I don't understand how this is so hard to understand. Let's try an analogy....
The lottario / 649 lottery draw has 13,983,816 (14 millionish) different 6 number combinations to win, if you DO NOT consider order of the numbers important.
If order IS important, then the odds of correctly nailing it jumps to 10,068,347,520 (10 billionish).
Here's the site that did the math.
These odds include a few things - there are only 49 numbers, and the numbers are NOT replaced into the bag after drawing one out. Got that? Great. Simple probability math for us poker folk right?
Now, the current periodic table contains 114 KNOWN elements. Something simple like water includes a combination of 2 elements (Hydrogen and Oxygen), but H20 means that hydrogen is used twice. This would be an equivalent of having 114 balls in a bag, and replacing the ball every time you're going to pick one out. Now, something like water, nice and simple, I'm assuming to randomly put those together by picking balls out (and remember, replacing them into the bag after to draw perfect), the odds would be 1 in 114x114x114 (1, 481, 544 or let's say 1.5 million) - that's like... lots ya? I fully admit my math may be hilariously bad at this point. Alright, now, I'm going somewhere with this.
A really smart guy once said:
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
Now elements combine and create stuff. Stuff is what we see / touch / consume etc. This stuff is needed by us, and in fact, we are stuff as well. The sheer chances of all these elements coming together in just the right combinations, all in the same kinda place, is outstandingly minuscule in probability to such a point where it's damned near impossible. And that's just the stuff part of this! Throw in things like "ideal conditions / distance from the sun / moons to control some of the stuff so it doesn't ruin other stuff"? Come on! I mean we said earlier that water is a one in 1.5 million chance? Wow! All of this coming together perfectly balanced, in the right amounts is just too much for any person to be able to comprehend!!!
And therein lies the point. It's "easier" for our brains, and even our consciousness, to think in terms of patterns, simplicity, and familiar. But that really smart guy earlier said space was just too big for us to understand. These elements are floating around and doing shit out in space, and an outstandingly large percentage of it goes nowhere, does nothing, and continues floating. No life forms, no planet with the right distancing from their particular star to sustain their stuff, nothing but elements kicking around, not really making stuff like the stuff we have.
This leads to people thinking "Well, some son of a gun must be out there using these elements to make our stuff, and we should be thankful that they did that because we like stuff like water, fertile soil, and high definition televisions". What I think though, is that with space just so big as it is, and all these different conditions and scenarios, well, of course at some point that stuff is going to get made by chance, with enough time and patience. Back to the lotto - I bet people would look strange if I bought a ticket with the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, but it's equally likely to win as any other combination, and some day, if we continue doing lotto, that willl hit. People aren't good at this kinda thing.
Brent your argument of a "design" has no backing to it aside from something you'd like to believe, that our stuff was intentional. I counter that the design argument is just a person's inability to comprehend / not wanting to comprehend space and it's big-ness. Want some (albeit anecdotal) evidence of man's desire for the familiar / simplification? Google "god" and look at the pics (here,
I did it for you). The far and away majority of them is a humanoid, generally white and bearded dude. Why wouldn't god be different looking than us? Because we like our familiar comfort, so god looks like us (well, technically, looks like a prototype of father-figure). We believe that's how it should be because we can't understand probability well enough.
I'm saying that our probability of existing is so stupidly small, we should not exist. However, we do, not because of bearded white men in the clouds, but because of the sheer size, randomness and extent of space and time. This gets even MORE hard to believe when you consider that those elements I named are just ones we "know" of... there could be tonnes more! This is like guessing the winning lottery ticket when you don't know how many numbers you're supposed to pick, or how many are available!
Water is highly unlikely, yet it's everywhere around here. More complicated things are less likely, yet they exist. We exist. We hit the longest of long shots, and the only reason we're not all cheering non-stop for our incredible fortune is because we cannot comprehend just how outstandingly lucky we are that everything came together to make our stuff. Instead, we boil it down, and make it manageable. "God" isn't a great designer, god is not picking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.
Mark