provides any insight . . . not an answer, just insight.
There are some constants in the fundamental laws of the universe that make life possible. I don't recall all the details, but I remember hearing something about the strong and weak forces, and if they were not just as they are, atoms would not be able to form. I may not have that exactly right, but there was something to that effect that I've heard. I don't think those are the only universal constants that fit right where they should be to make things possible as they are, but they're the only ones I can recall at the moment.
Then there are the local variables. The location of the earth in relation to the sun. It's in that narrow band where life is possible. A little bit this way, and a little bit that way, and life would not have formed. There's Jupiter that acts as our guardian, its formidable gravity sucking in or deflecting asteroids and comets, thereby preventing them from striking us.
There's the moon which does various things I can't recall at the moment that make life possible.
There are signs and patterns everywhere you look. Science is agnostic about these things, as it must be. But the human mind need not necessarily restrict itself to science. And by that, I mean that science can tell us what all these variable are, but not necessarily why they all worked out just so.
So when it comes down to that question, people address the issue in a couple of different ways. They can address the local variable by saying, "Well, in a universe so unimaginably large and unimaginably old, it was bound to work out at one point or another, wasn't it?" This seems strongly related to gambler's fallacy, but let's grant that for the moment.
What about the universal variables? People say, "Well, with infinite universes, it was bound to work out, wasn't it?" Though, the infinite universes interpretation of quantum physics has not yet been proven, to my knowledge. I'm not even sure if it's a fully qualified theory or just a hypothesis. But even if you take that out of the picture, people will still say, "Well, that's the way it is, because that's just the way it is."
And I say, "I believe because I believe."
I don't see that the those last two answers are much different from each other in their justification. |
