Recently published statistics indicate that the odds are overwhelming that you do not in fact exist

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 22, 2011

Cosmology, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design, News}

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Quanrtum fuzziness explains why you believe you exist.

In “Are you totally improbable or totally inevitable?” (National Public Radio, November 21, 2011), Robert Krulwich offers,

Author and blogger Dr. Ali Binazir did the calculations last spring and decided that the chances of anyone existing are one in 10^2,685,000. In other words, as this infographic figures it, you are totally improbable:

Of course, there are poets who argue exactly the opposite: that each of us is fated to exist, that there is a plan, and that all of us are expected.

Actually, there is no reason each position can’t be partially true. One might have been intended by a power beyond the universe, yet be unique at the same time.

Even earthly powers are not required to make more than one of any work of art. (Indeed, they are generally discouraged from doing so.)

We now await the professor who looks at these odds, shakes his head, clears his throat, and says that the graphic merely demonstrates his thesis that you do not really exist.

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Comments

Engineers, making little engineers through mating. But anyway- Peering into Darwin's Black Box: The cell divsion processes required for bacterial lifeJoseph_{November 22, 2011
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"Well, seeing that humans are designers, it goes to show that only designers beget designers- that is if we lean on our observations." Mating is now a design process? Maybe my engineer friends will incorporate it in their proposals.DrREC_{November 22, 2011
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DrREC:
Or producing some protein with some beneficial function? More and more probable.
The probability, or even feasibilty, of your claim depends solely on the question begged-> "from what?" Does your scenario require existing proteins, ie things that need an explanation in the first place?
Since we don’t need to invoke a designer when a human produces a human (despite one way of calculating odds), what is the observation that warrants a design inference again?
Well, seeing that humans are designers, it goes to show that only designers beget designers- that is if we lean on our observations.Joseph_{November 22, 2011
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"We now await the professor who looks at these odds, shakes his head, clears his throat, and says that the graphic merely demonstrates his thesis that you do not really exist." Isn't that YOUR line? This is the same lottery fallacy that ID people make with protein sequences all the time. A protein of 100 amino acid is one of 20^100, so the odds are astronomically against it, right? Like the odds of producing a particular human in the poster, the odds of producing a particular protein are low. But of producing some human? Or producing some protein with some beneficial function? More and more probable. Since we don't need to invoke a designer when a human produces a human (despite one way of calculating odds), what is the observation that warrants a design inference again?DrREC_{November 22, 2011
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In regards to Intelligent Design, it's a bit misleading. The odds that a specific sequence of human DNA will come into being through sexual reproduction are indeed very remote. But Intelligent Design theory does not posit that the offspring produced sexual reproduction (human or otherwise) is a result of design and not chance. On the contrary, only those offspring who exhibit a new, complex, functionally specific feature requiring at least 500 bits of information "cannot reasonably be attributed to chance." So while it may be incredibly unlikely that any specific person should come into being, none the less the best scientific explanation is a physical process determined by chance.rhampton7_{November 22, 2011
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Of course the atheist's retort to probability arguments, such as here and in the fine-tuning of the universe argument, is always something to the effect, 'Well, we exist so the probability of us existing is 1'. Which of course totally (deliberately?) misses the point. Dr. Sheldon has a excellent article refuting that entire line of thought, against fine-tuning, here:
The Multiverse Gods, final part - Robert Sheldon - June 2011 Excerpt: And so in our long journey through the purgatory of multiverse-theory, we discover as we previously discovered for materialism, there are two solutions, and only two. Either William Lane Craig is correct and multiverse-theory is just another ontological proof a personal Creator, or we follow Nietzsche into the dark nihilism of the loss of reason. Heaven or hell, there are no other solutions. http://procrustes.blogtownhall.com/2011/06/30/the_multiverse_gods,_final_part.thtml
As well, the OP reminds me of this:
