Religion

[Perfect Stu]

Originally posted by Xantar
Well, of course it's extremely lucky, but on the other hand, your reasoning is somewhat circular. Yeah, we're the correct distance from the sun and all that, but if that wasn't true, we wouldn't know about it. Because we wouldn't exist.

That may be kind of confusing, so let's put it this way. If we were a couple of observers who don't come from any particular place (like angels, maybe) looking around the universe and finding that it just so happens that Earth is situated just right for life, then your reasoning would have some validity. We would be neutral, unbiased observers.

But that's not what we are. Our very existence assures that the conditions are just right, and we can't form any idea of what the probabilities would be. For all we know, we really are the product of an accident. Back when we were created, however that happened, the odds might have been stacked against us by a billion to one or they might have been so favorable to us as to be certain. We have no way of knowing which it is because if the odds had tipped the other way, we would never have known it.

And by the way, the universe is a pretty big place. Nobody can say for certain that there is no intelligent life out there. Sure, there isn't any as far as we know, but how much of the universe do we really know? And the truth is we probably wouldn't recognize intelligent life out there. After all, what would it look like?

My religious beliefs are more or less well known, so I won't go over them.

It's not confusing at all. I know exactly what you mean...For all we know, it could be chance. For all we know, it could be a number of things, possibly something of which would be beyong our conprehension.

It's hard to have a reasonable discussion about something SO mysterious and subjective. It's even harder for a group of people to agree completely with each other about such a thing.

And for the record, I said 'frpm our knowledge', there are no signs of intelligent life. Possibly there is intelligent life out there, beyond where man can currently roam in space. Possibly there is intelligent life fairly nearby but we have no means to detect it. Either way, I never ruled out the fact that someone/something could be out there.