OK…I want numbers. What is the probability the universe is the result of chance?

[Yoko.52]

Im gonna quote Oxford University and Nobel prize winner, and mathematical physicist Roger Penrose:
“Try to imagine phase space… of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a ‘pin’ — which is to be placed at some point in phase space… Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator’s aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively ‘easy’ to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit. But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy — so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics — the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?”

“His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the ‘Creator’s aim’ must have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power or 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros.”

As Penrose puts it, that is a “number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job.”

And the only alternative to the universe arising from chance is for it to have arisen deliberately. Deliberate action requires a conscious creator aka God.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Im gonna quote Oxford University and Nobel prize winner, and mathematical physicist Roger Penrose:
“Try to imagine phase space… of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a ‘pin’ — which is to be placed at some point in phase space… Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator’s aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively ‘easy’ to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit. But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy — so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics — the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?”

“His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the ‘Creator’s aim’ must have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power or 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros.”

As Penrose puts it, that is a “number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job.”

And the only alternative to the universe arising from chance is for it to have arisen deliberately. Deliberate action requires a conscious creator aka God.

You’re not “quoting Roger Penrose” - you’re quoting an oft-rehashed yec claim that’s been made several times across the internet over the last decade or longer.

When/where did Roger Penrose actually say those things?

 

[Yoko.52]

You’re not “quoting Roger Penrose” - you’re quoting an oft-rehashed yec claim that’s been made several times across the internet over the last decade or longer.

When/where did Roger Penrose actually say those things?

well there dozens of google articles maybe all of them are fake. Maybe there not. I do notice athiest are terrified at the idea of god. I always wondered what someone like Richard Dawkins would say when he dies if he stood before god...other than losing control of his bladder and bowls

 

[atpollard]

If there is no God then 1/1.
If there is a God then 0/1.
(I was always good at statistics).

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

I do notice athiest are terrified at the idea of god.

You understand that is your perspective of it ? If they are atheists they are as terrified of idea of god then they are of dragons attacking them when they go jogging.

What they maybe terrified of are people that base their behavior based on what their version of God expects of them.

Unlike dragons events like 9/11 can ruin your day.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

There is a couple of interesting things scientists said about the probabilities of a self-creation of the universe. Here are a few:


„If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million the universe would have been recollapsed before it ever reached its present size.“ (Professor Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time [Bantam Books, 1995], p. 134)


Professor Paul Davies, of the Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University, says the likelihood of the forces of expansion and contraction being as perfectly balanced as they are is like aiming at a target one inch wide on the other side of the universe and hitting it (cited by John Polkinghorne, One World [SPCK], p. 58)

Cambridge physicist Brandon Carter confirms that if gravity were altered by a mere one part in 10 to the power of 40 „stars like the sun would not exist, nor, one might argue, would any form of life that depends on solar-type stars for its sustenance“ (quoted in Paul Davies, God and New Physics [Penguin, 1984], p. 188


A variation as tiny as one particle in 10 billion would have been enough to prevent our universe coming into existence, according to Dr. George Smoot, head of the NASA COBE satellite team. He says that his discovery of ripples of radiation from the universe’s beginning was „like looking at God“.


If the oxygen resonance level were only half a per cent higher, carbon could never have formed, and neither could life. When astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who did the pioneering work on carbon’s formation, found out how unlikely the existence of carbon is, he confessed: „Nothing has shaken my atheism as much as this discovery“ (cited by David Wilkinson, God, The Big Bang and Stephen Hawking [Monarch, 1993], p. 108)


Chandra Wickramasinghe, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at Cardiff University, who worked alongside astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, and is widely regarded as an expert on this subject, calculated the odds against life starting accidentally as one in 10 to the power of 40,000. Wickramasinghe says that is equivalent to no chance: „I am 100 per cent certain that life could not have started spontaneously on earth.“ He says that his conclusion had come to him as quite a shock, because he had previously been „strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation“. He concludes: „The only logical answer to life is creation – and not accidental random shuffling“ (Daily Express, 14 August 1981).

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

If they are atheists they are as terrified of idea of god then they are of dragons attacking them when they go jogging.

As C.S. Lewis once said, there are actually quite few atheists in the world. Many of those who call themselves atheists are not actually true atheists when carefully questioned.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

Many of those who call themselves atheists are not actually true atheists when carefully questioned.

Sure, like there are many who call themselves believers who don’t really believe.

But that is probably bit beyond the scope of this discussion.

If we intend to use words as they are defined then we can’t really attribute facts to them that are against that definition.

 

[Friedrich Rubinstein]

Sure, like there are many who call themselves believers who don’t really believe.

But that is probably bit beyond the scope of this discussion.

If we intend to use words as they are defined then we can’t really attribute facts to them that are against that definition.

After talking to many many atheists I learned that many atheists indeed secretly fear that their beliefs are wrong. There is absolutely no way to "disprove" God and this uncertainty - having the mere belief only that a God does not exist - gives those people moments of doubt.

Is there anyone who hasn't asked themselves before whether they believe the right things? Even Christians who experienced God multiple times in their lives ask themselves sometimes "And what if not..."? It's human to think about the alternatives, and atheists do it as well.

 

[Lost4words]

Zero chance as God created all.

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

It's human to think about the alternatives, and atheists do it as well.

I am sure everyone thinks about it. It is the belief part that matters after you have thought it through.

 

[d taylor]

If we are going by the Bible and not science. Then there is zero chance God created a universe. If you think so, then show in The Bible where God created this universe.

science created a universe but not God.

