Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!paul.rutgers.edu!christian From: HWT@bnr.ca (H.W.) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Anthropic Principle(s) Message-ID: Date: 19 Oct 90 08:19:17 GMT Sender: hedrick@paul.rutgers.edu Lines: 34 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu My understanding of the notion of anthropic principle is that there are two of them: The laws of nature and universal constants are currently found to permit life as we know it only at values within 5-10% of those currently observed. For example, if the energy released on fusing hydrogen as about 10% higher, there would be no long-lived stars. If it were 10% lower, there would be no warm planets. Variations in gravity on the same order would prevent galaxies and planetary systems. 1) the 'weak anthropic principle' (generally accepted) The universe appears to be hospitable to life. However, this is only because there is life to observe it. 2) the 'strong anthropic principle' (not generally accepted) The universe appears to have been designed to be hospitable to life. The weak anthropic principle asserts implicitly that the existence of life is irrelevant to the properties of fusing hydrogen - just coincidence. Essentially the strong anthropic principle is the 'argument from design' for the existence of God. And that's fairly old and familiar, I hope. Reference: try 'A Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking. There are no equations, so do not fear the book. [I find these arguments interesting. But it's hard to know what to make of them. E.g. suppose that the universe is cyclical, and each time we get a random collection of constants. This might be the only one out of 10**10 times that life developed. Of suppose that other values permit other sorts of interesting things than "life as we know it". If those values occured, the entities that existed then would also think how amazing it was that the right parameters existed. --clh]