We are the Evidence
If the universe is infinite, or rather infinitely expanding, then there would presumably be innumerable instances in which the circumstances on a planet, let’s say, are conducive to the emergence of life, although the mere fact of circumstances being conducive does not imply that life will emerge, however conducive the environmental prerequisites are for the emergence of life.
Given the point of the meme, it seems that the emergence of life would be extraordinarily fragile in its early instances at best, and, ultimately, unlikely to find the correct path toward what has become biological life on this planet. And, of course, when we look out into space, we see no evidence for life anywhere out there, though we search and hope nonetheless.
The staggering voids, the cosmic explosions emptying into their own self-made eternities, the vast flowing nebulae, wherever we look we see hope, but no evidence. And perhaps we are alone, given the odds, perhaps we are.
Our world is biology’s experimental laboratory, in a sense, and we ourselves are part of that experiment. If the universe is ever-expanding and infinite, that would imply a presumably innumerable possibility of planets that could be habitable to life and possess the life inducing chemical prerequisite to even start toward the emergence of the first building blocks of life. We might call these possible life inducing circumstance life’s “experimental settings”. In a presumably infinite universe there are a presumably innumerable experimental settings where life might occur. In each experimental setting the proverbial die would be tossed or, as the meme suggest, an attempt at solving the bike lock with 74 dials is made.
Every experimental setting is an attempt at a solution to “unlock” the protein code. It seems clear that the vast majority of instances would logically lead to a dead end in protein folding and, therefore, not lead to the emergence of life. However unlikely it may be, in an infinite universe with every experimental setting working its way through the combinations of numbers, for all intents and purpose, not one of them need reach the correct solution. And lo and behold, when we look out into the voids and gaze into the distant solar systems, we see no evidence for life out there anywhere. As Enrico Fermi pointed this is a paradox. With presumably billions of stars in the Milk Way galaxy alone, let alone the innumerable other galaxies across the universe, some of these stars most have planets within the habitable zone and some of these most be conducive to life by some degree. But, with so much potential, where is all the life?
As the meme so succinctly points out, life is extraordinarily difficult to come by, but however unlikely it is we do have at least one instance in which the combination has been solved and resulted in life and we, biological life on Earth, are the solution to those 74 dials.
We only need one instance to show that it is possible. And so, however statistically unlikely it may be, the path through the murk of the protein folding problem may well be a mostly insurmountable problem and no doubt much much more often leads to a dead end, but we ourselves are one, single instance in which what would otherwise be a statistically very unlikely circumstance has, in fact, emerged as a solution to that problem.
In an infinite universe there are presumably innumerable settings in which life might emerge. With so much potential for life, perhaps we are alone. Perhaps we are the only instance in which the circumstances were ever so perfectly orientated to solve the problem of life. Most of these settings will result in nothing. In fact, given the statically unlikelihood, almost none of them will. But however unlikely it is, an attempt is made at solving the 74 dialed bike lock in every setting and we ourselves are evidence that the path through the protein folding problem has a solution. It only has to happen once for life to emerge, and we are that once.
Footnotes:
Further details given by CrossExamined.org via Facebook account detailing the unlikely nature of life without a creator: “The theory of macroevolution is this: Once you have a code like DNA you can change the order of the letters along the spine, and if you change them enough eventually, you’ll get a new life form. Imagine a bike lock with 74 dials. For a new DNA protein to form, there are 10⁷⁴ DNA sequences that won’t work to every 1 that will. To put this number in perspective, there have only been 10¹⁷ seconds in earth’s history. And this is just to get one protein, keep in mind to create even the simplest life forms, you need about 250 proteins. Even if you could get a new protein to form by some miracle, you’d then have to repeat the miracle 249 more times. It takes a lot more faith to trust in those kinds of numbers than to accept that life was created.”
