The Certainty of Improbability

[Debater Slayer]

Over the years, one of the most common arguments I have seen people use in favor of intelligent design or creationism is "order and life on Earth could not have happened by chance." The most common form of this argument I have seen goes like this:

1. It would have been very improbable for life to arise on Earth without an intelligent designer.

2. It would have been even more improbable for the universe itself to have such order without an intelligent designer.

Therefore, there is an intelligent designer.

While the argument flows seamlessly from its premises to its conclusion, I think it ignores the fact that life is but a collection of improbabilities that are certain to occur. Coincidences happen many times throughout our lives, and there is an almost daily occurrence of coincidences in the everyday life of most people today.

Consider Selena, who is just an average women. Assume she is exactly in the center of a circle of ten billion colored balls, each having a unique color. They are all equidistant from her. She is then blindfolded and told to spin and stop randomly before picking one ball. The probability for any unique color to be picked is a fraction of a billion, yet it is certain that such a significantly tiny probability will occur. Often, 1, which is certainty in probabilistic terms, can be divided into billions of small fractions.

But Selena also does other things in her life besides randomly picking balls while blindfolded. She is, for instance, very fond of fish. When she goes to buy fish, the probability that one specific fish out of the millions that are caught worldwide ends up on her dish is starkly small, yet it is certain to happen every time Selena buys fish. One might argue that there is an intelligent planner who intended for Selena to pick that one specific ball or buy this one specific fish, but it is also clear that for all intents and purposes, we don't know of anyone who has planned these events in Selena's life. They are, for all we know, completely random.

I have no doubt that life on Earth is a fascinating phenomenon, as is the way things are in the universe. Their being fascinating, however, doesn't preclude their having been improbable to occur, and their improbability makes them all the more fascinating. It is a fact that improbabilities are certain to occur, no matter how small they are; life is a collection of tiny improbabilities that take turns in occurring. This is what I find most intriguing about life: the certainty of improbability.

 

[Sunstone]

A friend of mine has his masters in mathematics. If I recall, he's told me that the probability of life arising in the universe is 1 since we can only calculate probabilities based on statistics of what has already happened. And it has already happened that one known universe has existed and that life has arisen in it, thus making the odds or probability of life arising to be precisely 1 out of 1.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Over the years, one of the most common arguments I have seen people use in favor of intelligent design or creationism is "order and life on Earth could not have happened by chance." The most common form of this argument I have seen goes like this:

1. It would have been very improbable for life to arise on Earth without an intelligent designer.

2. It would have been even more improbable for the universe itself to have such order without an intelligent designer.

Therefore, there is an intelligent designer.

While the argument flows seamlessly from its premises to its conclusion, I think it ignores the fact that life is but a collection of improbabilities that are certain to occur. Coincidences happen many times throughout our lives, and there is an almost daily occurrence of coincidences in the everyday life of most people today.

Consider Selena, who is just an average women. Assume she is exactly in the center of a circle of ten billion colored balls, each having a unique color. They are all equidistant from her. She is then blindfolded and told to spin and stop randomly before picking one ball. The probability for any unique color to be picked is a fraction of a billion, yet it is certain that such a significantly tiny probability will occur. Often, 1, which is certainty in probabilistic terms, can be divided into billions of small fractions.

But Selena also does other things in her life besides randomly picking balls while blindfolded. She is, for instance, very fond of fish. When she goes to buy fish, the probability that one specific fish out of the millions that are caught worldwide ends up on her dish is starkly small, yet it is certain to happen every time Selena buys fish. One might argue that there is an intelligent planner who intended for Selena to pick that one specific ball or buy this one specific fish, but it is also clear that for all intents and purposes, we don't know of anyone who has planned these events in Selena's life. They are, for all we know, completely random.

I have no doubt that life on Earth is a fascinating phenomenon, as is the way things are in the universe. Their being fascinating, however, doesn't preclude their having been improbable to occur, and their improbability makes them all the more fascinating. It is a fact that improbabilities are certain to occur, no matter how small they are; life is a collection of tiny improbabilities that take turns in occurring. This is what I find most intriguing about life: the certainty of improbability.

