Hm, I see this argument used alot in the course of standard Christian apologetics to the effect that 'God is a scientific fact'...
Daniel McNeely said:
The odds are all the atmospheric pressure being correct when the Big Bang happened (so that earth would not collapse on its self) is the same odds as a hurricane hitting a junk yard and assembling a 747 jumbo jet.
Let's assume this is true, or at least in the ballpark. Let's at least assume that the thrust of this is correct: that the chance of the events happening the way they have happened (as described by scientific theory) are infinitesimal.
My problem is that I'm still confronted with a big "so what?" A similar rationale is used to raise questions (those Boltzmann brains again) or to question other theories (evolution) but probablistic arguments don't actually count (in formal logical terms) as compelling evidence for a creator. Why? Well, let's think of this question:
What is the significance of applying probablistic arguments retrospectively? Within the world of scientific endeavour, one might suggest that a theory that is deemed "more likely" than another theory seems to be a "better" theory than the other. But if all the theories appear to have an infinitesimal probability, does this necessarily mean that we should abandon all theories? Not necessarily...even assuming that the fundaments for model-building themselves might not be appropriate (conceptual advancements in quantum theory reveal the potential of employing multiple systems of thought), this doesn't mean that one ought to abandon trying to describe something, right? What's the point? It's not as if science was there to explain the how and the why as well as describe the what.
This is a trap that many people fall into: somehow they think that if we cannot conceptualise something into more abstract terms, it cannot exist. "Omg", they say, "does this mean I cannot actually exist because it was too unlikely!?" I believe I need not address this any further, except to say you should probably try to get over your consciousness, because it's yanking you around again!
We're not at the stage where God's sitting in a giant sandbox saying "okay, let's set all the conditions like this and that, fiddle with this here and give it a little zap and LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!" (Apologies for the blasphemy, I'm trying to make this a little more accessible...) We're at the stage where we're arguing over this, i.e. it's already happened, so we're trying to come up with different explanations for the same reality. Or, more appropriately, trying to address different facets of our perception of this common reality.
Let's take a brief look at that flip-side, shall we? Let's say that this 1E-22 probability "didn't happen" and the Earth collapsed on itself. So what? How many contingencies would we have to change to create a plausible situation from this kind of scenario? Would the nature of life be different? Would there be no life at all? If so...is that scary?
If you answered yes, chances are that you'd be more amenable to thinking that there was a real, certin, concrete reason that you're here today reading this awfully long post written by some random over the internetz. Chances also are, in this case, that this comes in the form of a separate yet all-encompassing entity that you believe is real.
However, I'm not at all suggesting that God is necessarily a mental crutch (although sometimes God can resemble that in times of need and there's nothing wrong with that). I'm saying that whether you need to believe in God is still up to you. I personally don't find contemplating my own neutral insignificance at all scary, but that's just me. One can be rationally aware that they've made this decision to place their faith in the Lord, or any other deity/set of deities/spiritual existence for that matter, but I simply had to address any implication that saying that the sheer unlikelihood of our existence is a proof of faith
over theory, or even a proof of faith itself is not rationally coherent.
(Besides...think about it. "Proof of faith?"
