You: The odds of us living in an ordered universe are quite good, actually. Think of it this way: A chaotic universe would only have one law of nature, namely chaos. If it had any others, then it would have some type of organization and would be not be chaotic. From this we can see that there is only one possible chaotic universe.

Orderly universes, on the other hand, come in many varieties. Imagine a million-million universes varying only in their upper limit to the speed of light. In one universe, the speed of light could be 185,000 miles per second, in another 200,000 miles per second, and in still another 55 miles per hour. There might even be a universe with no limit at all. There is an infinity of possibilities for orderly universes that differ only in their constant of the speed of light. Think of how many other "universal constants" there are! Gravity, Euler's constant, Avagadro's number; any of these could be varied in infinite ways.

From this we can see that there is an infinite number of orderly universes compared with only one disorderly universe. The odds, therefore, of us being in an orderly universe are infinity to one or, essentially, certainty.

Aaron: That is truly a dazzling misuse of statistics. I see that we would have to go quite deeply into some quite technical subjects if we wanted to pursue this line of reasoning any farther, and I don't think that either of us have the time for that. Let me move on to a less scientific and more human argument.

Go to next page