The funny thing about propability/improbability is there has to be a first occurence, then a second occurance to even gauge the odds proper.

One reason why the probability and odds argument is such a sorry way to go about establishing a a proper foundation for making a point on certain things and can be quite useless at times.

 

[Quintessence]

A friend of mine has his masters in mathematics. If I recall, he's told me that the probability of life arising in the universe is 1 since we can only calculate probabilities based on statistics of what has already happened. And it has already happened that one known universe has existed and that life has arisen in it, thus making the odds or probability of life arising to be precisely 1 out of 1.

I'm not sure that's quite right with respect to how the folks who make this argument actually go about it. They'll look at various parameters - such as what is the probability of various laws of physics being just so in order for the universe to be as it is - rather than just ask the question of "what is the probability of life."

Even granting that, the folks who make these arguments have a poor understanding of statistics. I wish I could recount how the stats instructor I had in grad school framed things like this, but we were having some discussion about outliers and how to handle them in the proper fashion. He mentioned how we have this tendency to want to ignore outliers for many hypotheses, but emphasized to us that we must beware of excluding outliers from our analyses just because they are outliers. While in some cases, outliers happen because of errors in instrumentation, outliers are also real. They represent real phenomena and should never be thrown out of your data set simply because they are outliers. That's bad science, bad statistics, and unethical research methodology.

In a fashion, the people arguing God must have created the universe because our data point is an improbable outlier are advocating for unethical research methods, bad science, and bad statistics. And on top of that, they have a poor grasp of how probability actually works, and what probability actually means. If something as a one in a million chance of occurring, it will happen once per million chances. There's nothing miraculous about this. It's how probability works. It will happen. Rare occurrences still occur. That people don't grasp this just befuddles me.

 

[Augustus]

If something as a one in a million chance of occurring, it will happen once per million chances. There's nothing miraculous about this. It's how probability works.

It will probably happen at such a frequency when averaged over a large enough sample

I think I read that something with such a probability happens to us once a week on average. Like when you start humming a tune you haven't heard for years then it comes on the radio and it makes you think you are psychic

Also something interesting:

"The headline of a 1990 New York Times article reads as follows: '1-in-a-Trillion Coincidence’ The article goes on to report a seemingly unbelievable coincidence about a woman who won the New Jersey lottery twice within four months, a feat originally reported as a 1 in 17 trillion long shot. Research on coincidences by two Harvard statisticians revealed, however, that the odds of such an event happening to someone somewhere in the United States were more like 1 in 30--not that amazing after all. They explain that this is an example of the law of very large numbers: 'With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen.' Out of the millions upon millions of people who regularly purchase lottery tickets in the United States, it is not unreasonable that someone should at some point hit the lottery twice." NN Taleb - The Black Swan

 

[Quintessence]

It will probably happen at such a frequency when averaged over a large enough sample

I think I read that something with such a probability happens to us once a week on average. Like when you start humming a tune you haven't heard for years then it comes on the radio and it makes you think you are psychic

Also something interesting:

"The headline of a 1990 New York Times article reads as follows: '1-in-a-Trillion Coincidence’ The article goes on to report a seemingly unbelievable coincidence about a woman who won the New Jersey lottery twice within four months, a feat originally reported as a 1 in 17 trillion long shot. Research on coincidences by two Harvard statisticians revealed, however, that the odds of such an event happening to someone somewhere in the United States were more like 1 in 30--not that amazing after all. They explain that this is an example of the law of very large numbers: 'With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen.' Out of the millions upon millions of people who regularly purchase lottery tickets in the United States, it is not unreasonable that someone should at some point hit the lottery twice." NN Taleb - The Black Swan

Yup. The stats professor for the course I took used the example of birthdays. Most of us think the odds of someone having the same birthday as us in a room of people is low. Turns out, it really isn't.

 

[Sunstone]

Yup. The stats professor for the course I took used the example of birthdays. Most of us think the odds of someone having the same birthday as us in a room of people is low. Turns out, it really isn't.

About one in fifty, if I recall.

 

[LuisDantas]

About one in fifty, if I recall.

