Doesn't the fact that we've only seen life on Earth make it ~more~ probable that it happened by chance?

Question

Even though this should go in a different section, I love asking the people of the R&S questions :)

It's kind of like the Infinite Monkey Theorem.

"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."

You could apply that to the planet Earth. If there are an infinite amount of planets (or atleast a very large number) in the universe, there is always a chance at least ONE will get it right.

Answer 1

Who knows? There might be life in other planets in the distant future.

Answer 2

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."

They've tried that, you know. And there was only a couple of monkeys that actually typed. I recall they used one as their community toilet.

Answer 3

You'd need a little bit more time than 15 billion years. It's more like zero chance.
Quote:
"Probabilities
Ignoring punctuation, spacing, and capitalization, a monkey typing letters uniformly at random has one chance in 26 of correctly typing the first letter of Hamlet. It has one chance in 676 (26 times 26) of typing the first two letters. Because the probability shrinks exponentially, at 20 letters it already has only one chance in 2620 = 19,928,148,895,209,409,152,340,197,376, roughly equivalent to the probability of buying 4 lottery tickets consecutively and winning the jackpot each time. In the case of the entire text of Hamlet, the probabilities are so vanishingly small they can barely be conceived in human terms. Say the text of Hamlet contains 130,000 letters (it is actually more, even stripped of punctuation), then there is a probability of one in 3.4×10 to the 183946th power to get the text right at the first trial. The average number of letters that needs to be typed until the text appears is also 3.4×10 to the 183946th power

For comparison purposes, there are only about 10 to the 79th power atoms in the observable universe and only 4.3 x 10 to the 17th power seconds have elapsed since the Big Bang.
Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys typing for all time, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be less than one chance in 10 to the 183800th power. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event…", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers." This is from their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys."

Source---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Answer 4

A very good question...and a far deeper one than you might have thought of at first.

"Random Chance" by definition dictates that if it happened once.....it must happen again. No matter how long the odds..1 in a zillion...sooner or later that 2nd zillion comes along and it happens again. If one monkey can type the collected works of Shakespeare by random chance (however unlikely)...sooner or later another must also...unless the 1st monkey had been blessed specifically with that skill.

And that there is the crux of your question.

If life evolved here by random chance....given the billions and billions of stars it must have evolved somewhere else. This is the dirty secret of many astronomers. The search for intelligent life in the universe is a search for that other 1 in a zillion chance. As atheists, predominately, and scientists they know that to find other life proves random chance, which proves evolution, which disproves God, which is their Holy Grail.

However, if despite everything, they cannot find life elsewhere, which they won't, that leads us inexorably to the conclusion that we are not a product of random chance, but Created Here, by a Creator who wanted us Here. A Creator who also Created the Heavens for our benefit, to fill us with the awe and wonder of his power, not to question His existence.

Answer 5

If the probability of there being life on planets is 1/1 Trillion, then Earth is that 1.
If life exists anywhere else then it would be 2/1Trillion.

I don't think this proves either chance or creation though.

Answer 6

You are right. Even long odds become a sure bet if you have enough chances. But we really have no idea rather simple life is elsewhere even in our own Solar System. There are some indications that it at least was on Mars, and there are other possibilities.

My personal guess is that simple life isn't all that hard. Getting past one cell is probably a lot harder.

Answer 7

Suffice it to say that the universe looks like exactly the kind of universe that would not need a god in order to create life -- a billion billion planets to mix and match chemicals, a timeframe of 13.5 billion years, etc.

The universe of an interventionist god would need only ONE planet to get it right, and would not need to create stars billions of light years away (created with light from them already en route to Earth), could make everything stick to a flat earth by divine will rather than by gravity, would place it at the center of the solar system, and all the other attributes the writers of the bible just assumed were true about their world.

Answer 8

I believe the universe was created by God, for us to explore. They say there are no limits in the universe, as so there is no limit to the expansion of our minds. God had a plan, and created this realm in which we live, as I believe Heaven is in another dimension. Maybe the life on the other planets is simply not for us to be aware of, perhaps seen only in another dimension.

Answer 9

No, it proves that the big-bang and evolution can't be true, as it would have gotten it right again somewhere else. Yet we are to believe that pieces of matter (whether in the BB or evolution) were able to produce information. Information used in DNA and also to be able to read and decode it. Without that information, there is no life. Here's the kicker....science has proven, matter CANNOT produce information.

Answer 10

This planet is the only planet that can support human life. The other planets are the ones that got it wrong? What kind of faulty logic is that?