Life Is Fine-tuned to the Universe

While slight changes in the constants of physics could make life as we know it impossible, what about life as we do not know it? We have no reason to believe that our kind of carbon-based life is the only form that is possible under every possible variation in constants and the laws of physics. I have shown that long-lived stars, which are regarded as necessary for the building of the chemical elements that constitute living structures, can be expected for a huge range of physical constants. Similarly, [physicist] Anthony Aguire examined the universes that result when six cosmological parameters are varied by orders of magnitude and found that they do not preclude the existence of intelligent life.

Furthermore, modern cosmology indicates that multiple universes may exist with different constants and laws of physics. In that case, it is no more surprising that we live in a universe suited for us than it is that we live on the planet suited for us—Earth rather than Mars or Venus. The universe is not fine-tuned to life; life is fine-tuned to the universe. [Citations omitted.]

--Victor J. Stenger (1935-2014), physicist, "Flew's Flawed Science" 

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