For how many people?

As I recall, after a couple dozen or so people it quickly becomes likely that at least two people in the group will indeed share a birthday.

 

[Sunstone]

For how many people?

As I recall, after a couple dozen or so people it quickly becomes likely that at least two people in the group will indeed share a birthday.

We have different recollections of the odds. As I recall, there's one chance in fifty. That is, gather a group of fifty people and the odds are of one set of matching birthdays. But my memory might be wrong.

 

[LuisDantas]

We have different recollections of the odds. As I recall, there's one chance in fifty. That is, gather a group of fifty people and the odds are of one set of matching birthdays. But my memory might be wrong.

There is a very small chance that a given group of 365 people (actually 366) might all turn out to have different birthdays even if they are not specifically selected in order to ensure such a situation.

It is never a sure thing before that point, although the odds rise very quickly indeed rather soon.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

One of the most powerful ways to describe complex arguments is with a comparative metaphor.
I have been trying to find a metaphor that epitomizes the completely different nature of consciousness and non-consciousness.

This is because it is more than a gross misconception to assume that life and consciousness can come about by an almost
infinite number of collisions between an almost infinite number of almost infinite types of non-conscious particles.

So I am trying to suggest that the notion of random material collisions causing consciousness is beyond the very notion of probability.
No matter how extreme the most improbable event is, that which is categorically illogical does not become logical simply by repetition of the event.

So no matter how many times I add the numbers 3+7, I will never get 5.
Arguments in favor of abiogenesis seem to suggest that if we add 7+3 an almost infinite number of times,
we will eventually find a situation arising whereby 3+7 has to eventually equal 5.

So if we add all varieties of non-consciousness together in all possible combinations, we will also never get consciousness.

There is a common narrative floating around the world in recent years about how madness is defined by
repeating the same event over and over again and expecting a different result.

Well that's a bit narrow for all types of madness, but it certainly qualifies for the neuroses called denial.
Most explicitly: What event in your moral history is persistently underpinning your denial of God?

 

[JustWondering]

One of the most powerful ways to describe complex arguments is with a comparative metaphor.
I have been trying to find a metaphor that epitomizes the completely different nature of consciousness and non-consciousness.

This is because it is more than a gross misconception to assume that life and consciousness can come about by an almost
infinite number of collisions between an almost infinite number of almost infinite types of non-conscious particles.

So I am trying to suggest that the notion of random material collisions causing consciousness is beyond the very notion of probability.
No matter how extreme the most improbable event is, that which is categorically illogical does not become logical simply by repetition of the event.

So no matter how many times I add the numbers 3+7, I will never get 5.
Arguments in favor of abiogenesis seem to suggest that if we add 7+3 an almost infinite number of times,
we will eventually find a situation arising whereby 3+7 has to eventually equal 5.

So if we add all varieties of non-consciousness together in all possible combinations, we will also never get consciousness.

There is a common narrative floating around the world in recent years about how madness is defined by
repeating the same event over and over again and expecting a different result.

Well that's a bit narrow for all types of madness, but it certainly qualifies for the neuroses called denial.
Most explicitly: What event in your moral history is persistently underpinning your denial of God?

Surely you saw this coming, who is god's designer then?

 

[muhammad_isa]

This is because it is more than a gross misconception to assume that life and consciousness can come about by an almost
infinite number of collisions between an almost infinite number of almost infinite types of non-conscious particles.

I've been told that this is an argument from ignorance
It certainly is illogical to think that there could be no reason for everything..
Strangely enough, mankind is very curious and conducts scientific experiments to find reasons why the universe behaves how it does. What sense does it make to suggest that the universe came into being without a reason? Our experience in life shows otherwise .. things happen for a reason!

 

[Revoltingest]

Over the years, one of the most common arguments I have seen people use in favor of intelligent design or creationism is "order and life on Earth could not have happened by chance." The most common form of this argument I have seen goes like this:

1. It would have been very improbable for life to arise on Earth without an intelligent designer.

2. It would have been even more improbable for the universe itself to have such order without an intelligent designer.

Therefore, there is an intelligent designer.

