The study finds life’s origin faces severe mathematical challenges. Chance alone may not be enough.
A new study addresses one of science’s most enduring questions: how did life first arise from nonliving matter on the early Earth? Using advanced mathematical methods, Robert G. Endres of Imperial College London developed a framework indicating that the spontaneous emergence of life may have been far more difficult than previously thought.
The research highlights the immense challenge of generating structured biological information under realistic prebiotic conditions, underscoring how unlikely it would have been for the first living cell to appear naturally. Think of it like trying to write an article about the origins of life for a well-renowned science website by randomly throwing letters at a page. The chances of success become astronomically small as the required complexity increases.
By applying information theory and algorithmic complexity, Endres analyzed what it would take for the earliest living cell, known as a protocell, to self-assemble from simple chemical components. This mathematical perspective demonstrates how improbable such a process would be if left to chance under natural conditions.
Barriers to life’s emergence
The findings indicate that chance alone, combined with natural chemical reactions, may not sufficiently account for the origin of life within the limited timeframe of early Earth. Because systems generally move toward disorder rather than order, the formation of the highly structured arrangements required for life faces serious barriers.
This does not imply that the emergence of life was impossible, but it suggests that current knowledge may be lacking. The research highlights that identifying the physical principles behind life’s rise from nonliving matter remains one of the greatest challenges in biological physics.
Considering alternative ideas
While maintaining scientific rigor, the paper acknowledges that directed panspermia, originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, remains a speculative but logically open alternative. This hypothesis suggests that life might have been intentionally seeded on Earth by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, though the author notes this idea challenges Occam’s razor, the scientific principle favoring simpler explanations.
This research doesn’t disprove the possibility of life emerging naturally on Earth, though. Instead, it quantifies the mathematical challenges involved and suggests that we may need to discover new physical principles or mechanisms that could overcome these informational barriers. The work represents an important step toward making the study of life’s origins more mathematically rigorous.
The study also reminds us that some of the universe’s greatest mysteries still await solutions, and that combining mathematical precision with biological questions can reveal new depths to age-old puzzles about our existence.
Reference: “The unreasonable likelihood of being: origin of life, terraforming, and AI” by Robert G. Endres, 24 July 2025, arXiv.
DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2507.18545
Adapted from an article originally published on Universe Today.
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186 Comments
I agree with you.
10x-6y=39 ; 15x-9y=29 give no result.
God’s chosen people did it why not the scientists…
Let’s assume for a minute the extraterrestrials seeded earth to begin life. How did the extraterrestrials begin? And if they were seeded by some other beings, how did they begin? It never stops. There’s only one answer that satisfies Occam’s razor, and that’s the existence of an intelligent, sentient being that made a choice.
Using your own logic, your next question should be: how did the first intelligent sentient being begin? There is nothing fundamentally problematic with the idea that complex systems such as humans evolved from simple (inanimate) systems. The problem is in understanding the details and the constraints, and we’re learning more and more about that.
How did the first intelligent sentient being begin? Perhaps it had no beginning. Things outside our space-time might not have beginnings or ends. It is so hard for us to imagine a dimension/space that has no time because we have never experienced the lack of time. Good question though.
How did the first intelligent sentient being begin? Perhaps it had no beginning. Things outside our space-time might not have beginnings or ends. It is so hard for us to imagine a dimension/space that has no time because we have never experienced the lack of time. Good question though!
Go ahead, explain it.
Mathematics makes it complicated but faith makes it simple: God did it.
Jason D Ivey
Faith is not reality. Hawking said that those with faith still look both ways when they cross the street. A barreling truck doesn’t care about your faith. In a clash between reality and faith, reality always wins.
Kevin Statler
Perhaps? So you don’t know? Are you guessing, or do you know that what you talk about is true?
Also, think about what you said: you are imagining something outside our space and time. How would that thing affect us in our space and time? Not only you don’t have any proof of your fantastical imaginings, you are not even consistent in what you say.
Haven’t you people any better things to do with your time?
There is something fundamentally problematic with the idea that conplex systems such as humans evolved from simple inanimate systems. The Bible on one hand has God forming Adam from the earth in his image, which is an origin story that is in alignment with the discussion here! The assumption that Humans are complex systems may be the bigger stretch here, we define complex based on what we have known and observed, man has fundamentally attempted to replace God, with his own understanding, or tried to reason God into existence which is limited to the reasoning of man! But the assertion that complex systems arose from inanimate processes would suggest that there would be multiple processes which would have to occur in perfect alignment and those processes could not have deviated even slightly otherwise the whole thing goes wonky! Or the systems need not be so precise which would indicate that these inanimate processes are an occurrence so common as to make the question no longer achedemic! If that were the case we would see life all over the universe, but we don’t! We would also likely see the fossilized remains of those inanimate chemical reactions that formed early life which was not conducive to the atmospheric processes as they came to be on earth, in fact we should see the remains of multiple failed systems at various stages of complexity by your logic! And that simply does not exist in the record either! So the last option which is the one that should be able to settle this question, that is if inanimate processes can create these systems why are we unable to replicate any form of this? We have the tech to clone, we can create environments exactly like those that existed, we should therefore have the ability to replicate the rise of a complex system or at the very least have ai run those systems a billion ways, over Billions of years to see the theory play out! Or we could see the entire thing come down to the simple truth that we exist on this planet and from our vantage point we cannot see the existence of others or our view is limited, but beyond this limited view could be an intelligent creator who was trying to create life through the processes which made us , and just as we would hope to crest something out of inanimate material this being has beat us to it in creating us. And some call him GOD! And his science trumps our science just saying l!
Here’s a corrected version of your text in clearer English, while keeping your tone and meaning:
—
7:30 pm
Mathematically, the probability of life emerging from chemistry is absurdly small. With 20 amino acids, about 300 per protein, and around 4,000 proteins needed for a simple cell, the odds come out to about 10 to the power of a million. For comparison, the size of the universe is about 10 to the 80, and the number of seconds since the Big Bang is about 10 to the 17. There is simply no way for such an impossibility to be overcome.
In any other area of science, such extreme improbability would be rejected outright. The only reason it isn’t is because people do not want to accept the implications.
The fact that we exist proves that something must be eternal—it cannot come from nothing. The universe itself is not eternal; the Big Bang proves that. DNA and life show that whatever is eternal must also be highly intelligent. DNA and the Big Bang point to an eternal, intelligent being. Think about it…
Who made that being?
See my response above.
That’s the deal. You are willing to accept that the universe is and has been forever, existing where what made it and where? But you can’t accept that there is a being capable of the same thing. You’re thinking too small.
If one is looking for answers while science backed thinking is in play one will never understand but to think on a more important question like what is and to place ones thinking outside the box ( not physical) but spirit one must search inside the mind to discover it’s true evolution.
God is the source of life
Jim Ratliff,
The goal is not to think big. The goal is to think logically to discover the true nature of the universe.
You can’t say it was extraterrestrial or natural because you just don’t know. No point in arguing either way
Life is an absolute fluke and is NOT the intended result of the universe. Intelligent life is about a septillion times more rare. Little wonder we have no neighbours in this vast cosmic arena.
Best estimates are 10 ^ 200 power (or considerably more). Impossible is usually considered 10 ^ 50
Nope wrong. Life is the natural progression of time. The elements only go together in certain ways, life is inevitable given enough time.
So, then life and existence means nothing…beautiful.
So if god is the answer, who created god!
At last, a true realist.
Hi everyone.
