Why can't some Christians accept Evolution?

[ithis]

otislotus said:

Coincidence is a mathematical term and the possibility of an event's occurrence can be calculated using the mathematics of probability.

The calculations of British mathematician Roger Penrose show that the probability of universe conducive to life occurring by chance is in 10¹⁰¹²³. The phrase "extremely unlikely" is inadequate to describe this possibility.

THE PROBABILITY OF THE OCCURRENCE OF A UNIVERSE IN WHICH LIFE CAN FORM

10000000000000000000000000000000   00000000000000000000000000000000   00000000000000000000000000000000 10 00000000000000000000000000000000

Taking the physical variables into account, what is the likelihood of a universe giving us life coming into existence by coincidence? One in billions of billions? Or trillions of trillions of trillions? Or more?

Roger Penrose*, a famous British mathematician and a close friend of Stephen Hawking, wondered about this question and tried to calculate the probability. Including what he considered to be all variables required for human beings to exist and live on a planet such as ours, he computed the probability of this environment occurring among all the possible results of the Big Bang.

According to Penrose, the odds against such an occurrence were on the order of 10¹⁰¹²³ to 1.

It is hard even to imagine what this number means. In math, the value 10¹²³ means 1 followed by 123 zeros. (This is, by the way, more than the total number of atoms 10⁷⁸ believed to exist in the whole universe.) But Penrose's answer is vastly more than this: It requires 1 followed by 10¹²³ zeros.

Or consider: 10³ means 1,000, a thousand. 10¹⁰³ is a number that that has 1 followed by 1000 zeros. If there are six zeros, it's called a million; if nine, a billion; if twelve, a trillion and so on. There is not even a name for a number that has 1 followed by 10¹²³ zeros.

In practical terms, in mathematics, a probability of 1 in 10⁵⁰ means "zero probability". Penrose's number is more than trillion trillion trillion times less than that. In short, Penrose's number tells us that the 'accidental" or "coincidental" creation of our universe is an impossibility.

Concerning this mind-boggling number Roger Penrose comments:

This now tells how precise the Creator's aim must have been, namely to an accuracy of one part in 10¹⁰¹²³. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full in the ordinary denary notation: it would be 1 followed by 10¹²³ successive 0's. Even if we were to write a 0 on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe- and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure- we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.

In fact in order to recognize that the universe is not a "product of coincidences" one does not really need any of these calculations at all. Simply by looking around himself, a person can easily perceive the fact of creation in even the tiniest details of what he sees. How could a universe like this, perfect in its systems, the sun, the earth, people, houses, cars, trees, flowers, insects, and all the other things in it ever have come into existence as the result of atoms falling together by chance after an explosion? Every detail we peer at shows the evidence of God's existence and supreme power. Only people who reflect can grasp these signs.

References:* Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind, 1989; Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny, The New York: The Free Press, 1998, p. 9

 

what takes more faith to believe?

I have to reply to this post by saying &$$$$$$$&!!!

This Universe is not as it is so we can exist in it, we are as we are so we can exist in this Universe.

Even if the above mathematician's number is true (but we still know very little about the universe to draw such conclusions), we could just argue that an infinite cycle of big bangs and big chrunches will inevitably produce (by chance) this perfect universe in which we can live. It could be that this universe is such perfectly balanced, neither expanding too rapidly, nor too slowly that it will eventually be the last one of all of the universes (not likely, even if the big bang/big chrunch theory is true), just so it makes the perfect universe for us to exist in, it still doesn't mean anything. If that means that there were a million times more universes than the odds against this one of being such as it is by chacne, it doesn't mean anything.

We make judgements about this universe because we exist in it and it is this one we can observe.

Whether a "GOD" created it all and the laws it is governed by, whether a fist of spores was thrown into the path of an exploding supernova's shockwave 12 billion years ago so that there was life, whether the soul was created to give us the vanity to claim that it is ALL for us, we can not possibly say at this time.

What we can say is that (it seams that) life addapts to fill all the niches of the earth it can (so far) and to consume all the sources of energy it can. It does this governed by some laws. Whether these laws were created or just are, noone can say.

Why some people are happy to dismiss the scientific method while using all it's fruits to spread missinformation I can't understand (LOL, plastic dinosaurs).