While the argument flows seamlessly from its premises to its conclusion, I think it ignores the fact that life is but a collection of improbabilities that are certain to occur. Coincidences happen many times throughout our lives, and there is an almost daily occurrence of coincidences in the everyday life of most people today.

Consider Selena, who is just an average women. Assume she is exactly in the center of a circle of ten billion colored balls, each having a unique color. They are all equidistant from her. She is then blindfolded and told to spin and stop randomly before picking one ball. The probability for any unique color to be picked is a fraction of a billion, yet it is certain that such a significantly tiny probability will occur. Often, 1, which is certainty in probabilistic terms, can be divided into billions of small fractions.

But Selena also does other things in her life besides randomly picking balls while blindfolded. She is, for instance, very fond of fish. When she goes to buy fish, the probability that one specific fish out of the millions that are caught worldwide ends up on her dish is starkly small, yet it is certain to happen every time Selena buys fish. One might argue that there is an intelligent planner who intended for Selena to pick that one specific ball or buy this one specific fish, but it is also clear that for all intents and purposes, we don't know of anyone who has planned these events in Selena's life. They are, for all we know, completely random.

I have no doubt that life on Earth is a fascinating phenomenon, as is the way things are in the universe. Their being fascinating, however, doesn't preclude their having been improbable to occur, and their improbability makes them all the more fascinating. It is a fact that improbabilities are certain to occur, no matter how small they are; life is a collection of tiny improbabilities that take turns in occurring. This is what I find most intriguing about life: the certainty of improbability.

Once you ask to see their probability calculations, the argument evaporates.
What's really going on is the argument of incredulity, gussied up with a sprinkling of math terms.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

So no matter how many times I add the numbers 3+7, I will never get 5.
Arguments in favor of abiogenesis seem to suggest that if we add 7+3 an almost infinite number of times,
we will eventually find a situation arising whereby 3+7 has to eventually equal 5.

I agree. It's like when Trinitarians tell us that 1 x 3 = 1.

Most explicitly: What event in your moral history is persistently underpinning your denial of God?

It has nothing to do with morality, and this is coming from a theist. They feel no evidence of a living divine presence. Hence, their conclusion. Fundamentalists also lack any feeling for the divine presence, which is why they must turn to idolatry by saying that "insert scripture here" is the end all, be all of God's word. However, they are hypocrites. It's why I prefer the honesty of atheists.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Surely you saw this coming, who is god's designer then?

When a being with an imagination, imagines something outside itself into being,
like the way a robot is designed, it is similar but not the same as when
a being imagines itself as being something more than what it is.

So we can imagine ourselves to become more than what we are.
So when we imagine ourselves into being it is not quite the same as when we design something else.

What your real question is actually asking, is about the origin of time.

What existed 'before' what we commonly understand as this physical world
is something that I can only describe as a-temporal.
In this way we have to realize that our observation of linear-causal time
is a surface feature of imaginative-time.

Consider a character in a book asking such existential questions about the
nature of his being: "Who created the Author of my narrative?" seems to be
a question similar to what you have asked. It would be perhaps better (though similar)
for him to ask: "What came before chapter 1?"

You see, time for the character in the book is for all intents and purposes in a different dimension
to time for the author. In the author's dimension of time, he can go back to the beginning
and change the narrative to better suit an ending he has considered.

There can be a virtually infinite number of editions of the character's book,
and a reader can read that same book with quite different perspectives.

The character in the book, is thus a deliberately restricted facet of the author.
The character is the author; and yet the character is not the author.
The author can even make his character not believe in having an author if he so chooses.

In this way, God's Time, from the perspective of our time is so vastly more in
so many infinite ways, that we are actually asking:
"What is the difference between linear time, and imagination?"

These types of questions from the perspective of the physical world,
are quite different from the perspective of the Platonic realm where
all that ever could exist, exists in all its potential possibilities - but its even
more than this, for in the imagination, even that which is logically and physically
impossible can also exist. The imaginative is thus entirely free from causal logic.

Thus in this mystical place where meta-logic persists, God can Imagine himself
into being without the physical boundaries of logical contradiction which would
be impossible in a linear-causal world.