The problems we face with the idea of life from non life are complex to say the least, the fact that if we say that if there is enough time it will happen is a faith statement on behalf of the scientific community. Therefore lacking in the scientific method. Over time the age of the universe has increased to help accommodate these theories. The other issue we have in evolution is the fossil record and the fact that everything evolved over time there should be a record of transitional fossils and there isn’t a single one. (Please research this issue for yourself) Again a step of faith to believe that this occurred. And the enthropic principle doesn’t allow for the evolution of complexity it works in the other direction. The question then of who made God is something that we can look at and we discover that he is eternal being, he wasn’t a created being he has existed eternally outside of time, space and matter. Again a faith response is needed. That’s more likely that in the beginning nothing exploded, then life came from non life and evolved into complex life in which many mechanisms can’t evolved because they need to exist at the same time to work. Or that God created the cosmos and everything in it to display the wonders of his works as a testimony to us as mankind. The complexities of life seem beyond mere chance when we study DNA as its an organised error correcting code that must have come from an author. Please look at both sides equally and decide what’s more likely don’t rely on what you were taught in school and blindly excepted. Apply critical thinking equally to both. Faith in God will prove to be the most logical outcome. In viewing the biblical text we see the creation of the universe explains in the first line. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Simply put time, space and matter were crested at the same time. Think on these things please, there is a living God he loves you and sent his son into the world to reveal himself through the person of Jesus’s Christ. Ask and he will show you the truth in these things, it’s his promise. Thank you.
We have barely discovered any of this “cosmic wonder” as you put it because we have barely seen any of it.
John, you say: ” In viewing the biblical text we see the creation of the universe explains in the first line. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
First, the line you quote is not an explanation. It is an assertion. I can say that I created the universe – does it explain anything at all? Does it explain how I or god created the universe.
Second, a text is not evidence. Anyone can write anything in text form – doesn’t make it true. You should demand evidence that shows it is true. I wrote down that I created the universe in text form just above. Is it true then?
It is foolish to believe something without evidence, and it is dangerous when you act on such unfounded beliefs.
John, you say: ” In viewing the biblical text we see the creation of the universe explains in the first line. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
First, the line you quote is not an explanation. It is an assertion. I can say that I created the universe – does it explain anything at all? Does it explain how I or god created the universe.
Second, a text is not evidence. Anyone can write anything in text form – doesn’t make it true. You should demand evidence that shows it is true. I wrote down that I created the universe in text form just above. Is it true then?
And how did this being begin. That doesn’t help at all
I know I’m trapped in this reality. Even if is not. So I exist, even if it’s fleeting and exposed to the screaming abusive reality. What made you question and realise this appalling truth. So religion but no concern for who made who. Science is so impotent and terrifying compared to faith in this situation.
He didn’t.
Oh but that’s not SCIENTIFIC! The horror of it! You mean, theres something beyond Almighty SCIENCE?
Here’s the little self-contradiction that about which these clever but infinitely STUPID “scientists” have no clue: something can’t come from nothing. You can’t get the immaterial — intelligence — from the material, and you can’t get life from non-life. Any third-grader knows that; only our Almighty “scientists” do not.
“The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God'” , says the Psalm …..
If there an infinite number of universes as some suggest then t h at is your answer.
something can’t come from nothing. You can’t get the immaterial — Is a God or Creator or Intelligent designer, not considered to be “something”? So help all those idiots out there that aren’t able to learn the future if the universe in 90 minutes on Sunday morning. Help them by explaining where the something that created everything came from. Even better, let’s assume we all accept that this one something “just always was”. Kindly explain where the raw matter that stars, planets, and every solid, liquid, and gas that is the universe came from. Like literally what was it created out of?
There a thing called secret math, complex formulas that humans don’t even know exist. Men are mutated women. Yet nobody knows where we come from. It’s all traceable. If it happens then it can be figured out. Perhaps God is the planet and we are the plaque on it’s brian slowly destroying it. Since the existence as humans. We have have took time multiplied it with chaos and we get destruction. That’s all any of us do all day everyday. Sleep destroy sleep and destroy again. Try not to in a one day. Unless your in a coma it is impossible. Taking the 1st step out bed is pure devastation on a micro scale. If God existed then it would be a complex problem which we may never solve. How could we when we’re to busy destroying everything, ourselves, each other all known environments. From space to the ocean to the highest mountain top. We are merely creators of trash. In the end that will be humanity legacy a layer of plastic for ever chemicals… As God intended to end it’s misery perhaps. We are the anti matter…
Larry Brown, third graders’ thinking is not always correct. That is why there are grades beyond three.
“something can’t come from nothing” – you need to prove this. And you need to define “nothing.” If you say that nothing is empty space or vacuum – then there are experiments that show that something can come out of nothing.
“You can’t get the immaterial — intelligence — from the material” – why not? Again what is immaterial in this case? Is gravity material or immaterial? Do we get gravity due to massive material objects?
Noone claims something comes from nothing except the religious people, unless you mean the Krauss definition for the universe out of the ‘nothing’ from fluctuations in an empty quantum vacuum.
For those that claim there are no transitional fossils. Not true. Plenty. Not for every step, but clearly showing the evolution. Religion is using the ever shrinking gap science has not filled yet (and still makes reasonable good predictions, showing the quality of the models).
You can get life from non life or we haven’t figured it out yet are two pair of shows. you claiming it being impossible has to be proven. but such a negative can’t be proven. same goes for a god. you can’t prove the no existence, only the existence. in both cases it needs to be proven. unless we are at ‘we don’t know’. but life from non life at least has plenty of indications for the assembly. not all steps admittingly, but it’s closer than some book saying some vague things are done by an entity we don’t know of written by some unknown authors that have been coped, rewritten and translated several times.
Stop spouting religious crap when you can’t find an acceptable alternative explanation.
Oh, you mean like infinite universes, and that space and time and matter spontaneously appeared out of an infinitely dense, hot singularity. Or, how about this one: we (people) don’t actually exist because what we call life is just the product of a chemical reaction that tends to become complex and varied over time? Science doesn’t explain everything.
James, science doesn’t explain everything. But science explains how antibiotics work, how the rocket flies, and how computers work. Science is useful that way.
Religion claims many things, but it predicts nothing. Religion doesn’t even know that its claims are unproven and unprovable. Religion is useless that way.
Read: The Science Behind the Story of Jesus by John Zachary
Scientific data validates the required existence of a Being that transcends spacetime and refutes all blind faith-based viewpoints that life spontaneously began. Where is the data to support non-living materials self-assembling into the simplest cell? I am asking for repeatable scientific test data to prove your blind faith. It doesn’t exist and never will based on the cited book above.
So far, what we do know is, life only comes from life.
Faith and science don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Science has been trying to explain miracles for a very long time. Just because we have the science to explain it doesn’t make it any less miraculous.
One day we will know for sure. How did inanimate matter become life? What animated us…are we just irradiated pond scum or were we designed by something ancient and divine? What you choose to believe can really set you up for what kind of person you want to be.
JRL, I appreciate your gesture, but history shows that faiths like Christianity and Islam do not agree with you. These religions have a long history of suppressing science and killing scientists. Even today there are pockets of intolerance – in US and Afghanistan for example.
Made what choice? To create humans? To create life? I ask because it took nearly 4 billion years for life to become human life. During which time 96% of all life that existed went extinct. Human beings have existed for approx. 300,000 years. Modern behavior in humans such as advanced tools, symbolic thought and complex hunting began much later. About 50,000-65,000 years ago with civilizations and urban dwelling about 6,000-7,400 years ago. During those 292,000 years, a typical human lived a very hard life. Avoiding predators, struggling to find food while constantly traveling to avoid the harsh seasonal elements. Those that survived these challenges did so only to die, usually in their mid 20’s, usually because of their teeth. Was that part of the choice? For the final result of the choice to suffer for most of its existence, of both the individual and the species? When this intelligent, sentient being, made the choice to create life. Was the original design to make the fuel and air intake the same hole? It makes me wonder how intelligent this being that chose to create life was. The choice led to a constant struggle to find food, and when food was found a percentage were guaranteed to choke to death on it because of a simple and predictable design flaw.
