Letters to the Editor
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Regarding Dave's question...
I am going to just touch on your question, and I think it would be useful for others to offer alternative perspectives as well.
For me, the statistical likelihood of life spontaneously developing is a moot point. It did, here, for us. Our cosmic lottery ticket had the winning numbers. Unlikely? Perhaps. But the fact that we're here to talk about it demonstrates that it wasn't impossible.
Even statistics will tell you that long shots do come in.
Now, one might argue that I don't know that life came about without divine help. True, I don't. But I have yet to learn of any evidence in some kind of divine creator, whereas I have learned of a lot of evidence of a materialistic development of life. Like Wilson, I am best described as a provisional deist, however. I always found atheism to be just as faith-based as most religions. So far, we can no more prove the absence of God as the presence of God. Show me empirical evidence of God (and I don't see that statistical pyrotechnics by themselves constitute empirical evidence), and I will change my tune. So far, physics, biology, and evolutionary theory are doing really well without God though. There's certainly so much more to be learned, but in terms of hard evidence, God is striking out.
Beyond that, I'm not sure I'm even convinced that you can statistically prove that life is infinitesminally likely. I've read (as a layman to be sure) that life may be more likely than it might seem. I've even seen it suggested, by meeting a few basic conditions, life may be all but inevitable. Life not so different from us (defining "us" as all life on planet Earth) may require little more than liquid water, a fairly reliable energy source, and a mix of elements commonly found in the universe.
I don't want to presume to suggest that I am an authority on this topic by any means. I'm just a layman who enjoys reading and learning about science. People with actual education likely come along and show all the absurdities and scientific fallacies in my arguments here, and I will enjoy reading them, and being educated further!