Tuesday, 22 October 2019

Why We Are Not Proof Of God

The argument for God has taken many twists and turns and usually put forward by theists is us and the Earth we live on are all the proof we need that we were 'created'.
It could be considered true that we live in a particularly privileged place, the right size to hold onto our atmosphere and distance from the Sun with the perfect mix of chemicals in our atmosphere and the right temperature to allow for liquid water which are both essential for life.
The Moon is in the exact right distance to correct the Earth wobbling and giving us wider temperature swings and we even have a couple of massive guardian planets in Jupiter and Saturn which shielded the Earth from all the debris being flung around the early Solar System.
After the formation of the Earth we were 'allowed' the required billions of years of settled conditions and constant temperatures, we then made the the right evolutionary steps from the original single cell organisms to complex celled organisms like humans so taken as a whole, the odds of all these factors coming together can appear infinitesimally small.
The argument is then that things are so finely balanced they must point towards a creator that brought forth all of this into existence and from what we know of our space exploration, no other world can match our exact conditions.
It s easy to understand why, if your mind is taught to be bent that way, you could believe that the Universe and everything in it was made by a God for us but that is to oversimplify things.
We know there are planets, many, many planets in the tiny parts of Space where we have looked, which are Earth sized rocky planets in the 'Goldilocks' position orbiting around a Sun and holding liquid water so the Earth is far from unique in that respect.
Most planets have an atmosphere, all made up of the 92 chemical elements in various concentrations so again, the Earth is not alone in that sense and as life is also made up of the same 92 chemicals, and both the Atmosphere and humans come from a small number of these available chemicals elements, the odds are that eventually the right mix would combine.
What we don't know is how many times life almost started over the billions of years until the correct mix happened and the simple, single celled organism came into being, an organism which was perfect for breathing the atmosphere which had developed around the Earth. Rather than the atmosphere being perfect for us, the life which began under the oceans evolved to breath it and flourish, those that couldn't, just never made it past the initial stages.   
The truth is that taken altogether, the Earth is not in such a privileged position after all, the conditions for life are available on every planet, of which there are billions of billions, and if you start reducing it to those who are in the Goldilocks zone and are Earth sized, then you still have hundreds of billions, all of which have the same 92 chemicals as us in the mix.
Where the Earth may be unique is that the life forms here have found the right mix of elements to breathe and thrive under whatever concentration of chemicals went into making up our atmosphere.      
So the worlds are there, around stars, in the right places and with the required ingredients to bring about complex life and suddenly the Universe being made by a Creator just for us inhabiting a planet in a far flung arm of a distant Galaxy is both arrogant and highly dubious.

3 comments:

Falling on a bruise said...

Religious folk will just have to take someone else's word for it and believe them.

Falling on a bruise said...

Yep, a religious experience as explained by other religious folk otherwise how would they know it was a religious experience.
Requisite unrelated anti-left comment - check

Falling on a bruise said...

Your comments stay on the same predictable David G-esque line though.