Hey Alan
Let us consider, what life is, how could the unimaginable almost infinitely complex molecule DNA of life came into existence so quickly in relation to cosmological time. Life existed on the primordial earth just a moment after its creation, again in cosmological time?
The universe is unimaginable complex and sustains itself by exact precise fundamental constants, if this harmony differed in the infinitesimal fraction we would simply not exist; indeed the earth itself would not exist.
A billion trillion googolplex monkeys typing for eternity would not produce even one of Shakespeare sonnets. Another analogy, if we took a billion airplanes, filled them with water, concrete and bricks and dumped the whole continuously on the earth for a billion years, would it magically and randomly form the beautiful Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera house? But you insist I must accept the beautiful universe a of unimaginable precision came into existence this illogical way
This form of reasoning, as I am sure you are aware from your acquaintance to philosphy, is called a teleological arguement, and this view is only held by a few now in philosophical circles, because it has many counterarguements (this does not render it wrong, just hard to defend). For example, If you give just one monkey an english typewriter which they use for infinity years, to use the weaker meaning of eternity, then logically, every mathematically finite possibility will and must occur.
Sonnet 74:
But be contented when that fell arrest,
Without all bail shall carry me away,
My life hath in this line some interest,
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,
The very part was consecrate to thee,
The earth can have but earth, which is his due,
My spirit is thine the better part of me,
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
The prey of worms, my body being dead,
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,
Too base of thee to be remembered,
The worth of that, is that which it contains,
And that is this, and this with thee remains.It contains 590 characters. If you say the typwriter has only letters, periods, question marks, exclamation points, commas, colons, semicolons, and apostrophes, and spaces, then there are 34 possibilities of keystrokes. So that means of any given 590 strokes the monkey makes, there is a (1/34)^590 chance that it will be
Sonnet 74. Now this is an infintesimal number, a percentage that is so small that it is a decimal followed by dozens of zeroes. In trillions of trillions of years, the percentage of such an occurence is still only about .1%. But that means that since Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, that the chance that one of them will be randomly generated is around 15.4%. Now this seems a small number, but given that you said we could have essentially infinity monkeys, and that they could work for infinity years, not only will they write all of the sonnets,
Hamlet,
12th Night, the
King James Bible, and
The Little Engine that Could, they would also write the sequence of letters that code for a human genome. The reason, is that given an infinite number of trials, any and every event of finite probability will occur. This alone disqualifies a Teleological arguement in most people's thoughts.
Apply this to the concept of which you used it as an analogy, and you see that if a universe that existed forever were given enough time to work, it must of mathematical necessity generate organic molecules like DNA. And it would only have to happen once. So the reason why the earth and its conditions are so agreeable to life is that it may have been that one necessary time that that probability occured for the set. If life formed randomly, then it must have been the case that it formed in a place it were possible to form, so it should not be wondered at that the place it exists is suited to it.
Atheism is a faith belief system just like anything that requires belief without evidence
Agreed. People do often overlook this fact. Believing in the absolute non-existance of a certain subject is illogical. If Someone were to say, "There are no green-stripped toads with pink polka-dots anywhere in the universe", could they have logically looked everywhere? It might be hiding in cave on the moon of a planet three galaxies over. I think a safer viewpoint would be if a person were to believe a deity were not necessary to explain the world as it is, which is what it seems most people who call themselves atheists seem to actually believe. This is very different from assuming the lack of possibility of the existence of any deity, as that cannot ever be proven.
Do I think it is possible that certain elements of life could have come about by random absolute chance? Unequivocally yes. Does this mean that there is no metaphysical other reality? Unequivocally no.
I do think your intent is in the right place, I would just suggest you find some sharper philosophical knives, and I can tell you they exist, because I have seen a few
Nice speaking with you again, Alan
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