To answer: a lot of things are pretty unlikely. Consider how often life is known to occur and develop to the point we are at;
Well since we only know of one instance of life in the universe, and only one universe, that'd be one out of one, or
always.
There is probably a point in the universe from which no life could be detected, assuming there was something there that could sense what we sense without being alive. There, those non-living things could argue about how unlikely it is for a mixture of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, etc., to develop into automotons on its own into intelligent life over the course of millenniums, and one could say that since it is so unlikely, the possibility of it ever happening should be dismissed.
Not really. The formation of a self-replicating molecule isn't that much of a stretch, and from there evolution takes over.
The truth is that if you dismiss everything that goes beyond a certain level of unlikelihood, then you must deny our own existence.
Obviously not.
Also, does a metaphor have to be fake? Does it being a metaphor automatically dismiss any truth behind it?
It does dismiss the literal meaning. That's kind of, y'know, the
definition of metaphor.
So yeah, you can say that God is a metaphor for nature, the laws of physics, whatever. But then you have nothing to build a religion around.
What are the chances of another planet developing intelligent life (and by that, I mean, that if you pick a random planet, that planet will do as stated)?
Infinitesimal. But with billions of galaxies, each containing billions of star systems.... yeah.
Don't mind me, this is mostly to get this thread on my "Unread replies" list.
Won't work for long.
However,
Retrospective probability is meaningless because the reason things are the way they are is not random chance, but by the natural progression of a sequence of events.
Current quantum theory puts a small spanner in that theory; it dictates certain happenings on a quantum level are dictated by constrained probabilities for things to occur, so while not completely random, chance does still play a role.
That being said, this is only the current model's interpretation, and there were proponents for deterministic theories (Einstein was the most well known of these).
Hm, I vaguely remember something about the future being increasingly random and unpredictable the further you go, but also so being the
past, since the laws of physics work the same in both directions.