[gort]

Given how well-suited our universe seems to be for life, I feel like we should admit that one of 2 things is true...

(1) There is a God who decides how things are.

(2) Many universes exist.

Actually I usually feel that the second is simpler than the first, despite my prejudices as a near-Catholic. But I'm increasingly skeptical about efforts to maintain that there's only one, unplanned, universe.

[lysium]

It really looks like some miracle that our universe allows life, but I don't think there is any effort: I can only write this comment because I live in a universe that allows life.

It's like marveling about how come that those two (great/ugly/wonderful/annoying/...) people are my parents, given that there are so many people in this world. What are the odds?

[gort]

"I can only write this comment because I live in a universe that allows life."

Sure; but my point is, it's really quite unlikely that the one and only unplanned universe would have life, at all. Life then seems like evidence for something...

"It's like marveling about how come that those two [...] people are my parents"

By contrast, I'm not sure what that would be evidence about.

[logfromblammo]

There is at least one crackpot theory out there that supposes that life will do something in the future that will influence the properties of the universe earlier in time. The super-civilization that exists in the far-future of the universe--one that is beyond Kardashev Type III--re-engineers the universe to use it for computation, so they can exist inside a simulation (and add cheat codes). In the process, universal constants are tuned for more optimal conditions, and that twiddling ignores time completely.

The original version had a lot more religion in it, particularly Christian eschatology.

This also leads to the possibility that our universe is actually a simulation running in another universe with different conditions.

If you really want to screw up your brain, consider that the universe hosting the simulation of our universe might be the result of a simulation in our universe that hasn't been started yet.

[lysium]

How do you know it is unlikely? Currently, it is a fact.

Let's assume there was a state were any universe was equally possible. When was that state? Does it make sense to describe states before the big bang, the beginning of time as we know it?

Even if it does make sense and our universe is very unlikely. It still can be pure luck (what I was trying to say with the parents example). The existence of our universe is no hint of its likelihood.

[ggg9990]

But our universe isn’t well suited for life, our planet is.

So 1) there is a god or 2) many planets exist.

[gort]

"But our universe isn’t well suited for life, our planet is."

I suggest that most possible universes would have zero regions containing life.