In this way, the Author, by imagining another being into existence, actually
causes his own being to come into being. This may seem illogical from
the perspective of linear-causation. But in the all-time it must always be thus.
For in the all-time, there is no logic. For logic is just a facet of freedom.

There is no logical reason for logic to exist.

Logic and linear time are just a local norms, the existence of which
preclude themselves from the Platonic Perspective.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

I agree. It's like when Trinitarians tell us that 1 x 3 = 1.


It has nothing to do with morality, and this is coming from a theist. They feel no evidence of a living divine presence. Hence, their conclusion. Fundamentalists also lack any feeling for the divine presence, which is why they must turn to idolatry by saying that "insert scripture here" is the end all, be all of God's word. However, they are hypocrites. It's why I prefer the honesty of atheists.

Yes, some atheists are often more honest, than some who call themselves theists.
But I cannot help wondering if absolute atheists even exist at all?

Is it perhaps not a cheap attempt at reverse psychology?
The agnostic does not have his prayers answered, and so decides
to call himself atheist in the hope that God will now prove his existence -
put God to the test and give him a miracle.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

So I am trying to suggest that the notion of random material collisions causing consciousness is beyond the very notion of probability.

With this, however, you are basically equating what you call "consciousness" with "magic" - which it most certainly is not. I would like to point out that even atoms make "decisions" - they abandon relationships with less stable companions for relationships with more stable conditions. Granted, there is an obvious difference in that the atom is adhering to "natural law", while our consciousness is more free-form, and allows us to think and react as we deem fit for our purposes. However, the point I am making is that so-called "inanimate objects" and the "static" material of the universe is FAR from "static" or "inanimate". In fact, it is nearly idiotic to even refer to matter of any kind that way. There are gravitational/mass relationships between every piece of matter in the universe at play. Energies transferred from one object to another via laws which dictate that flow. Vacuum being sustained or eliminated due to movements and processes that are constantly at work. Bodies moving and colliding, causing new material relationships, chemical reactions and releases of energy all the time.

Matter is obviously able to be placed in configurations that allow that matter to be made aware of itself. This is obvious because we, ourselves, are the evidence of such. And so, with all the movement and action constantly at work in the universe, and given literally infinite time, could such a configuration not possibly be sparked on at least a small scale (the "small scale" being the beginnings of life on Earth - single-cell creatures, and RNA-based "sub-life" - lest we forget the fossil record proving that this stage of development existed)? I would say one would have to be a fool to answer, definitively, that "no", it could not.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I think it ignores the fact that life is but a collection of improbabilities that are certain to occur.

But it isn't. There are uncountably infinitely many outcomes that could occur that don't involve life, this universe, any universe, any universe capable of supporting life, etc. It's true that we confuse coincidence with agency all of the time. But to say "collection of improbabilities" implies that we can speak to the set of possible outcomes, and if we accept that we can, then the possibility of life occurring is 0 (it is a countable set, at best, and therefore of measure 0).

One cannot reason about design arguments from the standpoint of assumption that the collection of improbable outcomes render life or a universe capable of supporting it to be "certain."

This is what I find most intriguing about life: the certainty of improbability.

Improbability is often considered a measure of uncertainty, which requires agents capable of degrees of certainty for any improbability to exist. In other philosophical interpretations of probability, the certainty of probability either just doesn't exist, or is wholly irrelevant here (or, indeed, supports the opposite view: that life has emerged as it has emerged has a vanishingly small probability, and the set of all probabilities make any other improbable outcomes involving life emerging in different ways as equally vanishingly small).

A friend of mine has his masters in mathematics. If I recall, he's told me that the probability of life arising in the universe is 1 since we can only calculate probabilities based on statistics of what has already happened.

