the probability of our being somewhere is identically 1, however unlikely life might actually be. It becomes the "lottery winner" effect: most Hubble volumes may be devoid of life, but all life forms will see themselves as living in an inhabited Hubble volume. Wheeler's "anthropic principle" wins after all.

You're not implying that fighting huge amounts of almost impossible odds, life just popped up one day some 3.8 billion years ago?

My argument is that is precisely what it did NOT do. Your borrowed calculation scheme is as bad a failure for life molecules as it is for salt domes.

Heck, if life is so viable in the universe, it should be overflowing with aliens.

So, let me get this straight. The only possible likelihoods are "impossible" and "ubiquitous"?

I vote for "rare, but likely enough over a sufficiently large volume". If we find life anywhere other than Earth in my lifetime, I'll change my vote to "ubiquitous".

[AntiGuv]

Since the universe requires a cause, the universe didn't begin by mere chance.

To our knowledge, the universe does not require a cause.

[AntiGuv]

True that God created Satan. But God didn't fill his heart with extreme pride or make him arrogant and wicked.

Just out of idle curiosity, who do you suppose created extreme pride, arrogance, and wickedness?

[XBob]

" "There are no geneically competing liveforms on this planet--"

The ability of a rogue prion protein, without a genetic code, to become infectious and reproduce is a dramatic and revolutionary medical concept,"

[Loose_Cannon1]

"Let's start building our salt dome atom by atom, just as your ghost writer started assembling his life molecule."

Not quite.

First of all, you're taking two basic elements of Earth, sodium and chlorine, and then juxtaposing it with life, and saying it's far more unlikely that SALT came about then life. The problem with this is elemental; both sodium, which makes up 2.5% of our crust, and chlorine, are elements that make up are our own body. In other words, if salt is really that unlikely, and salt makes up a portion of our own body, then our Body, with it's numerous other elements in it, is far, far more unlikely. It would have to form with other basic elements to form us, after it assembled itself, assumably by random.

Secondly, let's just take TWO of the 20 basic amino acids that make up Life: Lysine and Asparagine. The molecular formula for these amino acids is C6H14N2O2 and C4H8N2O3, respectively. If you say the chances that "a sodium atom would show up at the right place (our starting point) is 0.02" and that "Next we need a chlorine atom; nothing else will do. There's another factor of 0.01."--then what are the chances that Carbon, Helium, Nitrogen, and Oxygen would come together in such a way as to form just TWO of the basic Amino Acids needed for life? THEN, multiply that by 10 because there are 20 basic Amino Acids. NOW, what are the chances that those 20 Amino Acids would form together in such a perfect way as to make a Protein? NOW, what are the chances that the Protein would form with the DNA, to enable itself to reproduce??

It would seem as if all the ingredients in our kitchen got together--in perfect quantities, and baked itself into a cake. Not just any cake, mind you, but a cake that could reproduce itself. AND THEN, this cake started to evolve into a wedding cake, complete with a miniature bachelor and bride at the top.

As Isaac Newton, a man who's intelligence exceeds ours by far, once stated "In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence."

[Loose_Cannon1]

Maybe RadioAstronomer can give us some measured limits on the probability of life on other worlds, and tell us just how thoroughly we've checked our solar system.

Speaking of our solar system, it reminds me of a funny story of Sir Isaac Newton.

Sir Isaac had an accomplished artisan fashion for him a small scale model of our solar system which was to be put in a room in Newton’s home when completed. The assignment was finished and installed on a large table. The workman had done a very commendable job, simulating not only the various sizes of the planets and their relative proximities, but also so constructing the model that everything rotated and orbited when a crank was turned. It was an interesting, even fascinating work, as you can image, particularly to anyone schooled in the sciences.

Newton’s atheist-scientist friend came by for a visit. Seeing the model, he was naturally intrigued, and proceeded to examine it with undisguised admiration for the high quality of the workmanship. ‘My! What an exquisite thing this is!’ he exclaimed. ‘Who made it?’ Paying little attention to him, Sir Isaac answered, ‘Nobody.’

Stopping his inspection, the visitor turned and said: ‘Evidently you did not understand my question. I asked who made this.' Newton, enjoying himself immensely no doubt, replied in a still more serious tone. ‘Nobody. What you see just happened to assume the form it now has.’ ‘You must think I am a fool!’ the visitor retorted heatedly, ‘Of course somebody made it, and he is a genius, and I would like to know who he is.’

Newton then spoke to his friend in a polite yet firm way: ‘This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?’

As I've said before, I admire atheists. The faith they hold is much stronger, by far, then my own, being a Christen.

[Physicist]

First of all, you're taking two basic elements of Earth, sodium and chlorine, and then juxtaposing it with life, and saying it's far more unlikely that SALT came about then life.

I start with no such preconception. I merely followed the calculation scheme you borrowed. The likelihood I calculated was the result of that calculation.

In other words, if salt is really that unlikely, and salt makes up a portion of our own body, then our Body, with it's numerous other elements in it, is far, far more unlikely.

Try the calculation and see. I can tell you that the number will be much smaller than the one I calculated above, simply by virtue of the fact that a human body contains far fewer atoms than a salt dome. The number in the exponent will be smaller by a factor of several trillion, so the human body will be more likely by several trillion orders of magnitude. (Furthermore, we're primarily hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, which are more abundant than sodium and chlorine, but that part doesn't matter as much.)

If you don't like that answer, blame the calculation scheme.

then what are the chances that Carbon, Helium, Nitrogen, and Oxygen would come together in such a way as to form just TWO of the basic Amino Acids needed for life?

Well, I must admit that that probability is zero. ;^)