Maybe I’m not understanding your comment, but it seems to me they seeded life here in molecular form and let it evolve as it may.
It’s just a positive & a negative.. Good/bad black/white.
When you die it’s Life/death.. ..
Turn that around & it’s the same thing!
What was never was..
A quote from the film: The Grey, by Liam Nieson.
When a man dies & he says to a dead body, don’t worry about those you’ve left behind because you was never really here.
I believe that time don’t exist, only while your here.
The human conscience is in those that are alive!
Great observations
Who created that being?
You’ve gotten nowhere.
With enough time, the nearly impossible occurs with certainty.
Sue, you misunderstand Occam’s razor. Which is simpler – (a) an intelligent sentient being that created all of the universe, or (b) some blob of energy? Which one do you think is consistent with Occam’s razor?
What ever you do guys don’t admit there is a creator God 🙂
John – you prove it. I’ll admit it.
Ask trump and he’ll tell you it was Biden’s fault.
Ask b8den or any democrat, and they will say it is Trump’s fault. Now your turn
Ask biden or any democrat, and they will say it is Trump’s fault. Now your turn
Where did that being come from
People say “life was too unlikely to start on Earth.” But probability doesn’t work that way. The odds of you being born, with the right sperm, egg, ancestors, and events lining up have been estimated at about 1 in 10^2,685,000 (a 1 with over two million zeros after it). By that logic, you shouldn’t exist. And yet, here you are. Once something happens, its probability is 100%. Probability after the event is meaningless. What Robert Endres was really pointing out is that our current models may be too simple or missing key factors that made life more likely than it looks.
Why do you refuse to ask the obvious problem with your statement.? You concede that extra terrestrials seeding life is a rabbit hole but fail to realize the same about your conclusion about an intelligent being choosing. Where did this come from?
How is it satisfying occams razor? the universe pooped into existence is less problematic that God popped in or has always been and made stuff. in particular your Version needs even more, because it required motivation and intention that needs to be explained and adds more beggage. Furthermore you are claiming there is only one answer. but with not knowing what happened and all the unknown unknowns, that in itself is a bold claim.
In the 80’s I traveled with Astro physicist Dr. Micheal Strauss from school to our home town many times. He was, at the time, working on his Madters degree at UCLA. In our 2.5 hr commute he shared many ideas scaled down for my understanding. He mentioned, even back then that life on this planet originating from no life or single cell processes were beyond mathematical processes or better said mathematically improbable. Which means there are too many variables and short windows for change at the rates necessary for evolution or other such ideas to work. This idea in not new just swept away to be discovered again. For a scientific approach of any respectable level, all areas should be explored. If not then the scientific method is not practiced. See “Reasons to Believe” for a scientific approach that might amaze those who have a authentic approach to science and its processes.
See “Reasons to Believe” – well, maybe you can summarize for us lazy homework-wary folks here. Or, have you not seen it yourself?
Life shouldn’t exist 🤔 but it does .
In my opinion yet another example that God exist!
Suppose it is true that “Life shouldn’t exist”, and it obviously does.
How does that point to God? Why not say that we don’t yet know how it happened? Why not admit the ignorance?
How does saying that it is God add anything to the knowledge? You still don’t know the nature of such God, you don’t know how that God created Life, you don’t know why God created life. You have explained absolutely nothing. You have just swapped one unknown with another.
And incidentally, are you ok to day that this creator God is Brahma or Allah. Or, are we rooting for a Christian God?
Obviously the math isn’t mathin’ correctly cuz here we are!! Been here thousands of years. How does math explain that? I’m just sayin.
Hi everyone.
The problems we face with the idea of life from non life are complex to say the least, the fact that if we say that if there is enough time it will happen is a faith statement on behalf of the scientific community. Therefore lacking in the scientific method. Over time the age of the universe has increased to help accommodate these theories. The other issue we have in evolution is the fossil record and the fact that everything evolved over time there should be a record of transitional fossils and there isn’t a single one. (Please research this issue for yourself) Again a step of faith to believe that this occurred. And the enthropic principle doesn’t allow for the evolution of complexity it works in the other direction. The question then of who made God is something that we can look at and we discover that he is eternal being, he wasn’t a created being he has existed eternally outside of time, space and matter. Again a faith response is needed. That’s more likely that in the beginning nothing exploded, then life came from non life and evolved into complex life in which many mechanisms can’t evolved because they need to exist at the same time to work. Or that God created the cosmos and everything in it to display the wonders of his works as a testimony to us as mankind. The complexities of life seem beyond mere chance when we study DNA as its an organised error correcting code that must have come from an author. Please look at both sides equally and decide what’s more likely don’t rely on what you were taught in school and blindly excepted. Apply critical thinking equally to both. Faith in God will prove to be the most logical outcome. In viewing the biblical text we see the creation of the universe explains in the first line. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Simply put time, space and matter were crested at the same time. Think on these things please, there is a living God he loves you and sent his son into the world to reveal himself through the person of Jesus’s Christ. Ask and he will show you the truth in these things, it’s his promise. Thank you.
So do I,very interested.
What a tripe study, not worth the coverage of anyone. Life had to emerge somewhere spontaneously. It clearly did here. Just admit that we haven’t figured out the mechanics yet. Don’t need to waste money and time to come out with excuses as to why we haven’t. Probability already says that it’s going to happen, however improbable. Same as the entire universe coming into being.
Panspermia only kicks the proverbial can. Where did that life that “seeded” ours come from? Or was that a result of panspermia too? And the origins of that life ect ect? Or is it a case of it been “turtles all the way down”? We know the universe is full of non-living “organics” Chemistry isn’t just math, it’s quantum, and we haven’t scratched the surface of understanding what goes on at such small scales or how they scale up to the macro. So the chances of life starting are far higher than this “study” would want to admit too. All it takes is a single cell to form and then there’s no stopping the progression.
It’s the probability that places bounds on the difficulty. The article sates what has been known for decades: OOL research has no plausible naturalistic explanation for the emergence of life.
This unsupported claim from personal incredulity is no better than the paper which has nothing to say on the biology. In real life we know that the field advanced to a plausible, mainstream biology based theory a decade ago. [Weiss, M., Sousa, F., Mrnjavac, N. et al. The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor. Nat Microbiol 1, 16116 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2016.116%5D
Th problem is these algorithms always assume randomness is essential. Chemical processes, even at the inorganic level, is not random. Certain compounds are highly selective and have higher or lower probabilities of bonding. Some decay if there is no energy input, others because of the introduction of energy. These processes do not require the introduction of some higher intelligence.
I like it to a card fame where the players have certain simple bonding rules…say that face cards have a preference of retention in the hand when there is another face card. Let’s say there are six players. Each is dealt, at random, five-card hands. But the “rule” of bonding means you will keep a pair like King of Hearts-Queen of Diamonds. The other cards are tossed back into the deck and shuffled.
