How a Dice can Show that God Exists
Believing in God isn’t a delusion
Some people say that human existence is a result of a roll of the cosmic dice, like the gambler who stakes his life savings on the next throw. We just got lucky in the lottery of life.
Some people say there’s no purpose in the universe, no grand plan, no God behind it all, and our numbers just came up, and here we are.
But I don’t believe and neither should you.
If I roll a dice, the chances of getting a six are one in six 1/6. That’s not too bad, but what are the chances of me rolling six twice in a row? Well, the odds get longer, it’s 1/6 * 1/6 = 1/36, that’s one in thirty-six, so I’d have to be pretty lucky to get two sixes in a row.
Now every time I add the chances of rolling another six in a row, the odds go up exponentially and it gets even more unlikely.
Now, what if I roll the dice 70 times and every single time I got a six? Okay, that’s pretty unlikely, but it’s possible, right?
Well, in fact, the chances of rolling six 70 times in a row are around 1in10⁵⁵. That’s a one with 55 zeros after it. Now just to put that in perspective.
How long would I have to stand here rolling the dice allowing about 5 seconds per roll before hitting that lucky streak and rolling 70 sixes in a row?
I have a mathematician friend who worked it out for me: On average, you would have to continually roll the dice for 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years before your numbers come up.
That’s a long time.
What if you applied that thinking to us?
What are the odds of us being here? The odds of rolling 70 sixes in a row is one in 10⁵⁵.
As it happens, those are the same odds of something called the expansion rate of the universe [1] being just right for the existence of us here today.
From the moment of the Big Bang, when our universe began to rapidly expand, the rate of that expansion was exquisitely finely balanced [2]. Any faster and the universe would have expanded too rapidly to allow the formation of chemicals, atoms, stars, and galaxies. Any slower and the universe would have collapsed back in on itself.
As it happens, the universe expanded in just the right way to allow for life to develop in the future, for us to be here. It hits 70 rolls of the number six in a row the first time.
The expansion rate of the universe is just one among 30 or so other incredibly sensitively finely-tuned constants and fundamental forces in the universe that must be just the way they are for the universe to be able to produce us.
Let’s imagine if I went ahead and roll the dice 70 times, and every time it came up six, no waiting for trillions upon trillions of years, it came up the first time (beginners luck) hardly you would assume that I must have rigged it, maybe the dice are loaded, maybe there are sixes on every side.
It can’t be chance.
Now let me ask you, why would we assume that this universe, with us in it, which is actually way more improbable than my 70 rolls, is just a result of chance?
The fact that we’re here shows that someone loaded the dice. In fact, maybe there are no dice at all.
What if the evidence points to this life-permitting universe actually being the product of an intelligent mind which intended for us to be here.
Now you could come up with some speculative other theory like maybe there’s an infinite number of universes giving you an infinite number of chances to roll the dice.
Maybe, but we don’t have any scientific evidence for it. So, if you’re hanging your hat on that possibility, then you’re every bit as committed to a faith position as the person who says God was behind it.
Believing in God isn’t a delusion. It’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion when we look at the fingerprints on our universe.
And if it’s true that we aren’t just the fluke results of a cosmic roll of the dice, and that we’re actually here because a grand designer intended us from the very beginning. Well, that’s worth staking something on.
References
- Expansion Rate of Universe
- The Expanding Universe: From Slowdown to Speed Up