The Universe Is Too Improbable To Happen By Chance

During my time as an evangelical Christian, and later after I became an atheist, I've routinely heard Christians argue that "The odds of the universe being the way it is by chance are only 1: [Insert some large number here]. There's no way something like that could've happened by chance. Ergo, the universe must have been created by a deity. Therefore God exists." I've even heard some Christians try to claim that anything beyond "1:1*10^50" is "mathematically impossible" so the universe absolutely would've needed a guiding hand.

Today, I would like to debunk claim by way of demonstration: Pictured below is a deck of  54 cards (52 plus the Jokers). I shuffled it well, and then spread the cards out, face up on the table.

Take a moment to review this deck of 54 cards. Are you particularly awestruck by the ordering of those cards? My guess is that you probably are not. But do you know what the odds of getting all 54 cards in that exact order are? 1: 2*10^71 (which is billions of times less probable than 1:1*10^50).
To write it out longhand, the odds are 1:230,843,697,339,241,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

So why did you not find anything impressive in the ordering of these cards despite the absurd odds? The answer is, quite simply, that each and every one of those 2*10^71 possible permutations of 54 cards is equally probable, so it should cause no surprise that one of them turned up.

Now let's turn the clock back and do the same thing with just a minor tweak: Let's suppose that I shuffled the deck of cards and then - without looking - wrote down my prediction for the exact order of all 54 cards in that deck. Suppose that we then we spread the cards out on the table and found that my prediction was exactly correct. Under those circumstances, I expect that you would be (appropriately) awestruck about the ordering of the cards. In fact, it's quite likely that you would accuse me of having expertly stacked the deck.

So what is different about these two situations? Once again, the answer is quite simple: In the first scenario, we were not seeking to get any particular ordering of the cards. Each possible permutation was as likely as any other, and there was no one permutation that we were actively seeking to achieve. In the second scenario, however, my act of predicting the order established a single targeted outcome. By predicting the order of all 54 cards, I took one of those 2*10^71 possible outcomes, and established it as the one and only outcome that I was attempting to achieve.

In the same way, saying "the odds of the universe being the way that it is are minuscule" is only impressive if one believes that the universe was intended to be the way that it actually is. That is, we must accept the premise that there was a being who pre-existed the creation of the universe, and who specifically intended that the universe should be this way, as opposed to any of the near-infinite number of other possible ways that it could have been. The problem with accepting this as a premise of the argument, is that it is exactly the conclusion that the argument intends to prove.

On the other hand, if one does not assume the existence of a deity as a premise (which one cannot, if one intends for the argument to prove the existence of a deity), one must accept that every possible way that the universe could be is equally likely, and that the universe being the way that it is is no more unlikely than any other possible way that it could have been.

Now, one might wish to counter me by arguing that the cards on the table are quite random, but the universe is orderly. Surely it is less likely to get an orderly outcome than a disorderly one!

There is likely some truth to this. At first blush it seems like there would likely be more disorderly outcomes than orderly ones. That said: Consider the world that we live in. The sun causes plants to grow, and it gives us cancer. The clouds bring both gentle rains and hurricanes. The moon orbits the earth, but its speed is just a little bit off such that the moon is actually drift further away from the earth ever so slightly each year. The planets are generally free to orbit the Sun, but also the moon is still riddled with craters from meteoroids, and even the earth still has some craters from meteors that have struck the earth.

The world is defined as much by disorder as it is by order.

In much the same way, one can look at the cards above, and see that both Jokers are right next to 8's. Cards 3-5 are an Ace, King and Queen, in descending order. Shortly beyond that are three clubs all right next to each other. Near the center there are two jacks next to a king, and further down a jack next to two queens. Towards the right there are two queens, two 2s, two clubs, and two 4s.

If you look for only the orderly parts of the deck - only the parts that confirm your ideas that the deck is too orderly to come about by chance - you'll soon find that the deck appears much more orderly than you originally thought. In much the same way, if you only look for the orderly parts of the world, and ignore the disorderly parts, you'll quickly reach the conclusion that it must have been ordered by a deity, despite the numerous disorderly parts that stand as evidence to the contrary.