This is a number as close to zero as anyone has ever imagined. The probability is much, much smaller than that of winning the Mega Millions jackpot for more days than the universe has been in existence. The scientific atheists have scrambled to explain this troubling mystery by suggesting the existence of a multiverse—an infinite set of universes, each with its own parameters.
In some universes, the conditions are wrong for life; however, by the sheer size of this putative multiverse, there must be a universe where everything is right.
But if it takes an immense power of nature to create one universe, then how much more powerful would that force have to be in order to create infinitely many universes? So the purely hypothetical multiverse does not solve the problem of God. The incredible fine-tuning of the universe presents the most powerful argument for the existence of an immanent creative entity we may well call God.
Lacking convincing scientific evidence to the contrary, such a power may be necessary to force all the parameters we need for our existence—cosmological, physical, chemical, biological and cognitive—to be what they are. Science and religion are two sides of the same deep human impulse to understand the world, to know our place in it, and to marvel at the wonder of life and the infinite cosmos we are surrounded by. Contact us at letters time. Digitally generated image showing volcanic eruptions during formation of Earth.
By Amir D. Related Stories. God Is Dead. Except at the Box Office. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription. Need help? Visit our Help Center. Even a focus, ultra-energetic, nearby supernova might not be enough to extinguish life on a Multiple scenarios for the asteroid belt may each have advantages for life evolving on the inner Perhaps none of them are prohibitive to the evolution of intelligent life.
Feild, STScI. Same deal for asteroids. Yes, a solar system without a Jupiter-like planet would have many more asteroids, but without a Jupiter-like planet, would their orbits ever get perturbed to fling them into the inner solar system? Would it make extinction events more common, or rarer? The evidence that we need a Jupiter for life is specious at best, just like the evidence that we need to be at this location in our galaxy is also sparse.
And finally, we did come along relatively early, but the ingredients for stars and solar systems like our own were present in large abundances in galaxies many billions of years before our own star system formed. The conditions that we need for life to arise, to the best we can measure, seem to exist all over the galaxy, and hence probably all over the Universe as well.
Potentially habitable worlds may be possible around a large variety of stars. How rare or common are these conditions elsewhere in the Universe? So the worlds are there, around stars, in the right places! In addition to that, we need them to have the right ingredients to bring about complex life. What about those building blocks; how likely are they to be there? Organic molecules are found in star forming regions, stellar remnants and interstellar gas, all Humphreys University of Minnesota.
Believe it or not, these heavy elements — assembled into complex molecules — are unavoidable by this point in the Universe. Enough stars have lived and died that all the elements of the periodic table exist in fairly high abundances all throughout the galaxy. But are they assembled correctly? Taking a look towards the heart of our own galaxy is molecular cloud Sagittarius B, shown at the top of this page.
Organic molecules found throughout the Universe, particularly towards the galactic center. Like ethyl formate left and n-propyl cyanide right , the former of which is responsible for the smell of raspberries! So with tens of billions of chances in our galaxy alone, and the building blocks already in place, you might think — as Fermi did — that the odds of intelligent life arising many times in our own galaxy is inevitable.
But first, we need to make life from non-life. This is no small feat, and is one of the greatest puzzles around for natural scientists in all disciplines: the problem of abiogenesis. At some point, this happened for us, whether it happened in space, in the oceans, or in the atmosphere, it happened, as evidenced by our very planet, and its distinctive diversity of life. A young planet with the potential conditions for life could grow into an Earth-like world, or could But it could be far fewer than that as well.
Was life on Earth likely? In other words, if we performed the chemistry experiment of forming our Solar System over and over again, would it take hundreds, thousands or even millions of chances to get life out once? So while, by many measures, there are plenty of intelligent animals, we are interested in a very particular type of intelligence.
And there is not an iota of evidence for such a God, so on what ground should we believe it? Hart claims that this is the conception of God that has prevailed throughout most of history, but I seriously doubt that.
Aquinas, Luther, Augustine: none of those people saw God in such a way. My God is just sitting there, watching over us all, but only for his amusement. As Burkeman notes, Hart has removed God from the class of entities that exist and transformed Him into merely an Idea: a philosophical concept that can be subject only to philosophical arguments:.
If you think this God-as-the-condition-of-existence argument is rubbish, you need to say why. But this is all a stupendous confidence game. For the vast majority of modern history, women were viewed as intellectually inferior beings. But that is simply a culturally-conditioned belief that supports no argument for female inferiority. Why on earth does that argument have any force at all? Western monotheists usually believe in a personal and anthropomorphic God—one who has humanlike emotions, cares about us, and wants us to behave in certain ways.
The arguments for evolution are based on evidence, not philosophy, and can be comprehended by the average person: one who, for example, read my book Why Evolution is True. The difference between theologians and believers is not their differential acquaintance with the truth about God, but the greater acquaintance of theologians with the history of theology.
People like Hart, despite their intelligence, have no more handle on the nature of God than do Joe and Sally in the street. Theologians are, as we all know, simply confecting things about God, and then selling them using fancy words and their academic credentials. And these transcendental ideas unite in the classical concept of God, who simply is truth, goodness, and beauty. If I were a religious believer, I would likely neither appreciate the concessions that Linker has made, nor go along with his account of my beliefs.
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