Question People are often amazed that we exist. For example, I have heard on numerous occasions people say something like: "How crazy is it that atoms have aligned in a particular way to produce you and I, in the circumstances that we're currently in, as seemingly conscious beings?" Is the answer to that: "It's not crazy, it was bound to happen at some point!" ? Isn't time so long that every possibility of life, every permutation or combination of every event is bound to occur? For example, sometime eons in the future or the past, another me could be sitting here writing this exact question, only to make a miniscule typo, and that be one of the only differences between then and now? Is the fact that I am alive and conscious as I am right now a certainty given how long time is?

Accepted:
November 24, 2010

Comments

You clearly hang out with interesting people. These issues are much discussed amongst proponents/critics of various forms of 'telological' or 'design' arguments. You can find in Aquinas the idea that if time stretches back to infinity then eventually every logically possible outcome occurs, which he uses to argue that not every existing being exists contingently, at least one exists necessarily. You see the response (eg in Hume against Paley's biological design argument) that for all we know the alleged design in nature occurred via a very long series of random permutations, some of which are bound to be ordered, and obviously any one which includes us would be an ordered one so there's certainty that if we are doing the investigation we shall discover the order -- Nietzsche famously argued for the 'eternal recurrence' suggesting that an infinite time not only does everything happen but that it happens over and over again an infinite amount of time ... but you're raising the question in terms of probabilities and certainties -- which is strong langauge -- if Aquinas/Nietzsche are right, this very conversation is itself an eventual certainty to occur -- but does that make it any less amazing, meaningful, reason to base beilef in (say) a designing God on? Hm.