That's why we have approaches to probability and statistics like Bayes' rule and Bayesian epistemology. For example, a PNAS paper published a few years ago showed that given that life arose on earth as it did and given what we know of life arising elsewhere (and what we know of "elsewhere"), the probability of complex life existing anywhere else is extremely small. More simply, given that I toss a fair coin and it lands on heads, I'm hardly justified in concluding that the probability that the toss would yield heads is 1 simply because it did. Finally, we don't calculate probabilities on statistics- period. Modern probability theory is based upon measure theory (developed principally by Borel and Lebesgue) formalized into a rigorous probability theory by the great Kolmogorov. We never calculate probabilities on what has happened, but by assigning values to outcomes of random variables. In "naïve" probability theory (where distinctions are made between discrete and countable probabilities and many nuances relating to calculating probability can't be dealt with), the typical understanding of probability is based on an idealized set of identically infinite number of "experiments" (i.e., we say a coin has a 1/2 probability of yielding heads because an infinite number of fair coin tosses would give us a 50/50 distribution). In other words, we start from the assumption that, in order to determine the probability of particular outcomes, we MUST assume that infinitely many identical and (usually) distinct outcomes have occurred.

 

[mindlight]

Over the years, one of the most common arguments I have seen people use in favor of intelligent design or creationism is "order and life on Earth could not have happened by chance." The most common form of this argument I have seen goes like this:

1. It would have been very improbable for life to arise on Earth without an intelligent designer.

2. It would have been even more improbable for the universe itself to have such order without an intelligent designer.

Therefore, there is an intelligent designer.

While the argument flows seamlessly from its premises to its conclusion, I think it ignores the fact that life is but a collection of improbabilities that are certain to occur. Coincidences happen many times throughout our lives, and there is an almost daily occurrence of coincidences in the everyday life of most people today.

Consider Selena, who is just an average women. Assume she is exactly in the center of a circle of ten billion colored balls, each having a unique color. They are all equidistant from her. She is then blindfolded and told to spin and stop randomly before picking one ball. The probability for any unique color to be picked is a fraction of a billion, yet it is certain that such a significantly tiny probability will occur. Often, 1, which is certainty in probabilistic terms, can be divided into billions of small fractions.

But Selena also does other things in her life besides randomly picking balls while blindfolded. She is, for instance, very fond of fish. When she goes to buy fish, the probability that one specific fish out of the millions that are caught worldwide ends up on her dish is starkly small, yet it is certain to happen every time Selena buys fish. One might argue that there is an intelligent planner who intended for Selena to pick that one specific ball or buy this one specific fish, but it is also clear that for all intents and purposes, we don't know of anyone who has planned these events in Selena's life. They are, for all we know, completely random.

I have no doubt that life on Earth is a fascinating phenomenon, as is the way things are in the universe. Their being fascinating, however, doesn't preclude their having been improbable to occur, and their improbability makes them all the more fascinating. It is a fact that improbabilities are certain to occur, no matter how small they are; life is a collection of tiny improbabilities that take turns in occurring. This is what I find most intriguing about life: the certainty of improbability.

Probabilities of this sort are calculated from rules in turn calculated from definite facts and observations. It would be utterly impossible for anyone to set up the equations to predict the emergence of intelligent life, the universe itself or even predict the development of life on earth. The simple reason is that these are non-analogous events. The guy who posted that the probability of the emergence of life was 1 was correct. It happened and so it is 1. There are no different contexts in which the same rules and equations can be applied.

We have human intelligences that have attempted to produce life in the controlled conditions of laboratories and yet have been unsuccessful by any meaningful definition of the word life. So we can say the probability that these scientists can create life or predict the development of life is pretty much zero. Yet life exists so if the top brains of our time are unable to create life and yet life exists then their calculations on the probability of life emerging etc are probably meaningless also. What they cannot duplicate they cannot comment on in their own authority.

Yet life exists. So do we actually observe the spontaneous emergence of life in all sorts of places. No we do not. The theory of abiogenesis is a speculation ultimately that suggests because life exists and did not until certain conditions were available that it was those conditions that gave rise to the possibility of life. Yet since the duplication of those conditions does not result in life it is clear that this is just speculative hypothesising. If we have never observed lifes spontaneous emergence then the probability of that happening is also zero.

Yet life exists and since the probability of spontaneous emergence is zero then an alternate hypothesis is required.

A Creator God makes more sense than any other theory.