The naturalist insists that the universe, life, and our hospitable planet came into being by random chance. Joe Coffey, author of Smooth Stones: Bringing Down the Giant Questions of Apologetics, illustrates the absurdity of that claim, and the necessity of suspending one’s normal way of thinking in order to accept it.
Alvin Plantinga, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, compared this theory to a poker game in the Wild West. The dealer deals himself four aces twenty times in a row. Everybody starts to reach for their guns, and the dealer says, “Wait, wait, wait! I want you guys to think about something. In all the billions and billions of poker games that have gone on in this world and other worlds, don’t you think eventually it could happen that a dealer could deal himself four aces twenty times in a row and not be cheating?” And the people around the table would say, “Yeah, that’s a possibility. Now we’re gonna kill you!”
Because nobody operates on a line of possibility that thin.
—Joe Coffey, Smooth Stones: Bringing Down the Giant Questions of Apologetics (Cruciform Press, 2011), 28.
As you probably would guess, the chances of randomly drawing four aces twenty consecutive times from a deck of only fifty-two cards is many times greater than the chance of unintentionally producing the universe and all it contains. If we all know the dealer is a liar and a cheat, why should we believe scientists who tell much taller tales than that?
Cruciform Press publishes one new book each month, and offers subscriptions in print or ebook formats for a very reasonable price. Books may also be purchased individually. For more information, visit www.cruciformpress.com.
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3 Comments:
#1 || 11·06·23··09:11 || Daniel
I would have guessed that the chances of unintentionally producing the universe would have been many times greater than the chance of merely drawing four aces 20 times from a finite deck of cards.
#2 || 11·06·23··13:57 || David Kjos
Contrarian.
#3 || 11·06·25··09:36 || Gordan
I'll probably use that illustration in my teaching.
But, whenever we talk about the "probability" of evolution, it always bugs me: Who gets to set the odds that life appeared from non-life for no reason? However outrageous you set that number, I say you've been astonishingly generous.