Does Life Prove God?

Whenever theism dons the scientific mantle you will hear that God (or some god) must exist because life exists. The chances of life existing are so small, it is said, that God is the only feasible explanation.

The answer here is the same as the answer to the argument from design and other similar arguments: the supernatural can explain nothing. It is a pseudo-explanation: we are simply told nothing when we are told that life was created, via mysterious processes, by an inherently unknowable -- indeed ineffable -- "being" that "exists" outside of and prior to existence. (Treblig gainges.) Any scientific theory, however meager the evidence, is superior to a supernatural "explanation" because, being logically contradictory, that "explanation" doesn't even rise to the status of theory.

Drawing again on George H. Smith's Atheism: The Case Against God, I note that the argument from life bases its argument on the improbability of a spontaneous and simultaneous coming together of all the chemical prerequisites for life. But the story of life's emergence need not describe the process as happening in a single moment. If the sudden emergence of life seems unlikely, how about, Smith asks, life as "the result of many intermediate steps and synthesizing processes"?

Finally, Smith and others note, if the emergence of life is improbable -- that is, merely one possibility among an astronomically large number of equally probable possibilities -- then so is everything else we observe in nature. Smith writes:

When it rains, the probability that a particular raindrop will fall exactly as it does is, according to [this] use of probability, extremely slight. There are endless ways in which a raindrop may fall, if we consider each possibility as equally probable. Must we then believe in the existence of a rain god, who directs each raindrop? Does the alleged improbability that a raindrop falls as it does constitute evidence of intelligent planning?

Such an argument for a god of rain is nonsensical, but it is essentially the same as the argument for a god of life. If we regard every conceivable arrangement of atoms at any given moment as equally probable, then the "probability" of life is extremely unlikely. But, on this basis, the probability of every occurence in the universe is also extremely small. The "chance" combination of atoms needed to form a simple rock is extremely unlikely, when contrasted with the billions of different "possibilities" open to these atoms. Is it not miraculous that, out of the endless possibilities, billions of atoms come together in exactly the right way to produce a glob of dirt?

By the way, if an omnipotent God who wanted to create life, surely he could have created life for any conditions. The claim that only one set of conditions is appropriate for life seems to suggest a limit on the God of unlimited power. Surely, God would have us survive the minute change that theists say would otherwise wipe us out. 

At any rate, the evolutionary evidence demonstrates not that the universe was "fine-tuned" to life, but the other way round. That was Darwin's point in formulating his concept of natural selection. Which account makes more sense?

The choice is not between God and chance because we have a third alternative: the laws of identity and causality. Things are what they are, and their natures determine what they do and what happens to them under specific circumstances. Existence exists (eternally) and, whatever its exact origins -- if it had an origin -- life exists. There's no need -- or room -- for the absurdity of the supernatural.