Editor’s Note: I am on a Blog Semi-Vacation until September 8, where I will be primarally posting updated and rewritten versions of old material or short get-to-the-point posts rather than the lengthy new material I usually do.

Follow up to: Is Naturalism Bleak and Hopeless?

In “Is Naturalism Bleak and Hopeless?”, I argued against the idea that mindless, purposeless arrangements of matter are incapable of having mind or purpose, saying that we can indeed lead a rich life even in a godless reality. I also argued against the idea that if death awaits all of us, then life doesn’t matter.

In this essay, I will follow up on that, and argue against the idea that our lives are an accident, as well as argue for the idea that accidents can have meaning.

Is Life An Accident?

First, let’s get our origins right. It is true that humanity came into existence by the blind, mindless, and purposeless of evolution, but understand that evolution is not random — evolution by natural selection will only result in a certain set of possible outcomes (that which is fit to survive) and will automatically exclude another set of outcomes (see here, here, and here).

Humanity was not designed with a purpose, or designed with any other thing — we weren’t designed, period. This leads many naturalist critiques to make the conclusions that humanity arose accidentally, saying that all life is an accident. This is very often given with the corollary that we should be depressed by this very fact, with the suggestion that we must be designed to have a purpose in order to have a purpose.

But let’s deal with the first part first: is it appropriate to call the origin of life an accident?

Is the origin of life like this?

What Is An Accident?

Again, it should be no surprise that we need to define what an accident is. What are we implying when we say life was an accident? What is an accident? I feel Wikipedia defines it best:

An accident is a specific, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, with no apparent and deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its occurrence.

We can now go down the definition and see if the origin of life fits this definition of “accident”:

• Was the origin of life specific? Well, it wasn’t a specific event that happend at a single time, but a great series of events, called evolution. I suppose you could say it was specific to the concept of life, but that’s still very broad.
• Was the origin of life unexpected? Of course. None of us knew ahead of time we would be born, no life form saw evolution coming, and evolution was blind, not conforming to any expectation.
• Was the origin of life unusual? Yes and no. A quick analysis of all the other known planets shows that life doesn’t originate just anywhere — it takes a very specific planet, such as Earth. However, was the origin of life unusual on Earth? It exists everywhere. Was life unlikely to evolve given the conditions on Earth? We really don’t know.
• Was the origin of life unintended? Sort of. Evolution certainly wasn’t intended by anybody, since it all happened blindly without direction. However, it wasn’t contrary to anyone’s intentions either.
• Was the origin of life an external action? That doesn’t make sense, since there is nothing the origin of life could be external to. Furthermore, it wasn’t an action, since there was no actor to create an origin of life. Such a requirement for an external action would make it have to be an action of God for it to be considered an accident.
• Did the origin of life occur in a particular time and place? It’s really hard to say without further research in abiogenesis. Life was a mostly gradual process, so it’s really difficult to point to a specific time when non-life suddenly turned into life. Also did it occur in one specific cave on Earth, or in multiple locations, or even on multiple different (yet to be discovered) planets. There’s no evidence pointing either way. Lastly, concepts of panspermia are at least plausible.
• Does the origin of life imply a generally negative outcome? Not at all. I think everyone agrees that we would rather have existed than not existed. For whatever the cause, the origin of life turned out to be pretty good for us.
• Could the origin of life have been avoided or prevented? Only by a truly devious time-traveler or by some extraterrestrial life, seeing as no humans were around at the time to possibly have stopped the event.

Is this all consistent with the definition of accident? I would argue not. We don’t know enough about the odds of life to say that it was a rare event (see here). Perhaps life wasn’t really an accident, but something that is regular, likely, and natural, such as the formation of planets.

If the origin of life is an accident, then it's more consistent with this money falling from the sky than the guy falling over on his bike.

A Most Fortunate Accident

So what are theists implying when they talk about life being an accident? They seem to operate on the idea that everything undesigned is an accident, which is weird. They insinuate that we should be unhappy that our life was not specifically designed for us. But so what?

Even if the origin of life was an accident, this is a happy accident. It wasn’t an unfortunate accident like a deadly car crash, but a positive one. The origin of life was more like the “I just found a twenty dollar bill on the ground. Yay!” kind of accident.

Accidents can be good. Think of winning the lottery. Neither the origin of life or winning the lottery was prearranged or predetermined in your favour, but it sure worked out well. You’re not going to get depressed after winning the lottery because it was accidental, and you certainly aren’t going to say that winning the lottery lacked meaning. A life that originated as an accident is still a meaningful one.

If anything, the idea that life was a positive accident should make us happier. How meaningful would it be to win the lottery and then find out it was only because someone rigged it for you? We can take reassurance that life was not handed to us, and it was not rigged in any human sense of the term.

Followed up in: Do We Need an Ultimate Purpose?

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