It seems that while I was away for Easter, somebody has resurrected
that tired old argument that life is simply too improbable to have
arisen by chance.

Now, in one sense, I have to agree, that the previous history of our
world should lead to this particular points is pretty unlikely; after
all, it's only one possible outcome among many equally probable ones.
If somebody asked me what do you get when you leave a dead planet
alone for 4.5 billion years, the GameBoy would probably not be my
answer.

But *any* state would just be one out of many improbable ones. Hint.
"Pick a number between 1 and 10". "3.5". "Wow, you picked that one
out of infinitely many possibilities! It can't have been chance, God
must have made you do it!"

There's another perspective that makes the argument even more obviously
ludicrous. Recall the argument.

"I find it impossible to believe that life could just arise by chance.
I therefore believe that (by chance?) there happens to be an omnipotent
omniscient God who just happened to create it in this particular form
out of all the possible ones."

Now, why on earth should I see the existence of a God who just happens
to create life the way we see it as more probable than the life just
happening to arise? To my mind, it seems as if more argument is needed
to explain the existence of an infinitely complex creator than that
of finitely complex organic goop. It is more parsimonious to assume
that things just fell together than to assume that there just happened
to exist for no apparent reason something capable of sticking it
together.