@Jammin: That analogy doesn't really hold. Firstly, given the laws of science as they are (for whatever reason that they are that way), it's even less likely that a rock would form from natural erosion into a highly detailed carving. Second, and more importantly, the reason we identify it as obviously being man-made (but still not 100% certainly) is our experience with sculptures that we do know with 100% certainty are man-made. We see a man made carving, and a very very similar carving, and we associate the two. Whereas there is no comparitor for "the universe". 
Please forgive me for posting without having read the whole thread, but it seems to me that ariich just hit the nail on the head. Sometimes people make the mistake of assuming that just because a result of random chance is familiar, it is therefore more improbable than an unfamiliar result.
For instance. Imagine a set of twenty-six sided dice, each containing one letter of the English alphabet on each facet. Now imagine that someone rolls eight of these dice, and the result of this dice roll is the English word 'alphabet.' Obviously, the odds of this outcome are astronomical, right? But the thing that some people fail to realize is that, 'jzmbleqf' is an equally improbable outcome. In fact, any eight-letter combination is equally improbable, because they all have equal chances of being rolled in such a random-chance dice situation. No one combination is truly any more likely than any other one combination. The reason we think that 'alphabet' is a more improbable result than 'jzmbleqf' is that we attach meaning to the word 'alphabet.' With 'jzmbleqf', we are able to dismiss it as random chance, but with 'alphabet', we see higher meaning simply because it is a word we recognize.
Don't get me wrong, if an English-speaking man was to roll the dice and get the word 'alphabet', that would be quite a coincidence. But the coincidence would be that he spoke English, not that the dice roll happened to spell out an English word. Think about this: what if a Chinese man with no knowledge of English rolled those alphabet dice? Any result, including the word 'alphabet', would be equally meaningless and incomphrensible to him. Are we to believe in some kind of fate or destiny just because we happen to have a word which matches a dice roll?
To put it in very simple terms, I'll switch to a regular six-sided numerical die. When you roll a die, there is a 16.66% chance that the result will be a 5. Now, say you predict that you will roll a 5. What are the chances of rolling a 5? Well, there's still a 16.66% chance. Your prediction doesn't change the probability of any one outcome. It only changes your perception of that outcome. You will feel lucky for the coincidence of guessing correctly, but the truth is, the odds of rolling that 5 were exactly the same no matter what you guessed. Because the meaning you attach to a number has no bearing on its probability of occuring by random chance.
The same goes for the universe, albeit on a much larger scale. There are infinite factors involved in this universe, infinite dice constantly being rolled. And for the universe to turn out the way it has, yes, that is incredibly unlikely. But why is it any more unlikely than any other result? After all, in a random chance situation with infinite possibilities, there is still a guarantee that
one of those possibilities will definitely occur. The only reason we consider this outcome - the universe we have - to be impressive is because we are familiar with it.
But 'alphabet' isn't any more improbable than 'jzmbleqf', 5 isn't more improbable than 6, and this universe isn't any more improbable than any other universe that might have existed.
We think it is impossible that life could have come into existence by random chance only because life is familiar. True, the elements of the universe had to interact in a very specific way to create life, but the odds of the elements interacting that way aren't really any more or less likely than any of the other quadrillions of ways the elements could have interacted. All outcomes are equally improbable.
Now, here's the issue. Going back to my above example, if you were to roll the word 'alphabet' on a set of alphabetical dice
a hundred times in a row, then you'd be onto something. Because after a certain point, you start to get the feeling that those dice are somehow destined to be rolled as that word. That's why scientists repeat experiments - because they want to make sure that the result is always the same before they go proclaiming their result as scientific fact. Similarly, if you were to destroy the universe and then have it evolve again the exact same way, then yes, I would be pretty convinced that it is
supposed to be this way, that perhaps some greater power
designed it this way. But as it is, I go back to ariich's point: do any of us have an alternate universe with which to compare the one we live in? Do we say it must be the result of grand design because we have seen some
other example of grand design which ended up being very similar? Or do we just assume grand design because the universe we've got is so complex that we can't comprehend the possibility of random chance?
Sometimes a dice roll is just a dice roll. And if the results have meaning to someone, well, good for them, but it doesn't automatically prove that some greater being carefully laid out those dice for that person.
Topic: Are We Truly In The End Times? (Read 107709 times)
