If it is agreed that a Universe that lasts for less than a second or is only composed of light are not suitable places for life to come into existence then we must conclude that we are extraordinary lucky that the Universe is such so as to support life. Many people such as Paul Davies and Brandon Carter have compiled books containing many other such coincidents which together make the existence of intelligent observers the most stupendously unlikely event imaginable.
In response to this amazing discovery, two seperate schools of thought have emerged, each with its own theory which purportedly explains how a Universe such as the one that we observe could come into being. The first is typified by scholars such as R ichard Swinburne, these Theists claim that an omnipotent being with the desire and power to create a Universe with intelligent observers must have actually fulfilled that desire. According to Baye's theory of confirmation, if a theory entails the observation of some evidence that would otherwise be unexpected and that evidence is actually discovered then the probability that the theory is true is increased. The theory that God exists entails the intelligent beings will also exist, therefore the fact that we do exist and that this is so unlikely, greatly increases the probability that God exists. What we end up with is an argument from design that resembles Paley's watch argument but it is the laws of nature and not the parts of the human eye that resemble a clockwork mechanism.
The other school of though maintains that the existence of many, possibly infinitely many, spatially and/or temporally isolated universes (small 'u') each with randomly determined natural laws and/or initial conditionswould also entail that a universe such as the one that we observe should exist. The observation of a life bearing universe equally well confirms the Many Worlds Theory and the argument from design. Supporters of the multiverse or world ensemble often claim that theoretical and empirica l physics often supports their theory. If the search for the so-called missing mass is successful then we will have evidence that the universe will one day stop expanding and contract into a Big Crunch. At this space-time singularity the laws of nature may somehow be randomly changed before the everything bounces back into an expansionary phase again. Hugh Everett's 1957 quantum Many Worlds Interpretation is supposed to remove some of the paradoxes of the Copenhagan Interpretation of the same subject by postulating that the universe actually splits off into causally isolated worlds each time a quantum possibility is realised. In one sense, Shroedinger's cat is both alive and not alive in two completely seperate, co-existing and equally real universes. The existence of spatially seperated regions of which our universe is merely one, is one alleged consequence of the Inflationary theories of Tryon, Gott, and Linde.
The debate between these groups is both as active (thanks to the recent books of Paul Davies) as it is unlikely to reach any kind of satisfactory conclusion. However, I do believe that it is possible to show that the empirical grounding for the debat e could be misplaced. I will use an analogy to demonstrate my point. Given that a few seconds ago I had one hundred fair coins in my hand and that I toss in the air and they all amazingly land "heads" up, how should we explain this incredibly unlikely event. One explanation which is supposed to be similar to the argument from design is that God may have interfered with the coins in some way so that they would all land on heads. Maybe this was done to impress us, it does not really matter. The second possibility is that we were observing one of 2 to the power of 100 coin tossess, sooner or later it is expected that such a hundred "head"s combination will turn up. This explanation has an obvious similarity to the Many Worlds Theory. A third possibility is that one hundred "head"s is just one of those things that happens from time to time, after all it is a combination no more or less likely than any other. This is analogous to saying that the Universe's natural constants and starting conditions had to be something so why should I consider a Universe which produces life special or something that should be unexpected. This position is an argument that a sceptic may find attractive. Finally, a position that has been put forward by Brian Ellis and Graham Nerlich is that we should question the assumptions that led us to conclude that the Universe is apriori such an unlikely affair. In other words, we should question whether or not the coins were fair. Certainly, a rational person upon observing such an unlikely event as the coin toss should immediately check for two-headed coins. Ellis and Nerlich seem to be saying that there may be something wrong with our hot Big-Bang model of the Universe. Perhaps then we should only be satisfied with a model of the Cosmos which has the existence of intelligent observers as a consequence of its theory.
Finally, I remind the reader of Brandon Carter's Anthropic Principle, that is, intelligent life necessarily finds itself in a Universe that has the conditions requisite for the evolution and existence of intelligent life. This is of course a tautology and has little if any explanatory value. I look forward to any response to this short paper. Do you agree, disagree, want to know where to get references? Let me know on email - plrwb@flinders.edu.au -Richard Brown, Flinders University, Australia.
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November 16, 1995.