You see, when you looked at a human's face, you had to comprehend the luck that brought that person there. Isobel Martin has a total of 150,000 generations before her, and that only includes the humans. That was 150,000 increasingly unlikely copulations resulting in increasingly unlikely children. That was a one in quadrillion chance multiplied bu another quadrillion for every generation.
Or around twenty thousand times more than the number of the atoms in the universe. But even that was only the start of it, because humans had only been around for three million Earth years, certainly a very short time compared to the three and a half billion years since life first appeared on this planet.
Therefore, mathematically, rounding things up, there was no chance at all that Isobel Martin could have existed. A zero in ten-to-the-power-of-forever chance. And yet there she was, in front of me, and I was quite taken aback by it all; I really was. Suddenly it made me realise why religion was such a big thing around here. Because, yes, sure, God could not exist. But then neither could humans. So, if they believed in themselves - the logic must go - why not believe in something that was only a fraction more unlikely?
The Humans, P207
Matt Haig
ISBN 978-0-85786-876-3
No comments :
Post a Comment