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Did the Universe Know We Were Coming?

I'm not sure who originally said it, but it's become a truism in science that "the universe has every appearance of having been created". The physical constants that control the structure of matter have to be extraordinarily finely balanced for the universe to be stable and supportive of life. The probability of them being in the right proportions is so infinitessimally small that it's hard to conceive how it could have happened by accident. It appears - as Freeman John Dyson put it - that “the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”

This apparent 'fine tuning' of the universe to support life is often presented as evidence for a creator.

It's also said that appearances can be deceptive. And of course, that's true. But it's normally one particular sense that's deceived, as in the case of an optical illusion. And the most of the time appearances are not deceptive at all. The grass appears to be green, and it is. My hair seems to be thinning with age. The bus appears to be late.

The fact is, the vast majority of the time things are more or less exactly as they appear. And the more attention we pay to something, and the more senses we bring to bear, the more likely we are to identify the reality behind the appearance. Science itself depends upon our ability to do so.

So if centuries of scientific study present us with the appearance of a universe that was created, personally I'm going with that, unless and until I see some evidence to the contrary.

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