[MD] Dawkins quotes RMP on religion.

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
This is the great "anthropic debate" about why cosmic physics seems 
so finely tuned to the emergence of intelligent life (aka humanity) ....

[Arlo]
I don't see it this way at all. If anything, "humanity" seems like 
the rarest of the occurrences in the cosmos. If the cosmos were gear 
towards this, I'd expect there to be a mountain of evidence that 
"intelligent life" exists somewhere "out there". Don't get me wrong, 
I do NOT think we are alone in the cosmos, I just think that "life as 
we know it" appears to be rare, not common. Check out the Fermi 
Paradox for some interesting theorizing on this 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox).

The way I see it, "humanity" is a lucky fluke, owing its existence to 
a highly _improbable_ series of events, co-occurrences and 
evolutionary steps. Had it not been for that one rogue asteroid (to 
over simply one extinction theory), the "cosmos" seemed perfectly 
content with dinosaurs. Some, of course, posit that "dinosaurs" were 
part of a large, necessary "plan" to prepare the way for an 
oil-loving humanity eons later, that their entire existence was a 
pre-ordained path to oilhood so that "God's Children" (us) would one 
day be able to drive SUV's to work. While I understand how special 
that makes some people feel, I just don't but it. We are here not by 
design, but by luck, and given the overall emptiness (in terms of 
intelligent life) in the cosmos, I'd say we are here by a great deal of luck.