The Case for Jesus the Messiah — Incredible Prophecies that Prove God Exists By Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon, and Dr. Walter Kaiser, Jr. Excerpt: But, of course, there are many more than eight prophecies. In another calculation Stoner used 48 prophecies (even though he could have used 456) and arrived at the extremely conservative estimate that the probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is one in 10^157. How large is the number 10^157? 10^157 contains 157 zeros! Let us try to illustrate this number using electrons. Electrons are very small objects. They are smaller than atoms. It would take 2.5 times 10^15 of them, laid side by side, to make one inch. Even if we counted four electrons every second and counted day and night, it would still take us 19 million years just to count a line of electrons one inch long. But how many electrons would it take if we were dealing with 10^157 electrons? Imagine building a solid ball of electrons that would extend in all directions from the earth a length of 6 billion light years. The distance in miles of just one light year is 6.4 trillion miles. That would be a big ball! But not big enough to measure 10^157 electrons. In order to do that, you must take that big ball of electrons reaching the length of 6 billion light years long in all directions and multiply it by 6 x 10^28! How big is that? It’s the length of the space required to store trillions and trillions and trillions of the same gigantic balls and more. In fact, the space required to store all of these balls combined together would just start to “scratch the surface” of the number of electrons we would need to really accurately speak about 10^157. But assuming you have some idea of the number of electrons we are talking about, now imagine marking just one of those electrons in that huge number. Stir them all up. Then appoint one person to travel in a rocket for as long as he wants, anywhere he wants to go. Tell him to stop and segment a part of space, then take a high-powered microscope and find that one marked electron in that segment. What do you think his chances of being successful would be? It would be one in 10^157. Remember, this number represents the chance of only 48 prophecies coming true in one person (there are 456 total prophecies concerning Jesus). http://www.johnankerberg.org/Articles/ATRJ/proof/ATRJ1103PDF/ATRJ1103-3.pdf
Further notes:
The Precisely Fulfilled Prophecy Of Israel Becoming A Nation In 1948 - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4041241 Bible Prophecy Fulfilled - Israel 1948 - article Excerpt: Although July 15, 537 B.C. can not be verified by outside sources as the exact day of Cyrus's proclamation, we do know that 537 B.C. was the year in which he made it. As such, we can know for certain that the Bible, in one of the most remarkable prophecies in history, accurately foresaw the year of Israel's restoration as an independent nation some two thousand five hundred years before the event occurred. http://ezinearticles.com/?Bible-Prophecy-Fulfilled---Israel-1948&id=449317
The preceding start date, used in the prophecy calculation, is confirmed by the archaeological record:
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT Excerpt "In late years several cuneiform tablets have been discovered pertaining to the fall of Babylon which peg both Biblical and secular historic dates. The one tablet known as the "Nabunaid Chronicle" gives the date for the fall of Babylon which specialists have ascertained as being October 12-13, 539 B.C., Julian Calendar, or October 6-7, 539 B.C., according to our present Gregorian Calendar. This tablet also says that Cyrus made his triumphant entry into Babylon 16 days after its fall to his army. Thus his accession year commenced in October, 539 B.C. However, in another cuneiform tablet called "Strassmaier, Cyrus No. 11" Cyrus’ first regnal year is mentioned and was determined to have begun March 17-18, 538 B.C., and to have concluded March 4-5, 537 B.C. It was in this first regnal year of Cyrus that he issued his decree to permit the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. (Ezra 1:1) The decree may have been made in late 538 B.C. or before March 4-5, 537 B.C. In either case this would have given sufficient time for the large party of 49,897 Jews to organize their expedition and to make their long four-month journey from Babylon to Jerusalem to get there by September 29-30, 537 B.C., the first of the seventh Jewish month, to build their altar to Jehovah as recorded at Ezra 3:1-3. Inasmuch as September 29-30, 537 B.C., officially ends the seventy years of desolation as recorded at 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21, so the beginning of the desolation of the land must have officially begun to be counted after September 21-22, 607 B.C., the first of the seventh Jewish month in 607 B.C., which is the beginning point for the counting of the 2,520 years." http://onlytruegod.org/jwstrs/537vs539.htm
bornagain77_{November 22, 2011
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Image location: http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/WhatAreTheOdds_4ebb1b0343634.pngbornagain77_{November 22, 2011
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