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Modern
science has discovered that the conditions necessary for life are
extraordinarily improbable. Let’s divide the requirements into four
categories, all of which are essential for the existence of life: a
viable universe; the right atoms; a habitable environment; and an
effective genetic code.
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One
of the choices in the creation of the Universe had to be very close to
zero for life to be possible. In fact, it must not differ
from 0 by more than 1 in the 50th decimal digit. The odds of
that are the same as the odds of drawing one card from each of 29
shuffled decks of playing cards and having each drawn card be the
A♠---I wouldn’t bet on it.
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copyright©
2008
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Earth
is a wonderful and extraordinarily improbable habitat. We are located
at the right distance from the center of a favorable galaxy. Our Solar
System formed at the right time, with only a single star that has just
the right mass. Earth is protected by a big brother, Jupiter, and our
seasons are consistent due to a little sister, our Moon.
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I
believe his quandary was: do the laws of nature and mathematics allow
the existence of universes quite different from ours?
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How
likely are humans? We are defined by our genetic code—our DNA that
contains 3 billion base-pairs. All our DNA is 99.9% the same.
What are the odds of 3 billion randomly arranged base-pairs matching
human DNA? About the same as drawing the A♠ from one billion decks.
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