The 'Anthropic principle' is the theory that our Universe was finely tuned and designed for human beings to appear. There are billions of possible combinations of notes, but only Beethoven 9th Symphony. Something similar appears to be happening in creation.
Francis Collins in his book (the language of Godp 144) quotes Stephen Hawking:
'If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size.' ('Brief History..., p138)
Collins also recommends JD Barrow and FJ Tipler, 'the Anthropic Cosmological Principle' (1986), and reproduces a quote from Freeman Dyson in that book:
'The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.' (quoted in Barrow and Tipler, p318)
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I'm fascinated by the Anthropic principle, yet there seem to be many who don't rate it highly, ostensibly from a scientific point of view. I wonder whether it is really from a philosophical point of view, that to posit a purpose to the creation of the universe is to reverse the order of events.
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