anthropic principle Religion is often thought to be out-of-play to scientific study and it is often taught that science could not explain how the cosmos began. However, is this all entirely true? In regards to disproving a particular religious experience, beliefs, texts, and history, science would be seen as out of bounds to play an argument against. Although science can explain an alternative solution to how the universe works and how it began. (Or if it began at all) In this sense no religious text or believe could disprove the science suggesting the alternative. So it is safe to say that the argument that science can’t disprove religion can also be turned around on itself. Although the atheist belief of how everything works can be seen, tested, and reviewed by multiple people in its results offering information that is normally out of reach of the everyday view. For instance, Daniel Dennett mentioned in his book Breaking the Spell that “you are normally oblivious of your own blind spot, and people are typically amazed to discover that we don’t see colors in our peripheral vision. It seems as if we do, but we don’t, as you can prove to yourself by wiggling colored cards at the edge of your vision—you’ll see motion just fine but not be able to identify the color of the moving thing.” Science has been able to find answers that are visible to the world, with proof, ideas that an everyday person would not even consider. Undoubtedly, religion does offer a well structured argument that really throws people off perspective and to the average person seems to be lost to think there is no other answer. As complex as the universe is given that it has numerous variables that, if changed in the slightest, would make the universe inhabitable. Noting this, it seems nearly imposable for an instance like this to work out so perfectly to our advantage. This is known as the anthropic principle.

By definition, the anthropic principle states that humans should take into account the constraints that human existence as observers imposes on the sort of universe that could be observed. In other words, the only universe we can see is one that supports life. If it were a different type of universe, we would not exist to see it. Inconclusively, we are figuratively a needle in a stack of 100 billion haystacks. So from the needles perspective, it is easy to find itself, but from every other part of the 100 billion haystacks, the needle appears to be impossible to find. In a planetary sense, our planet is in perfect track to what a planet needs to support life, thus being able to support life. Now under the concept that these conditions are rare, it seems entirely possible considering how many unsuccessful tries the cosmos was given. It is estimated that the cosmos as we can see consists of over a billion different galaxies each consisting of over 100 billion planets. That would be in total, there are 100 billion billion (or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000) planets in the universe. So even if the chances of all the building blocks required to produce life are 1 in 100 billion, there would be billions of planets producing life. (Take a note how big a billion actually is; A billion credit cards combined would weigh the same as 1562 hippopotamuses, 52 blue whales, or 78 brachiosaurus. If a billion credit cards stacked up they would be as high as: 120 Mt. Everests or 7,219 Great Pyramids) Getting past that it is easy to say that even if we are the ONLY planet in the universe with life, it is statically very possible that it would happen.

“The anthropic principle is usually applied not to planets but to universes. Physicists have suggested that the laws and constants of physics are too good - as if the universe were set up to favour our eventual evolution. It is as though there were, say, half a dozen dials representing the major constants of physics. Each of the dials could in principle be tuned to any of a wide range of values. Almost all of these knob-twiddlings would yield a universe in which life would be impossible. Some universes would fizzle out within the first picosecond. Others would contain no elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. In yet others, matter would never condense into stars (and you need stars in order to forge the elements of chemistry and hence life). You can estimate the very low odds against the six knobs all just happening to be correctly tuned, and conclude that a divine knob-twiddler must have been at work. But, as we have already seen, that explanation is vacuous because it begs the biggest question of all. The divine knob twiddler would himself have to have been at least as improbable as the settings of his knobs.” (Richard Dawkins) Although as far as scientist know, its possible that these knobs were never able to be readjusted and that physics works under the laws that it does because it has to in order to work at all. Even if that is not the case, understanding the planetary anthropic principle it works the same way when it comes to the universe(s). If there are a series of different universes, with an unknown number or infinite number of them, it would seem unlikely that we of all universes would be the ones that could produce life, although the fact that we are able to observe that scenario guarantees that we are a universe that can produce life. In other words, if there were only universes that could not produce life, there would be no life to question how it would. “As physicists have said, it is no accident that we see stars in our sky, for a universe without stars would also lack the chemical elements necessary for life. There may be universes whose skies have no stars: but they also have no inhabitants to notice the lack.” (as quoted in The God Delusion)

….This passage will be added to later on with additional content including the anthropic principle regarding to life itself and much more.