But one can even take the game further through competition and reproduction. Let’s say the lowest hands are tossed but those with the highest face cards and an Ace or Ten not just are retained but are copied. So you end up in succeeding hands multiple copies of the winner. Only these high cards are retained with lower cards returned to the deck. If two players have equal hands the one with the most high cards in the same suit “reproduces” while the one with fewer gets recucled into the deck. On the successive deals one player may approach a Royal Flush and the other players toss their cards but they get to act as the cloned offspring of the winner. If one does this after about six cycles of Dr Ealing and tossing losing hands about 30 hands) one will get a Royal Flush (10-Ace-Joker-Queen-King, all in the same suit) To randomly draw a Royal Flush has a probability a Royal Flush is 1: 649,740 random 5 cc ard draws. Yet we have arrived at it it through chance+selection+reproduction in a matter of @45 hands. And the next round we’ll have SIX Royal Flushes. The odds of that are improbable. But once on has reproduction, a simple copying system akin to a crystal template that becomes perfectly likely.
Well said
It’s not so hard to believe.
What IS incredibly hard to believe is some sort of supreme being that can create organic beings without somehow being organic too. Human beings came from primates that evolved inevitably over hundreds of thousands of years
Evolution is key and real!
evolution is real but thats not how life emerged from nonliving minerals we cant recreate life in a labratory with controlled perfect conditions and with some of the most intelligent brains behind the experiment but yet its easier for u to believe that nature some how accomplished this very feat with no intelligence in the most hostile conditions and not just once but billions of times in order for just a single strain of RNA. that wouldnt b a sufficient answer for anything else
I firmly believe that some beings roaming the earth came from animals……
Yes, I am tired of the compucentric chants of the orthodoxy too. We live in a time of “shut up and calculate”. I am so looking forward to the time of “calculate, and shut up”.
Let’s spell it out clearly, and slowly also, for the many logically challenged amongst us:
G-O-D. Got it? Good. Everything – and that means EVERYTHING – points directly to that rather obvious conclusion. Because when you combine the many, many other other mathematical impossibilities which abound, and which you are experiencing at this very moment, then much as you despise the implications, the obvious becomes unavoidable.
Let’s try it again, because the TRUTH takes some getting used to. Say it with me (slowly now): G-O-D.
Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? And you have to do now is BEHAVE 😊
I believe the word that you are actually looking for is T-H-E-O-C-R-A-C-Y.
As individuals, we are lucky if we get one hundred orbits around our relatively calm star in our relatively calm arm of the Milky Way. The universe is a laboratory beyond measure. To assume that 13.8 billion years is not enough time for the universe to create the proper conditions for life is specious at best and pushing an agenda at worst.
Even with 14 billion years the odds are impossibly high. (1 in 10 ^ 200).
Every event and state if matter is improbable. Some events are hugely improbable. But some insanly improbable events actually exist and once they exist, the probability of their existance becomes 1. This article is just one more futile attempt to rationalize “Intelligent Design”. We may never understand how life began, but establishing that it’s VERY improbable does not imply any wild speculation.
That’s not science and neither is this article that clearly is just meant to cast pointless doubt on the vast knowledge and deeper understanding that science can grant you.
As a person of faith who also loves science, I don’t see why the two can’t click. I mean it was science that revealed that the Earth was created approximately 4.5 Billion years ago. But it was also the Bible that simply stated God created humans. If science is saying that it would have been mathematical impossible for human life to evolve in harsh conditions, that just gives more reason to believe maybe we didn’t evolve on our own but we’re created. It would be the only logical conclusion. I mean if alien civilizations can get supposed credit for creating human life, why can’t God?
As a person of faith who also loves science, I don’t see why the two can’t click. I mean it was science that revealed that the Earth was created approximately 4.5 Billion years ago. But it was also the Bible that simply stated God created humans. If science is saying that it would have been mathematical impossible for human life to evolve in harsh conditions, that just gives more reason to believe maybe we didn’t evolve on our own but were created. It would be the only logical conclusion. I mean if alien civilizations can get supposed credit for creating human life, why can’t God?
Sorry. This isn’t proof of your imaginary friend.
Agreed
Th problem is these algorithms always assume randomness is essential. Chemical processes, even at the inorganic level, is not random. Certain compounds are highly selective and have higher or lower probabilities of bonding. Some decay if there is no energy input, others because of the introduction of energy. These processes do not require the introduction of some higher intelligence.
I like it to a card fame where the players have certain simple bonding rules…say that face cards have a preference of retention in the hand when there is another face card. Let’s say there are six players. Each is dealt, at random, five-card hands. But the “rule” of bonding means you will keep a pair like King of Hearts-Queen of Diamonds. The other cards are tossed back into the deck and shuffled.
But one can even take the game further through competition and reproduction. Let’s say the lowest hands are tossed but those with the highest face cards and an Ace or Ten not just are retained but are copied. So you end up in succeeding hands multiple copies of the winner. Only these high cards are retained with lower cards returned to the deck. If two players have equal hands the one with the most high cards in the same suit “reproduces” while the one with fewer gets recucled into the deck. On the successive deals one player may approach a Royal Flush and the other players toss their cards but they get to act as the cloned offspring of the winner. If one does this after about six cycles of Dr Ealing and tossing losing hands about 30 hands) one will get a Royal Flush (10-Ace-Joker-Queen-King, all in the same suit) To randomly draw a Royal Flush has a probability a Royal Flush is 1: 649,740 random 5 cc ard draws. Yet we have arrived at it it through chance+selection+reproduction in a matter of @45 hands. And the next round we’ll have SIX Royal Flushes. The odds of that are improbable. But once on has reproduction, a simple copying system akin to a crystal template that becomes perfectly likely.
Asserting that “God did it” doesn’t mean that it’s true. People once believed that the planets and stars revolved around the Earth. Why? How? “God did it” was the usual refrain. No need for Newton and science then, right?
Perhaps you need to consider not where we came from ,that does not matter. Consider where we are going and how life can survive.
That’s heavily investing…
Besides, “God did it” doesn’t explain anything. It might as well be “Bob” did it. And, those who say “God did it” are invariably mighty offended if that God turns out to be the wrong God of a different tribe.
Asserting that “God didn’t” doesn’t mean that it’s true.
If G-O-D exists, I say people like you will be the first among the ones who’ll be casted in fire. Imagine how many people you alienated from the “path” so far, with such deplorable attitude.
Behave, do you realize that you are playacting as a God? Now, didn’t your holy book say something about the fate of a false god?
Didn’t your holy book say something about judging others, warning that then ye shall be judged?
Or, maybe you don’t care about those holy books – the truest atheist of them all.
TruthSpeaker
Your G-O-D is not a conclusion to anything – because you haven’t demonstrated its existence. Worse, you haven’t even defined it precisely enough for us to recognize it if we were to find it.
not necessarily, merely a “creative force” would be a suitable explanation, it does require “intelligence”, in part because “intelligence” is a nonsensical term that lacks both definition and consensus. A “creative force” that is the opposite of entropy would be enough, yet this is *never* discussed, probably because the vast majority of people that say they care are either theists or anti-theists battling it out. The theists don’t like it because it doesn’t fit with their concept of God and the anti-theists don’t like it because it’s too close to theism for their liking, i.e. admitting something out there caused life that they (or the scientists on their side) cannot detect or explain. but then isn’t that the whole point of a hypotheses (which is a perfectly legitimate aspect of the scientific method) to present an argument that requires verification. they don’t like this because it feels too much like “back to the drawing board”. but then that’s what happens when hypotheses or theories aren’t tested with mathematical rigour. something the likes of Dawkins doesn’t seem to be that arsed about. now there’s an alarm bell if ever there was one.
p s. the edit facilities on here are crap, so any typos? not my fault !!!
The “creative force” is quantum chemistry over billions of years. The molecules of life are known to naturally arise. Billions of planets in billions of galaxies and trillions of trillions of atoms for trillions of seconds. How could you prove it didn’t happen?
