OK JimB, you and Todd are going to have to get out of your system that preconceived “robed old guy with human characteristics.” Perhaps hypnotism and/or electric shock?

Your emergent outcomes wouldn’t exist without the low entropy at the beginning, 13 billion years ago; and the odds that entropy would be so low are infinitesimal, at least according to Penrose’s math.

Perhaps we both have that “bent gene” you refer to, but that your faith is in chance, and/or in many universes, and/or in the atheism of the academics you study (except for great E. O. Wilson).

It’s a troubling question, isn’t it—what are the odds that the universe and we are here by chance? Seems to shake one’s faith in one’s atheism, doesn’t it? And just think of how happy you and Todd will make me this Christmas when y’all renounce your atheism.