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A Small Thought About Some Big Numbers
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t find the thought of life originating and evolving on Earth through purely naturalistic processes incredible. Five hundred million years — the approximate time we think it took life to get a figurative toehold on our cooling orb — is a long time: multiply that by the number of ponds and puddles and deep ocean vents and, well, there are a lot of places where naturally occurring lipids might self-organize, as lipids do, into little test tubes in which organic molecules can dance.
I find it entirely plausible that that’s what happened.
But I realized today that I’ve been looking at the numbers wrong. Yes, a half a billion years on Earth is a lot of time for chemicals to slosh around, but nonetheless that’s really a drop in the bucket — no, a drop in the ocean.
No, far less than a drop in the ocean.
There’s no reason to think only of the opportunities for life to appear on Earth. More sensible is to think of the opportunities for life to appear anywhere, because, wherever it appeared, that’s the place from which we’ll end up marveling at its improbability.
About a billion lightyears from Earth is a cluster of galaxies named Able 2029. One of the galaxies in that cluster goes by the poetic name IC 1101. It’s the biggest galaxy of which we’re aware, containing on the order of one hundred trillion stars.
That’s 100,000,000,000,000 stars.
In comparison, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a mere quarter of a trillion stars.
There are well over two hundred billion galaxies. Ours is unexceptional — other than being the only one, as far as we know, that contains life.
We now think that most stars probably have planets. Recently, scientists decided that the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” the range of orbits about a star in which the temperature might be “just right” for water to exist as a liquid, is probably much broader than we originally thought. (This has to do with atmospheric dynamics of planets considerably larger than Earth.)
The universe is pretty young (at least it seems that way to me), less than 15 billion years old: life on Earth has been around for more than 20% of the age of the universe. But our sun isn’t a first-generation star: there have been at least two or three generations of stars before ours, perhaps more. So that’s a lot more stars than “merely” the 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars we can see on a clear night. (I kid, of course, but that’s a rough approximation of how many we think are out there.) So double that number to account for those stars that have come and gone before us.
That’s an awful lot of stars with an awful lot of planets. Multiply that by half a billion years, to give life a chance to start. Think of all those ponds and puddles and deep ocean vents.
Given all that, while I find it wonderful and beautiful and deeply moving that life exists at all, I don’t find it surprising.
Published in Science & Technology
Numbers:
One problem with the anti-odds argument is that the universe didn’t have to come up with this particular configuration of life in order for life to emerge. It only had to come up with one of a probably infinite set of configurations that would work.
The universe is not trying to come up with “us” — it’s not trying to do anything. Things happen, and we assign significance to them.
The so-called “birthday paradox” sheds light.
My point was your absurd argument of possibility vs probability, to the point that you would entertain the possibility of unicorns, should be able to be applied to the question of God’s existence.
You demand far more evidence to be convinced of his potential existence than you do in the existence of other life forms in the universe.
Your claim to rationality is questionable at best if you can’t be consistent in what evidence you are willing accept for either position.
Lee Strobel’s Case for Christ would be a good read for you. Not to convert you or because he is super scientific, but because he realized his own inconsistencies on evidence and belief.
I know what I believe and I accept my beliefs on faith. I do not use science to justify my faith. I recognize a great deal of what I believe is not rational because trust is not always rational. What little of science I enjoy is BECAUSE I believe in an ordered universe and the order I see by studying science reinforces that belief. If you can not understand this statement, you will continue to strawman the faith & science position for those of faith. It isn’t a matter of what we do or do not know. For me, discovery of what we did not know reinforces my belief in God. It does not push God further away to only be God of the unknowns.
I’m not “convinced” of the existence of other life in the universe. I’m merely saying that I haven’t seen anything to make me think it’s impossible.
I think I’m consistent. My standard for evidence is that it be observable, measurable, somehow susceptible to objective assessment. We can observe chemistry and biology and physics, measure phenomena in those domains, make predictions based on observations, and perform repeatable experiments. Metaphysical claims don’t provide evidence consistent with those standards. I simply don’t see such objective evidence either for or against metaphysical belief.
I read it years ago. He and I have different standards for evidence, and I don’t find his arguments compelling. (Nor did I find C.S. Lewis’ arguments compelling, though I think he did it better than Strobel does.)
I’m glad. And I do not use science to justify my non-faith.
I don’t think I’ve even approached anything like a straw man argument. All I’ve said — all that I’ve intended to say, in any event — is that (a) I think a natural origin of life is plausible, and (b) I think people should avoid mixing science and faith, because the two domains have different rules and standards and it does a disservice to science if you try to elevate it to the level of faith, and a disservice to faith if you lower it to the level of science. I’ve been practically tripping over myself to make it clear that I appreciate religion and the value it has for people, that I respect people of faith, and that I am making no claims about God’s existence. I’m just talking about the natural world.
I object to such careless thinking…
Careless drinking is the only kind I do.
Wait. Did I read that right?