Mr. Anderson
You claim that scientists are dismissive of some hypothesis – what is the hypothesis?
And then, scientists are not unfairly dismissive of this hypothesis (whatever it is). Scientists are dismissive of all hypotheses that lack evidence or are ill defined or are unfalsifiable. Scientists are more of “show me” types than “trust me” types. Everyone should be – in scientific matters or elsewhere.
The best answer I have ever heard on the existential question was: all will be revealed and then we shall know the truth. However, no one is in a hurry to find out.
The gods as we call them are genetic engineers who realizing that their planets were going to be “flooded” with deadly radiation, built an Ark to send genetic samples somewhere else in order to restart their civilization again. It
It’s ridiculous to think that some guy named Noah was able to build a wooden ship to save all the species as bulky living animals that would probably end up eating each other before all the water could mysteriously go back to normal sea level. Makes for a good story to explain our existence to the poor common illiterate peasants who would believe anything and even turn it into a religion. One could say it happened in Israel, but how did so much diversity end up all over the world? Remember what P.T. Barnum said…
Your level of belief in the superstitions of naturalism is strong but on a very shaky foundation, from the whole team how people fight in defense of chance, As part of their war on rationality, they demonize logic, all within the framework of worshipping chance.
Science isn’t “naturalism”, it is a useful tool like a hammer, and the evolutionary process that underlies biology isn’t “chance”. Selection is directional.
The gods as we call them are genetic engineers who realizing that their planets were going to be “flooded” with deadly radiation, built an Ark to send genetic samples somewhere else in order to restart their civilization again. It
It’s ridiculous to think that some guy named Noah was able to build a wooden ship to save all the species as bulky living animals that would probably end up eating each other before all the water could mysteriously go back to normal sea level. Makes for a good story to explain our existence to the poor common illiterate peasants who would believe anything and even turn it into a religion. One could say it happened in Israel, but how did so much diversity end up all over the world? Remember what P.T. Barnum said…
You need to fix this software because it won’t let me post because it thinks I already made this posting.
Yes, we all remember P.T. Barnum’s famous quote, “You need to fix this software because it won’t let me post because it thinks I already made this posting.”
What does that have to do with this article exactly?
Paging Giorgio Tsoukalos …
“new physical principles or mechanisms that could overcome these informational barriers”
How about quantifying and accounting for the high efficiencies in biological systems? This alone speeds up the process for the molecular biology of life. Mathematicians get stuck because they don’t understand physical, chemical and biological systems. They think that pure math should be generative of all answers in the physical world. Nope.
To do the calc’s on the probabilty of a simple cell self assembling, is ridiculous beyond the pale.
The first cell, no matter how simple is already the result of millions of years of evolution from far simpler self replicating molecules.
The first cell was likely little more than a tiny bio engine that split in two instead of dying. So simple it barely qualified as life, but it replicated and so the cycle began. The first life on earth clearly didn’t come from our soup, given the earliest complexity we see if several steps above what should have emerged here. So it’s likely that while the cosmos itself were cooling, they at one time reached a state of warm gas that allowed life-like patterns to emerge, Conway’s game of life style. Most of these flitters would die shortly or never replicate, but eventually some sort of seeds were left behind, enough to scatter onto forming planets, a few proteins and single digits of DNA precursors.
The division between animate and inanimate life finds itself laid right at the boundary of organics and chemistry. Chemical reactions that can repeat (that one chemical clock cycle experiment) are not yet considered life, but clearly hold the basis for what the earliest life forms must have been, simple reaction vessels that divide into more functional reaction vessels, probably reacting something carbon rich with the byproduct of forming tiny structures shaped the same as itself.
But who could say really.
The first cell was called L.u.c.a.
Last
Universal
Common
Ancestor of
All life
Makes sense to me 👍
“The findings indicate that chance alone, combined with natural chemical reactions, may not sufficiently account for the origin of life within the limited timeframe of early Earth. Because systems generally move toward disorder rather than order, the formation of the highly structured arrangements required for life faces serious barriers.”
That comment seems to me like it could have been written decades ago by advocates of Intelligent Design Theory.
As I see it, the primary challenge in origins of lives (plural) research is that chemistry alone won’t provide answers to what is primarily a problem of quantum mathematics, quantum physics, quantum inorganic chemistry, and quantum organic chemistry / biology.
But then, the political-economics of giving priority to sales and marketing to provide ever more reinventions of the “wheel” won’t solve transportation or other challenges either.
Local Transportation & Systems guy
Okay this is all kind of dumb, while the odds state that no one should win the lottery someone eventually does every time. See how easy that is to debunk the odds.
This article may well just argue for the existence of a god. What a scientific puffpiece. Math shows us that reality is ordered, biology follows the order of math as does inert matter in reality. Given we can prove life exists and observe how simple repeating cycles can breed complexity, why would failing to understand a theoretical equation imply anything about the origins of life???
Clearly monkeys on typewriters at a cosmic scale could easy create one lowly microbe on a wet dustball, that’s all it would take for the chain reaction of life to begin, complexifying to better feed on the entropy of energy leaving the sun.
Scientists can’t replicate it in a lab because they can’t simulate the entire freaking universe to allow life to emerge, they think a prebiotic muckpit existed in a small vacuum and can’t understand how radiation or unknowns from early planets could have played key roles in something they can barely define the specifics of. So yeah, nobody is making lab life to prove life occured naturally, but it still did and the math still checks out.
Like how the mars rover got stuck despite all their martian soil simulations, because they had never measured real martian soil and were just guessing at what it contained. Same for primordial soup, who knows what was in it, not us or modern science, not enough to replicate clearly.
This is a nonsense study. No current model for the emergence of life posits that cells sprung into life spontaneously from simple ingredients, so this adds nothing. It’s describes what we always knew. That would be immensely improbable. Talk about stating the obvious. So all it does is put a number on how improbable. Useful, I guess, but it neither challenges or advances the current theories.
This study rehashes the tired old Hoyle-Wickramasinghe idiocy. Probably calculations done by a bunch of creationists butt-hurt that their god has no place to hide.
Every event and state if matter is improbable. Some events are hugely improbable. But some insanly improbable events actually exist and once they exist, the probability of their existance becomes 1. This article is just one more futile attempt to rationalize “Intelligent Design”. We may never understand how life began, but establishing that it’s VERY improbable does not imply any wild speculation.
The word is that the mathematician in question committed suicide right after the findings.
Let’s assume for a minute the extraterrestrials seeded earth to begin life. How did the extraterrestrials begin? And if they were seeded by some other beings, how did they begin? It never stops. There’s only one answer that satisfies Occam’s razor, and that’s the existence of an intelligent, sentient being that made a choice.
Natural processes such as evolution are not “sentient” or make “choices”. And we know that it is evolution all the way thanks to phylogenetic trees describing the split between biology and geology, see my own response to the article.
How much money was wasted on this “study” . Just admit that science doesn’t have a clue about the origin of life. Laugh if you wish, but I choose to believe the Bible. God created the earth and all life on it. He also created everything else. Period. Expanding universe, hmm, how bout that
And, Robert, I believe you are wrong. If belief were the sole arbiter of truth then that leads to unresolvable contradictions. Now, hopefully, you understand why the money invested in science is well spent. Science gives us actual tools we can use (like this internet you are spreading your message through), religion gives us contradictory beliefs.
I’ll also add, since it is pertinent here, that bioinformaticians are well aware that phylogenetics of ancestral relationships is so complex that parsimony (“Occam’s razor”) is the worst method to construct a tree. As soon as you have more information than bare bones it is maximum likelihood and bayesian statistics that compete (in a complementary way, strengthening the model).
