Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hey... i'm not in this guild, but i would like to add my input.

I am not an atheist, though i do not believe in creationsim. I believe in evolution. However, the coincidences involved, the exact tuning of each atom, the way every single particle comes into play to not only create physical matter with concrete rules, but life itself- this seems a bit strange. in the words of vonnegut, why anything? why would atoms need to combine? why would oxygen and hydrogen need to have the exactly correct energy levels to always fuse into water, the life-sustaining compound? why would one chemical reaction be so special as to propogate itself and create not only thought but conciousness?

all of this just happening seems too far-fethced to me. I am no bible-thumper, i do not believe in the 7 days crap, at least not literally. I do, however, marvel at the coincidences that make not only life but matter possible and have concluded that it would jsut be too unlikely to just happen. i feel that there may be some force that had some kind of plan, and set all this up- a cosmic lego set or chemistry project, if you will

but none of it HAD to happen. although your analogy is sensible, of all the infinity of impossibility, reality in itself without sentience is a miracle.

everything happens to fit perfectly. to make the analogy more like it, it would be like a lottery winner then being struck by lightning while being abducted by aliens, while being bitten by a shark and discovering the last living tasmanian devil.

there is not merely one coincidence, but millions upon eachother that cointeract with eachother into this perfection.

Although there is little scientific evidence to back it up, I think that all the possible "dead universes" that do not support life do exist, in sufficiently remote dimensions (including the normal four). Note that this is true, for example, if you extrapolate further into the past or future, in which there was/will be no life. In other words, every lottery ticket with each number combination exists, winning large or smaller prizes depending on the combination. They are simply 'hidden'.

Again there is no reliable science to back this idea up, but it seems likely to me to be true (I don't normally rely on hunches, and wouldn't stake my reputation on this). However, I will say this; everything that can possibly exist does exist, somewhere, in space and time (and any hitherto undiscovered dimensions). If it does not exist anywhere in any dimensions then it would be improper to say that it can exist in any dimensions.

I mention all this because I dislike the notion that it is 'improbable' that we should find ourselves in a universe in which life can develop. The probability that it could happen wasn't low; it was 100%. It had to happen, because it did. We look at the universe from this perspective because this perspective has to exist; as does any other perspective. Life on other planets surely asks the same questions; why was I born on this planet, and not another? It is a foolish question; on another planet you would say the same thing.

Am I making sense?

Think of it this way. If we were three-eyed, five-legged, two-tailed beings that spoke in grunts and gurgles, the same question would be asked. "Why are things the way they are? Why have we evolved to be this perfect?"

The truth is, in fact, humanity is not perfect. We can be killed by organisms we can't even see. We can be born deformed. We have no natural form of protection (i.e., turtles, blowfish, armadillos) or attack (i.e., bears, sharks, hydralisks). The thing is, we have to take a step back, and look at all the possible courses evolution could have taken, but didn't. Why did it turn out this way? Why does a pair of dice sometimes come up 7 and other times 11?

Basically, given enough time, anything can happen. And I really don't think saying "a couple billion years" of evolution really gives you a good picture of just how vast that time span is.