 

[iluvatar5150]

well there dozens of google articles maybe all of them are fake. Maybe there not.

All of the ones I came across seem to be merely copy-pasting the same story (or lightly-edited versions of it) over and over again with no apparent attempt at verifying the quotes or providing some greater context for them. Even the analysis is copy-pasted; the whole thing isn't an alleged quote.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Common sense/logic says, 0% chance.

*awaits the Atheist that will now tell me, logic has nothing to do with it.

You’re not “quoting Roger Penrose” - you’re quoting an oft-rehashed yec claim that’s been made several times across the internet over the last decade or longer.

When/where did Roger Penrose actually say those things?

So, what do you think the numbers are?

 

[Lost4words]

If we are going by the Bible and not science. Then there is zero chance God created a universe. If you think so, then show in The Bible where God created this universe.

science created a universe but not God.

 

[klutedavid]

Im gonna quote Oxford University and Nobel prize winner, and mathematical physicist Roger Penrose:
“Try to imagine phase space… of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a ‘pin’ — which is to be placed at some point in phase space… Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator’s aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively ‘easy’ to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit. But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy — so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics — the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?”

“His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the ‘Creator’s aim’ must have been accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power or 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros.”

As Penrose puts it, that is a “number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job.”

And the only alternative to the universe arising from chance is for it to have arisen deliberately. Deliberate action requires a conscious creator aka God.

An impossible question to answer.

No one really knows how the universe began and we probably never will know. So obviously, no one could ever know whether the origin of the universe, was a random event or not. This question is on a pay scale far beyond science and statistics.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Common sense/logic says, 0% chance.

*awaits the Atheist that will now tell me, logic has nothing to do with it.



So, what do you think the numbers are?

Had things been slightly different, it’s entirely possible that a different, yet just as functional and roughly equivalent universe would have developed.

Imagine the universe as a bomb that explodes into a bunch of debris and then organisms start growing on that debris the way they do on a coral reef or a shipwreck or some abandoned building.

Only the precise one-in-a-gazillion arrangement of molecules in that bomb and in its surroundings could have resulted in the exact arrangement of debris and organisms that we see after the explosion. But what would have happened if the pre-blast arrangement of molecules had been different? Maybe there would have been no explosion at all. But just as likely is the scenario in which organisms grew in a debris field, but in a somewhat different arrangement. In this new arrangement, perhaps there would be more trees and less grass; or the debris field was a different size or shape; or it had more insects and fewer birds, etc. Whatever the new arrangement, it would still be a debris field with organisms. Likewise, with different starting conditions, the universe could have developed in different, but similar ways.

The faulty assumption made by the OP is that this is an all or nothing thing - that without the precise starting conditions, there would have been no universe. The possibility exists that with different starting conditions, we could have had a different universe.

 

[atpollard]

Had things been slightly different, it’s entirely possible that a different, yet just as functional and roughly equivalent universe would have developed.

Post #6 is a “sensitivity analysis”, meaning that if we make only a small change in the conditions, what impact does that have on the results. These sensitivity analysis indicate that even an extremely small change in the conditions render the outcome of life impossible (no universe, no suns, no carbon).

Your “slightly different” is an astronomically small difference if it still results in life.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Post #6 is a “sensitivity analysis”, meaning that if we make only a small change in the conditions, what impact does that have on the results. These sensitivity analysis indicate that even an extremely small change in the conditions render the outcome of life impossible (no universe, no suns, no carbon).

Your “slightly different” is an astronomically small difference if it still results in life.

No, post #6 is a compilation of quote mines that give the impression of being a sensitivity analysis without actually being one.

Re: Stephen Hawking - What does Hawking say would have happened if the rate of expansion had been greater? What does he say about the possibility of the universe having collapsed innumerable times in the past (assuming "the past" is even a relevant concept in this context) until it finally crossed the threshold needed to achieve *all of this*? I've loaned out my copy of A Brief History of Time, so I can't check this for myself.

Re: Brandon Carter - Lots of stars are not like the sun. What does Carter say about the scenario in which different kinds of stars were created and life developed dependent upon them rather than on the sun?

Re: George Smoot - He qualified his „like looking at God“ claim with the phrase "if you're religious". He is quite clearly in the camp of a naturalistic big bang:
‘LOOKING AT GOD’ | Maclean's | MAY 4, 1992

Re: Fred Hoyle - That's carbon. It's long been theorized that life could develop around other elements with silicon being the most likely candidate as far as I'm aware.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Had things been slightly different, it’s entirely possible that a different, yet just as functional and roughly equivalent universe would have developed.

Imagine the universe as a bomb that explodes into a bunch of debris and then organisms start growing on that debris the way they do on a coral reef or a shipwreck or some abandoned building.

Only the precise one-in-a-gazillion arrangement of molecules in that bomb and in its surroundings could have resulted in the exact arrangement of debris and organisms that we see after the explosion. But what would have happened if the pre-blast arrangement of molecules had been different? Maybe there would have been no explosion at all. But just as likely is the scenario in which organisms grew in a debris field, but in a somewhat different arrangement. In this new arrangement, perhaps there would be more trees and less grass; or the debris field was a different size or shape; or it had more insects and fewer birds, etc. Whatever the new arrangement, it would still be a debris field with organisms. Likewise, with different starting conditions, the universe could have developed in different, but similar ways.

The faulty assumption made by the OP is that this is an all or nothing thing - that without the precise starting conditions, there would have been no universe. The possibility exists that with different starting conditions, we could have had a different universe.

How can you even start with a universe at all, unless you really meant empty space. Please clarify, then I will continue.