The miracle of you is that you shouldn’t even be here. Not if you consider the odds.
I had an excellent statistics teacher at Murray State University. A couple of them, in fact. One of the first things he did was show us the folly of playing the lottery. He patiently explained the basics of statistical mathematics so that we understood completely how small our chances of winning the big prize is. And how casinos use long odds to build massive amounts of wealth. As he put it, and as we all inherently know, “The house always wins.” And that’s true. The house always wins, even when it loses. (Because a huge payout inevitably garners publicity, which draws even more poor schmucks in to play the wheels of fortune.)
The odds of winning the lottery, or in Vegas, are usually calculated to be somewhere in the millions. Often it’s compared to the odds of getting struck by lightning. But consider this: the odds that you are alive here on this planet are so large as to be almost incalculable.
Let’s go back 250 years in our example. (The further back you go, the higher the odds that you would never have been born).
First, you have to consider the odds that one of your ancestors would survive, much less procreate. Then you have to figure out the odds that they would conceive of a child. (It’s one in several million for each try). Then the odds that their child would survive. Then you have to figure out the odds that their child would survive and procreate and the offspring live, etc. and on and on. All the way down to you, continuously, in an unbroken or uninterrupted line.
If you go back 10 generations (250 years) the chance of you being born at all is at most 1 divided by 6 x 10100 or 1 in 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
I don’t even know what you call that number. Maybe bazinga-trillion? Whatever it is, the odds put your chance of being here at essentially ZERO. (Even lower as you go further back in time.)
I’m sure you have read all your life about how we are miracles of creation. This proves it.
Are you feeling lucky now?
© Wade Kingston