Sabbatum Excerpt: The Fine-Tuning Argument Against the Odds of Life Emerging from Non-Living Matter

The fine-tuning argument for God is strong and getting stronger, as the astonishingly precise balance of physical constants is continually clarified by science. For many folks, such as Antony Flew, the inference to God has become irresistible. But Flew’s third major reason for abandoning atheism is perhaps the strongest of all—the impossibility of life emerging spontaneously from non-living matter. Even given a universe hospitable to living systems, one that is tuned to the “life-station,” there remain insurmountable odds against life forming anywhere, even given the 15 billion years since the Big Bang. In the early 1980s two scientists, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, calculated the odds of life emerging from non-living matter to be one in 10^40,000. To put this enormous figure in perspective, consider that the number of atoms in the known universe is 10⁸⁰—a paltry sum by comparison. Moreover, consider the fact that statisticians, as a general rule, consider any “possibility” less than one in 10⁵⁰ to be impossible.