Besides, “Occam’s razor” is a cute concept but there is no reason for the universe to adhere to it.
No one thinks Quantum Mechanics is simple, yet here we are.
And who made the intelligent, sentient being? Is it turtles all the way down?
What you are using isn’t called Occam’s razor. You are using Occam’s tampon.
“Turtles all the way down”
I love me them turtles.
So, instead of starting with simple strands of self-replicating molecules you chose to start with a hugely advanced, hugely complicated intelligent, sentient being capable to creating universes. Some Occam’s razor you got there!
While Endres is a director at a biological physics network, the pre-print paper isn’t based on biology but on a model of lossy data compression in the spirit of creationists. The biology says the exact opposite, evolution is easy, early and fecund.
That phylogenetic trees branch prodigiously has been known since Darwin’s times. On the rapid start, for the last 20 years biologists have recognized that the split between biology and geology happened very early around 4.3-4.2 billion years ago [c.f. TimeTree website].
That is a dating that has become precise with new crossbracing and midrooting methods [Moody, E.R.R., Álvarez-Carretero, S., Mahendrarajah, T.A. et al. The nature of the last universal common ancestor and its impact on the early Earth system. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 1654–1666 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1%5D.
And that has led astrobiologists to conclude that life is common:
“However, the recent result of a 4.2 Gya LUCA pushes the odds over the threshold for the first time (nominally 13:1). In fact, the odds ratio is >10:1 for all possible values of the biosphere’s ultimate lifespan and speculative hypotheses of ancient civilizations. For the first time, we have formally strong evidence that favors the hypothesis that life rapidly emerges in Earth-like conditions (although such environments may themselves be rare).” [2504.05993, David Kipping, Accepted for publication in Astrobiology]
Ok; the mathematics is wrong. We exist.
Bingo!
It’s foundational to science that when theory and data conflict, then the theory is wrong (or at best, incomplete). But theory must give way to data.
This paper could even have the formula correct but the probabilities wrong. Who knows? It’s for the study authors to support their ideas, and they’ve done a poor job here.
Add enough time and the impossible happens. Lol! Chance is no thing. Say it three times really fast. Lol! In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and all that is there in. He is self existent. The Great I Am. Maybe some of you can’t comprehend how complex life really is. Study DNA a little and tell me there is no God. Lol! What is morality, guilt, sense of right and wrong……? Why is it wrong to commit murder, to steal , and to lie? Could go on and on. We did not evolve, we were created. You’ll find out soon enough.
Best comment!
I get what you’re saying, but I think some of those assumptions don’t hold up when you look at what we actually know from science.
First, complexity doesn’t always require a perfect, finely tuned sequence. Complex systems can emerge from very simple rules. You see this in nature with snowflakes, crystals, or even sand dunes—order and patterns forming without anyone “building” them. The same principle applies to chemical systems. Given enough time and the right conditions, molecules can self-organize.
Second, we do see evidence in the fossil and chemical record of simpler life leading to complexity. Microfossils of bacteria go back over 3.5 billion years, well before multicellular life. Life started simple—single cells, then colonies, then multicellular organisms—and gradually became more complex. That’s exactly what the record shows.
Third, the idea that life should be everywhere if it can emerge from chemistry isn’t necessarily true. Earth had a very rare set of conditions—stable liquid water, energy sources, protective atmosphere, plate tectonics. The universe is huge, but the window for habitability is narrow. Statistically, life could be rare, and we wouldn’t necessarily see it everywhere yet. We may find it on other planets or moons, but absence of proof so far isn’t proof of absence.
Fourth, scientists have recreated many of the building blocks of life. The Miller–Urey experiment in the 1950s showed amino acids forming under early Earth conditions. Since then, we’ve seen lipids form membranes on their own, RNA strands self-replicate, and simple metabolism-like cycles happen spontaneously. We don’t yet have a full “life in a test tube,” but we’ve shown the steps are chemically possible. The fact that it took billions of years naturally makes it a huge challenge to compress into a lab experiment.
Finally, just because science doesn’t yet have a full “origin of life recipe” doesn’t mean it’s impossible. That’s how science works—piece by piece, evidence building on evidence. The gaps don’t prove God, they just mark the frontiers of our knowledge. Belief in God is a separate question of meaning and purpose, not a replacement for the scientific process.
Just think of the alternate possibility. Some 4 billion years ago, the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) was hotter than the surface of Earth. Naturally, absorption of radiations was greater than emission, leading to a large build up of organic molecules formed by catalytic reactions similar to photosynthesis. When temperatures became equal, both forward and reverse reactions happened leading to complex organic molecules. When the temperature of CBR became sufficiently lower than the surface of Earth, primitive life emerged in thousands of isolated locations. Emergence of life on Earth is rather deterministic. Chance acts as a spoilsport in some cases.
That makes absolutely no sense, and if the CBR was hotter than the surface of the earth 4 billion years ago, there would be no stars and no planets. Please read at least basic science before you embarrass yourself.
Life could not exist until the necessary elements were created in the deaths of giant stars. It took billions of years for those to be created in sufficient quantity for life.
Sounds like someone found Fred Hoyle’s broken calculator in the dustbin of science and decided to dust it up for another wild ride.
From the bio-supercomputer between my ears: a very, very long time ago the universe existed for an instant as a single sentient entity (God?) which became instantaneously dissatisfied with being alone in a cold, dark, silent place and created a physical universe, nature and evolution with a single thought, perhaps “Let there be light,” followed immediately with a ‘Big Crunch’ and a Big Bang. We now live in a physical universe characterized with a scaled spectrum of energy forms/frequencies that range from mindless matter at the lowest level to matterless mind at the upper end. Life may be defined as the conversion of lower forms of energy to the highest form (think ice/water to steam). The purpose of life is to live as long and well as possible; a learning experience with the only ‘sin’ being to use life without learning. Nature not only ‘abhors a vacuum,’ it favors balance, moderation and sharing. The universal conflict is between contraction and expansion, with a totality of either being inherently unstable.
With all the proofs we still have mystery and the unknown.
Vide: Deutsch emergence.
What if God didn’t create the universe? What if God (or the soul) was created with the universe, at the time of the Big Bang. A few decades ago my students (first through third graders), were awestruck when I told them that they were made of stardust, which was created at the time of the Big Bang. Then why not soul dust, the part of us that makes us ask “why?”
Respectfully,
Gramma Windy
The difference between stardust and souldust is that we know stardust exists. We can do various forms of experiments on stardust, and we can see how it moves from one form to another. On the other hand, we cannot confirm the existence of souldust. In fact, it is hard to even describe it, let alone find it.
Now, you might say that souldust is what gives us consciousness, and that it is too fine to detect with our crude instruments. You might want to prove souldust by saying that it must exist. But if this is your line of reasoning, then you have to explain why a bunch of neurons in the brain cannot create consciousness. You will also have to explain diseases like advanced Alzheimer’s, where the patient is alive, but the the nature of consciousness exhibited by the person is completely changed from before.
I wonder if the calculations included the firmware we have including our base AI code?
I don’t have an issue with effectively random transpermia. While nature is random I question whether it is actually 100 percent random. There is a degree of randomness in conception but obviously an inmate chance for success, also. And earth is believed formed from various space stuff, former star matter. So, forming the building blocks for life and life itself in addition to a hospitable environment for life, might all be seen as one overarching process.
When you talk about directed transpermia by intelligent civilizations, built into that is the assumption that life could not occur spontaneously on earth, but somehow came about elsewhere. Passing the buck and pretty weak.
