I was raised by educated people to be science-oriented and skeptical. The latest mathematics say: it’s appropriate to party.

For a long time, I didn’t believe in miracles. Now, some days, it seems like I don’t believe in anything else. What aspect of reality is not wondrous? Is there an atom somewhere that is not somehow connected to us all?

A couple of years ago, a childhood friend won the California lottery.

The only winner. Fifty million bucks. After taxes, I hear he took home about $30 million. I haven’t seen him, but mutual friends tell me he’s the same old guy. Thank goodness.

Funny thing is, of all the kids I knew growing up, he was the one most obsessed with luck. Superstitious. He’d say stuff like “If I make it all the way to school without stepping on a crack, that means I aced the math quiz.”

His news got me thinking about miracles, luck, and odds. And fate. And existence. And so on….

Mathematicians have been doing some interesting work along these lines. The latest research suggests that the probability of your existance is basically indistinguishable from zero. They approach it this way:

1. Odds your parents ever meet: 20,000 to 1
2. Odds that once your parents meet, they hook up and produce kids together: 2000 to 1
3. Odds the right sperm and egg meet to create “you-ness”: 400 quadrillion to 1
4. Odds all your ancestors reproduce successfully in an unbroken line for 4 billion years: 10 to the 45th, to 1
5. Odds all your ancestors produce the right sperm/egg combo in each generation to ultimately create “you-ness”: 10 to the 2,640,000th power, to 1

Multiply all these odds, and the odds of your existence come to 10 to the 2,685,000th power, to 1.

For perspective: all the atoms in the universe come to just 10 to the 80th. A vastly smaller number. This begs some obvious existential and theological questions.

If the odds of your existence are mathematically indistinguishable from zero, doesn’t that make you the ultimate accident?

Or, maybe, you have every right to be here, and the universe is unfolding as it should. Maybe it’s kind of an “all or nothing” deal.

Thirty million is nothing. You’ve already won the biggest lottery in all of eternity. Me, too. It’s a miracle.

Let’s live it up.