In the movie
Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd (played by Jim Carrey) asks Mary (played by Lauren Holly) what the chances are that a "guy" like her and a "girl" like him could end up together. When Mary gives him the unfortunate news that the chances are "one out of a million" he optimistically replies, "
So you're telling me there's a chance. Yea!" What does it mean for there to be a chance? What does it mean for something to be possible? In a textbook I used as an undergraduate student,
Thermal Physics, by Charles Kittel, one of the end-of-chapter problems asks what the probability is that 10
10 monkeys (more than the entire population of people on the earth) typing on typewriters for the entire age of the universe could type Shakespeare's play
Hamlet?
1 The calculated odds turn out to be 1 in 10
164,316. Perhaps the most profound part of the problem is its in-text title:
The meaning of "never." I have talked with people whose understanding of probability aligns with that of Lloyd. They think that if the odds of something occurring are not identically zero, then there is a possibility that the event may occur. But from a scientific viewpoint, when the odds become small enough, that means "never." A commonly used cutoff in science for something that will "never" happen tends to be somewhere from about 10
-50 to 10
-100. So I guess maybe Lloyd does have a chance.
This is the final blog post in a series in which I have applied some general principles that are helpful for determining the validity or truth of a scientific proposition to certain claims and ideas proposed by a Christian world view. Because these principles can be used to assist in determining the veracity of any idea, then if Christian claims are true, they should hold up under such an examination that uses reasonable criteria to determine their validity.