sixoverme Posted November 1, 2005 Share Posted November 1, 2005 I found this on some fundies myspace page, www.myspace.com/bratbrit (hehehehe)...let me know your thoughts please... John Clayton and Nils Jansma, authors of The Source, using mathematical probability offer the following “Estimated Odds of Selected Variables Vital to an Earth-like Planet occurring by Chance.” Being in the right kind of galaxy 1 in 100 Being in the right place in the galaxy 1 in 150 Having the right kind of star 1 in 1,000 Being the right distance from the star 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary mass 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary spin 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary tilt 1 in 10 Having comet-sweeping planets 1 in 40 Not being near a black hole 1 in 250 Having a large solitary moon 1 in 10 Possessing a magnetic field capable of shielding 1 in 10 Total odds 1 in 150,000,000,000,000,000 Clayton goes on to say: "If I offered you a billion dollars (tax free) to jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet without a parachute, with the proviso that you had to live to collect it, would you accept the offer? Not if you were in your right mind. Obviously, the odds of survival are much too small for any rational person to accept. Yet the odds of there being an 'accidental' planet hospitable for life using only the few parameters we have considered are 15 billion times less likely than surviving a free-fall from an airplane." with all this said...id like to know if anyone knows the validity of these claims and also...if there are any math geniuses out there, what are the odds of the universe being created by a sky daddy? if this has all been covered before, i do apologize Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MQTA Posted November 1, 2005 Share Posted November 1, 2005 Total odds 1 in 150,000,000,000,000,000 Relativity? The odds of jumping out of a plane, without a parachute, gives a human the odds of survival being slim. Give the same offer to an ANT, and you'll be paying him/her a billion dollars. The total odds are very small considering the pool off odds in the Universe are 150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, Look at this planet as an Egg. Look at comets/meteors/asteroids as semen carrying sperm, alive/active and dead/inactive. The orbiting rocks are constantly being bombarded with space debris. If Mars, Jupiter and out to Pluto, get bombarded, NOTHING happens. If venus and mercury get hit, nothing happens. If an Earth gets hit, well, WYSIWYG. 1 in 150,000,000,000,000,000 is a workable number, given there are countless stars with countless rocks orbiting them. How many of those stars have a planet that can support life? and maybe perhaps do, we may never know. However, we are here. So it's not against those odds. IF the odds were 1 in 150, we'd probably have been invaded by now, or at least may know of other planetary existances with life out there. Changes nothing in the God argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skankboy Posted November 1, 2005 Share Posted November 1, 2005 The odds of the Earth appearring as it is are 1:1. We know because it's here. Also, like MQTA says, even if you took their odds at face value, you would really need to compare it against another variable indicating the universe as a whole. And since that number is soooooo huge, it brings the relative odds back down to acceptable levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kryten Posted November 1, 2005 Share Posted November 1, 2005 Those guys are trying to use odds to support their beliefs, but showing their ignorance. When they quote THOSE odds, they are really saying "if you pick any planet at random throughout this universe, what are the odds you will PICK one with life?" If we grant the stated odds are correct, then the odds of picking ours (for example) would indeed be 1 in whatever it was. Their argument says NOTHING about the odds against life (as we know it) forming here. Poor application of mathematics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MQTA Posted November 1, 2005 Share Posted November 1, 2005 Poor application of mathematics. 100220[/snapback] I guess it was a calculated risk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zach Posted November 1, 2005 Share Posted November 1, 2005 There are other calculations to choose from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qadeshet Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 I found this on some fundies myspace page, www.myspace.com/bratbrit (hehehehe)...let me know your thoughts please... John Clayton and Nils Jansma, authors of The Source, using mathematical probability offer the following “Estimated Odds of Selected Variables Vital to an Earth-like Planet occurring by Chance.” Being in the right kind of galaxy 1 in 100 Being in the right place in the galaxy 1 in 150 Having the right kind of star 1 in 1,000 Being the right distance from the star 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary mass 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary spin 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary tilt 1 in 10 Having comet-sweeping planets 1 in 40 Not being near a black hole 1 in 250 Having a large solitary moon 1 in 10 Possessing a magnetic field capable of shielding 1 in 10 Total odds 1 in 150,000,000,000,000,000 Clayton goes on to say: "If I offered you a billion dollars (tax free) to jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet without a parachute, with the proviso that you had to live to collect it, would you accept the offer? Not if you were in your right mind. Obviously, the odds of survival are much too small for any rational person to accept. Yet the odds of there being an 'accidental' planet hospitable for life using only the few parameters we have considered are 15 billion times less likely than surviving a free-fall from an airplane." with all this said...id like to know if anyone knows the validity of these claims and also...if there are any math geniuses out there, what are the odds of the universe being created by a sky daddy? if this has all been covered before, i do apologize 100135[/snapback] This is basically the fine-tuned argument. In other words, the odds of the Universe being fine-tuned for Human life. Actually, since we exist, life was fine-tuned to the Universe. Talk.origins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HuaiDan Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 You know what they say about statistics.. This just amounts to comparing the astronomically small against the even more astronomically large. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSpooky Posted November 2, 2005 Share Posted November 2, 2005 Why is it that people who propose the Fine Tuning Argument will enunciate all the factors that make life WORK on Earth but ignore all the horrible extinctions that have occured in Earth's history? If we focused on meteorite impacts in the precambrian to the multiple ice ages, atmospheric disturbances and yadda yadda that have nearly wiped the slate clean multiple times over Earth's history, and ONLY on these factors, one might conclude that if there was a God he was out to get us. What typically occurs in such arguments is a blatant stacking of the deck to make the existence of life much more inconcievable than it really is. Such proponents of the Design Argument would state "Hey look, Earth is pretty special. We're safe from these horrible atrocities that make life difficult," but then ignore the horrible atrocities that have occured that destroyed higher forms of life multiple times. If the universe is hostile to life and black holes would swallow up intelligent civilizations and gravitational disturbances would wipe out others before they could communicate with us, so what? The same thing is going to happen to Earth sooner or later. Hugh Ross and others work from the ASSUMPTION that we don't live in a cold, uncaring universe before they construct their proofs. They outright reject a priori any atheistic construct that would declare intelligent life could develop, but it would be wiped out thereafter by the cruel forces of the cosmos. It's like saying "In a few hundred million years, the sun is going to expand into a red giant and engulf our planet! What remarkable chance it is that we exist before this could happen!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scitsofreaky Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Using stats is hilarious. Have they accounted for every variable? No. Can they? No. We need to know every variable to calculate anything worth looking at when dealing with the chances of life, which we may never know. Seriously, where did they even get those numbers from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gnosis of Disbelief Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 This is basically a red herring argument. The "odds" don't really prove that their gawd exists. They just prove that life has some rarity to it (though it may not be quite as rare as they think it is, as Asimov has pointed out). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Being in the right kind of galaxy 1 in 100 I read this far, and saw how stupid that number is. How did they come up with that number? Why 100? And what the heck is "the right kind of galaxy?" Would it really be any different between one galaxy to the next? Is it a fraction of difference in gravitational forces from the black hole at the core? What is the definion of "right kind?" Being in the right place in the galaxy 1 in 150 Having the right kind of star 1 in 1,000 Being the right distance from the star 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary mass 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary spin 1 in 10 Having the proper planetary tilt 1 in 10 Having comet-sweeping planets 1 in 40 Not being near a black hole 1 in 250 Having a large solitary moon 1 in 10 Possessing a magnetic field capable of shielding 1 in 10 This is utterly nonsense and stupid numbers. The people putting these numbers together pulled them from their hat. They probably used a random number generator. Total odds 1 in 150,000,000,000,000,000 It doesn't matter if the odds are 1 in 10^10^10^10. The odds are still there. It happened, so it did happened. The 1 in 150,... became that one that was needed. Statistical odds arguments are foolish crap, but I've seen that a lot of people love to get into it and use it to support their own beliefs. It's just like the "secondhand smoke causes cancer" statistics that has been proven to be fake and false. They were created to support the opinion, and not the observable facts. with all this said...id like to know if anyone knows the validity of these claims and also...if there are any math geniuses out there, what are the odds of the universe being created by a sky daddy? if this has all been covered before, i do apologize 100135[/snapback] Again, their numbers are made up. There are more galaxies that we don't know about yet, so there might be billions of "right kind" (whatever that means) of galaxies. What does "being in the right place in the galaxy" mean? And how can the chance be only 1 of 150? If the only "right place" is exactly where we are right now, then the chance would be much less than 1 of 150. Stupid number! There are more stars than we have had a chance to look at, and see if they're the "right kind". So how can it be that they "know" that there's 1 out of 1000 stars that are the right kind. The distance from the star! We are not following a perfect circle, so our distance is changing all the time. So what is the "right" distance? Planetary mass... Why is it 1 in 10, why not 1 in 9? Or compare it to the total number of existing planets in the universe. Oh, that's right, we don't know that number yet. We only have found c 200 planets so far. And then planetary spin!!! Is has changed several times since the inception of our baby earth! Same with the tilt! These people are fucking n00bs! The tilt has changed over the millions of years! Comet-sweeping planets, what the heck is that? Not being near a black hole... fuck... We're going to die soon, because they're about to create a temporary microscopic black hole in one of the accelerators (unless they already did), which means that "begin near a black hole" is 1 in 1, and not being near is 1 to infinity, because it's already too late. Almost every planet in our solar system have some kind of moon or moons, so why 1 in 10? Are they claiming that there are planets that don't possess magnetic fields? Where did they get that information from? The people that put this information together have no clue what they're talking about. It's just poppy-cock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Posted November 4, 2005 Share Posted November 4, 2005 Most scientists now think that there is life elsewhere in the universe. The people who made those odds up still want to believe that we are "spechul" and the only intelligent life forms in the entire universe and "chosen by god." Sort of like when Christians believed the earth was so "spechul" that all the planets and even the sun revolved around it. It's the same type of arrogant thinking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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