About that tendency toward disorder. The infamous second law of thermodynamics, some are no longer defining entropy in those terms. When stars age and die this entails comparatively immense heat loss. Textbook entropy. It also appears to make post hydrogen elements possible. The stuff of earth and life.
To take it even further, as addressed in my book Could a Heat Death be Necessary for Life? The aging and death of stars is progress toward a theoretical heat death for the universe in trillions of years. Basically, of all the stars have expended themselves and no new stats are forming that is a major step toward a universe that has run it’s course. (Good luck proving this one way or the other.) When stars die, the universe ages, perhaps en route to a lifeless condition. When stars die, they also make our existence possible along with that of earth and all life. Our existence may be one tiny step toward that projected heat death. We are the aging and death of former stars, and the aging of the universe. If there is to be a heat death, it has resulted in life along the way.
You are right in your hunch – nature is not 100% random. No one explained why it should be.
In nature, some sequence of events are favored over others.
You chose the least likely option with the least evidence and logic. Using your own logic, how did your intelligent thing come to be? Why would an intelligent being set it all up and never make itself known again? Why would they allow sub species of trump to exist so as to ruin the planet and for so many conflicting religions to be born and for religious nutcakes to become greedy sexual predators? Simpler explanations include that very simple life was made possible when some necessary elements arrived when objects from outer space collided with the Earth or when life emerged after billions of years when the required elements finally and perhaps inevitably came together in the right way in the right conditions. Evolution with associated DNA and fossil evidence supports this kind of simple beginning with ever more complex life forming slowly over millions of years.
The question as to whether some supreme being exists is in no way dependant upon us understanding that being. This isn’t an argument for its existence, just that not understanding isn’t a good argument against anything. The existence of “God” isn’t impossible but it is unprovable. Untestable. Not part of what we call science. So far, neither is abiogenesis. The belief that one will be proven and the other will not is just that… Belief. Time will tell which, if either, is correct.
The existence of “God” isn’t impossible but it is unprovable.
Your statement is correct, but the danger is that many will interpret it as if the chances are 50-50. When there are two choices, we tend to assume that they are roughly equally likely.
In this case, god is very unlikely.
First, it is never defined with precision. Is it Jesus, Allah or Brahma?
Second, even the imprecise definitions run into obvious contradictions that definitely prove the non-existence of such gods (e.g., all knowing, all powerful, all benevolent god cannot exist. Which one of the three should we get rid of?)
Finally, even if we define such a god, you have to hide it away “outside our space and time” to avoid violating known rules of physics – which means that such a god is irrelevant to us in our space and time.
So under what pretense would a god be unlikely? I’ve been reading all your posts and you seem to be doing everything in your power to eliminate God as even a possibility behind the origin of life. But yet, you are probably more likely to believe that life was planted here on earth by a super intelligent life source from another planet, as the article mentions. If you claim you’re a person of logic, you really need to think long and hard about that assessment.
Thanks for your comment.
Your assessment of my posts is correct – I do not think God is behind life on earth.
You are right – it would be inconsistent of me if then I believed that life was planted here by extraterrestrials. So, I don’t think that’s a possibility either. Why? First, interstellar travel is basically impossible. It’s not a technical limitation, it’s a scientific limitation coming from known science. Second, if life came aboard an interstellar comet, then the probability of that is the joint probability of life occurring in that other planet (call that x) and that life finding its way here (probability = y). Both x and y are small, xy is even smaller. But then the probability of life occurring here on earth is x, which is much higher than xy. In short, life has to spontaneously form someplace, so why not on earth?
In conclusion, it is almost certain that life started on earth on its own. Now, you may ask how did life start? That I don’t know.
I feel good more be more knowing that my own thoughts and theories that I had formed early on my own are now starting to be proven as correct .. ✅
Mathematics makes it complicated but faith makes it simple: God did it.
Mathematics gets it right. Faith gets it wrong. People have different faiths which contradict each other and cannot all be correct. At the very least, the majority are wrong.
How do you calculate the odds of something like this. We’re here. So the odds were 100%. We don’t have a parallel universe to compare to. We don’t know how it happened. Life is chemistry, and the universe has shown us chemistry is everywhere. I feel like these types of studies are just a few people bewildered at the idea that it could happen and so many things had to go right for wife to develop. I think it’s just as easy to conclude. It was an inevitability. I can’t wait till we go to more planets and start actually finding molecules and life forms in water.
I agree. The most important development was for a wife to appear. That was the best idea that the Universe came up with. And so all love comes from a vagina. That’s the cherry on top too, Love. Strange powerful emotion. Makes us reproduce resulting in more people trying to guess what why and where. I’m sure that’s the reason behind the why.
We reproduce (and we love trying!) because if we did not then we would not have survived this long. In other words, there might have been some animals who didn’t like reproducing, and they died childless and the lines ended there.
Love (as you describe here) is the outcome of evolution.
Large organic molecules (amino acids, I think) have been found on asteroids.
I thought science was exploring with an open mind. Why must the concept of origin be as we want it to be. Existence is far more than even the Universe as we think we know it and, oh so limited, in our puny minds as we struggle to understand what we can perceive. It’s also interesting to see the word believe used by scientists. I thought it is the purview of faith. I wonder how many scientists would board an aircraft that was manufactured without the proper authentications yet believe or should I say theorise that the far more complex Universe emerged from chaos simply because they cannot understand the origin of it’s designer forgetting that a being that intelligent and powerful would not necessarily conform to known laws or even the most incredible hypothesis for that matter. I understand that most people deny the existence of a higher intelligence because of the state of the human race . That does not devolve from the fact that everything in existence has a blueprint even the so called big bang. However, just because we cannot understand the designer does not invalidate His existence. What matters is not what anyone thinks, believes or theorises but what is.
“What is” must necessarily come from what actually is. You seem to be pleading for things to exist that do not actually exist. You are right that there are things that exist that we don’t know about. The policy then should be to search for those things, not make random guesses about them.
My usual response to thought experiments such as this is; “Just because you and me can’t solve the problem doesn’t mean it can’t be solved… it just means you and me can’t do it”.
And yes, I used the words I intended. Pardon me for bein’ a Redneck.
If you are aware you did a redneck-y thing, then you’re not a redneck.
It’s a shame most people are not intelligent enough to know the answer. In short it has nothing to do with improbable random processes that don’t actually exist in our universe. Our universe is chaotic not random, and chaotic in a biases way such that it is inevitable that life, intelligence and consciousness etc has to occur, complexity creates more complexity, not by chance. People that believe in pure mathematical randomness are just ignorant of the actual processes that are occurring in our universe! Simple example for those that don’t understand the concept that I have just explained(the details are too long to explain here). What are the chances of creating one human being? By random chance not possible. What is the chance of creating 2 human beings by random chance?. even longer than the length of the calculated universe. What is the chance of creating 3 human beings? Even more stupid calculation. Real truer answer 9 months 30% of the time! Nothing to do with random once you know how it is done. The same principle applies to all life and all processes. Subatomic, atomic, molecular, cellular etc etc all the way to consciousness and beyond, including expanding and contracting universe. No other universes required to balance anything, everything is already being balanced, you just kneed to know how. Mr Andrew Pepes.
Apologises for some miss spelling in my previous comment. It is the concepts that are important first, not the spelling, Mr Andrew Pepes
In my ‘insighted’ model of the universe God and universe are mutually exclusive and there will be random mutations. Try looking independently ‘in’ for the answers.
How long would it take for a billion monkeys randomly typing away at a typewriter to come up with the exact copy of Hamlet? The answer is that it would take more than the current age of the universe (by far!) – so it is basically impossible. A similar math seems to be at work in this article.
