Probably (pun intended) the most difficult part of my argument for God is to properly convey the unlikelihood of our universe forming because of an unplanned and undirected sequence of events. The odds against the existence of our universe are literally astronomical.
Even so, I may have finally stumbled upon a way to present the improbability in language anyone can understand, or layman’s terms, using the NCAA basketball tournament popularly known as “March Madness.” Recently, ESPN published a rather remarkable story about an otherwise unremarkable neuropsychologist named Gregg Nigl.
What was Mr. Nigl’s specific claim to fame? Had he made some innovative medical discovery that was some groundbreaking innovation in the world of sports? No. No skill was involved in his otherwise noteworthy “accomplishment.” Did he break some unique sports record like hitting the most bullseyes in a game of darts, or somehow make his mark in the Guinness Book of World Records? Nope, that wasn’t it, either.
What did Gregg Nigl do in 2019 that was so remarkable? He was the first person known to have gone a perfect 48-0 in predictions through two rounds of the NCAA tournament.
The odds against picking a perfect NCAA tournament bracket have been estimated as between a somewhat modest 1 in 120 billion for an experienced gambler to correctly guess all the tournament winners to treating the outcome of every game as a coin flip. Those “coin flip” odds have been estimated to be a stunning 1 in 9.2 quintillion.
But in 2019 for the first time in history, Nigl’s picks were perfect for two full rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, and the NCAA wanted to make Nigl temporarily famous. Tournament sponsor Buick flew Nigl and his son to California to watch the Sweet 16 and gave him $500 in spending money.
Nigl’s streak of successful guesses ran to 49-0 before one of his picks finally lost a game in overtime, and then the bottom sort of dropped out on his bracket for the final three rounds. Even so, Nigl finished with 53 correct picks out of 63 total games predicted. According to a statistician, making 49 correct predictions in a row was akin to winning the Powerball twice. In other words, some pretty unbelievable luck was involved. He got interview requests from several major news networks. Gregg Nigl had the fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol suggested we will have.
However, as soon as one of his predictions failed, the story was over.
As always happens with luck, Nigl’s luck eventually ran out. He still had a great time with his son, attending the NCAA tournament and getting to watch his favorite team play, the Michigan Wolverines (who also lost the game Nigl attended to Texas Tech.) He also watched Texas Tech defeat his pick to win the entire tournament, Gonzaga. After managing to achieve perfection for two full rounds, Nigl struggled across the finish line, only predicting about half the games correctly in the final three rounds.
According to ESPN, 40 million Americans fill out an estimated 70 million brackets every year, The article accurately said, “No one has ever picked a verified perfect men’s bracket, and it’s probably not going to happen in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our kids, or their kids, or their kids.”
By now you’re probably wondering, what does Gregg Nigl’s improbably lucky run at the NCAA tournament have to do with The God Conclusion?
The answer is simple — to believe in an unplanned world that exists due to chance, you have to believe in the ability to not only pick one perfect NCAA bracket, but at least http://fhaloanmichigan.org/doc.php five consecutive perfect NCAA tournament brackets in a row. The estimate produced by Sir Roger Penrose based on the work of Lord Martin Rees is 1 in 10 to the 300th power, which is the equivalent of predicting five consecutive perfect brackets, and that’s just to satisfy the improbability of a fine-tuned Big Bang.
However, if the goal is to solve the mystery of life, in an unplanned universe we must multiply the probability of fine-tuning to the probability of cosmic inflation and the probability of abiogenesis (both equally unlikely.) I’m not going to pretend I’m a math expert so I’m not going to even try to represent some value as the probability that life itself could exist due to a series of very serendipitous unplanned but necessary events that had to happen in a specific sequence in order for life to exist.
Even my atheist friend Tony Zoltai agreed with me during our most recent conversation that the improbability of the Big Bang should be multiplied against the improbability of cosmic inflation and the improbability of abiogenesis. The probability against choosing one perfect NCAA bracket is so unlikely it is virtually impossible to believe it will ever happen but you need so much more luck than that to resolve the improbability of life, the universe, and everything, as Douglas Adams titled one of his famous books.
An unplanned universe is extraordinarily unlikely and even statistically impossible if the estimates are even close to correct. One must be an atheist to believe in an unplanned universe. For that reason, atheism seems to be illogical because correctly picking five perfect NCAA brackets in a row is equivalent to the improbability associated with the Big Bang, and we must also consider the improbabilities of cosmic inflation, abiogenesis, and the origin of consciousness as very difficult problems to resolve in order to explain our existence.
As they so often do, the writers at the Babylon Bee explained the reality of trying to pick one perfect NCAA bracket in this hilarious headline: Woman Unable To Distinguish Between Basketball and Hockey About To Smoke Your March Madness Bracket Again.
How many perfect NCAA brackets would we have to predict to equal the improbability of the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, and abiogenesis? Fifty? Five hundred? Five thousand?
How much worse than 1 in 9.2 quintillion do the odds against success need to get before we must concede the odds against an unplanned universe make it impossible to believe?
Remember, one single wrong prediction means universal death.
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