But then how long would it take for a billion monkeys randomly typing away at a typewriter to come up with the exact copy of Hamlet, IF we have the ability to guide them? Suppose now we can call out the wrong letter as soon as it is typed, and preserve the initial part of Hamlet already typed flawlessly. The answer is that with guidance it could be done in a day. Chemistry is guided – some molecules are more stable than others. Life is guided – by natural selection. All you need is the first bit of self replicating molecule. After that complex life isn’t just possible, it is inevitable.
Is this still a theory after all that? How can a scientist think that life with all its complications came from nothing?
All these living beings, all these cycles, the sun the moon the sea the air we breath came from a coincidence???
Why dont they admit thst there is no one capable of doing that except one God.
Then who created God? If God can exist forever, then so can the universe.
And also – science has very good explanations for the creation of the sun and the moon and the sea and the air. We can see protoplanetary disks around other stars and water and oxygen and nitrogen are plentiful in the universe
Science doesn’t know exactly how life came from non-life. But God is not an explanation – it is a name for that lack of knowledge. You don’t know whether or not God did it, how he did it, and why he did it. You just are making claims without anything to back it up.
“life with all its complications came from nothing”
no scientist believes something so stupid
organic matter is the same as inorganic matter, it is just a different pattern
“The unreasonable likelihood of being….”
Clever takeoff!
reminder: Einstein: God doesn’t play dice.
You can’t retrospectively apply probability to things that have already happened. If you insist on doing that, then the probability of life evolving on earth is 1, because it’s already happened. What this study is really suggesting is: there’s a possibility we might actually be alone in the universe.
History proves life on earth came from somewhere else. Archeologists finding artifacts. Human bones. All the homo species. They were all seeded by either our creator or other creators. For all the processes for human life to take place naturally from a variant, a resonance or a single quark at the latest. Your looking at a litl over 63 billion years and that would be fairly quik developement. unless we start from scratch. Then we are just following in our creators footsteps. To understand how life started or what created it you have to understand that this universe was created at the same time we wer. And to think that it just so popped out of a single figure 8. The figure 8 is the continuous recycling of the energy that was put into play well before the universe started. Beings are more common in the universe than we all think. But dna was engineered not natural. The genes. Its all part of a much more complex genetics. For example who gave god the name god. Enlil never assumed the name or ever expressed his nature like a god. Summerians never called enlil god. Maybe the hebrew or babylonians or maybe the romans came up with it but it says Genetically Organized Design. Now that sounds engineered and so our creators were humans im sure if god came come to earth as his son then god came from outside of our universe or we were created within our god. Our souls were created at the same time as the universe but our spirits are much older. You have to sit & ask yourself if you can imaGine it. Ask yourself with the desire to know all truth & god will tell you . Sorry guys but natural selection is out the window unless you can create an environment where the biological processes that create life will occur naturally because as it looks nobody can prove anything. Try putting the math to find a 4 in 10^200 cause the probobility is greater than you know. Archeaological record will show that we are not the only 1s in the universe. 1 cant imagine the size of the universe. The same thing for the immensely small processes that take place. To create any amount of genetic code much less the rna to run the code to build run & manage would take hundreds of thousands of years to create something like us. It probobly took billions of years to create the creators from a more intelligent species.
And what is the probability that creator or those creators spontaneously sprung into being?
Apparently those creators are much more complex than us- so it is reasonable to assume that their own probability of coming into being is significantly smaller.
Doesn’t necessarily require an advanced civilization to seed the planet. Extremophilic microorganism could have hit the early earth. Adapting as the earth aged. Evolving like any other life form.
During post-surgery discussions with their patients many doctors and nurses are shocked to learn that their patient was able to accurately describe the medical procedures that had been performed on them while their brain was unconscious (anesthetized), because the patient’s consciousness was hovering near the ceiling in the operating room and observing the operation. As medical technology improves, an increasing number of people are being brought back from the brink of biological death with accounts of other-worldly experiences. After conferring with deceased loved ones, some NDE experiencers learn things about their family that they could not have known otherwise.
This constitutes powerful evidence that consciousness may be independent of the brain, and that there may indeed be an afterlife.
Evidence coming from a stressed brain is no evidence at all. Brains hallucinate all the time – even when they are not anesthetized or deprived of oxygen (in case of near death).
What an idiotic calculation. Why would anyone calculate chance of life emerging on one single planet? There are potentially 2 billions earth-like planets in our Galaxy. The only thing that makes Earth special is the fact that life did evolve here. If intelligent life evolved on another planet it would be the other planet suddenly being “special” one.
Faith is all that holds our foundations for certain beliefs. There are many entities that we don’t see but believing in them is inevitable. We are bound to time and space with limited mobility and capabilities. So life on earth is a matter of belief that God created everything. He is omniscient and omnipotent.
It is true that faith is the foundation of certain beliefs. But that is not a guarantee of correctness. The question here isn’t whether there is such a thing as faith or belief, the issue is whether what you have faith in actually exists and whether you can demonstrate that.
About our limitation in capabilities – that is the strongest argument for having faith in God. But it is still a bad argument. Are we that limited still? A few centuries ago we didn’t know how heavenly objects moved, how the human body worked and practical things like what causes diseases. Now we do. We still don’t know everything – but we know many things more than when the holy books were written. When we fall sick, we go to a doctor not a shaman, we take medicines not say prayers. Assume for a moment that there is no God – in this case, the holy books were written by men. Those men might have been the smartest of their times, and it made sense to follow them then. But we know better now. Why should we run our lives with outdated information?
The existence of intelligent sentient beings is so improbable, that the only answer we can imagine is, that they were created by an intelligent sentient being.
KEH?
I believe I explained it all in a ‘big picture’ format in my September 1 and 3 comments. Some of the details still elude me but not the basics; we live in an action-reaction, cause and effect, stimulus-response universe characterized with a scaled spectrum of various forms, levels of energy, from mindless matter at the lower end and matterless mind at the upper end, When God created a physical universe and evolution, ‘IT’ self-destructed. I still can’t explain how it all started but, simply put, as with each of you, I am one with all that is, I have always been and I will always be, in one form or another.
Paul Tillich’s ” Ground of Being” concept might help?
Arguing over the impossible to prove, or disprove, makes everyone an idiot. I guess that’s why people can’t see how stupid it is. Having an enlightened discussion on the impossible however, makes everyone think.
At the end of the day, we live in a duality universe/multiverse, so there is only one possibilie answer.
Either God created everything and that being needs no creator, or the universe and everything in it, has existed forever, and thus needs no creator.
Will humans ever find the answer to this question, maybe, but if most people continue being idiots, then the answer is a definite no.
Everything that exists, everything we have, exists because people worked together. In some cases, they overcame their differences to cooperate and grow as individuals.
Anyone who says God isn’t real, show me your irrefutable proof?
Anyone who says God exists, show me your irrefutable proof?
Any random person can make any random claim, and it’s not the job of the rest of us to prove the claim wrong. So, no one is working too hard to prove that God isn’t real – we are all waiting for the “god exists” people to deliver their irrefutable proof. It’s just like if you are asking for a loan from the bank, and you claim that your net worth is a billion dollars, then the loan officer will wait for you to provide irrefutable proof in form of bank statements and such.
That said, some claims can be shown to be false. We can show that most gods aren’t real. This is because the different gods contradict each other. It cannot be that the Christian God created the universe and Allah created the universe and Vishnu creates the universe, and so on for the many gods that humans envisioned. At most one such god is real. All others are unreal.
We can go further – and nix that last god. But for that, that god needs to be defined precisely. So, I will wait for theists to agree which god is real, and then we will work on that one “true” god.