• Question: Does the Universe Have a purpous? Ever since people started thinking systematically about the world, there has been a widespread impression that the universe exists partly to serve the interests of humanity. That is, that nature is arranged to make it possible for human being to be here. Galen, the Greek medical scientist and philosopher, said, “The reason the sun is where it is relative to the Earth is so that the Earth would not be too hot or too cold for us.” That is a very crude example, but there is a general impression that we somehow have a special significance built into nature. I don’t think that’s true.

    Asked by abster to Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think the universe exists to serve humanity – indeed I don’t think it has a purpose at all

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Did you know there are tools on line that can check for plagiarism? So you can enter text and it compare it to text available on the internet to see if its been taken from elsewhere. Its pretty clever technology.

      Answering the question – I don’t think there is a purpose above survival.

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I don’t think the universe has a purpose. I believe the most likely reason for the existence of the universe is that it was the result of a random fluctuation, perhaps one of an uncountable number of others.

      You write very well abster. Have you heard of the anthropic principle?

      Wish I had more time to talk about this..

    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I agree with you – I don’t think humans have any special purpose etc. I think we just happen to be one of the intelligent (sort of…) inhabitants of the Universe. There are theories like the Anthropic Principle, that say that we are here and able to view and study the Universe because all of the conditions are “just right” – so if some basic physical constants were even slightly different, stars would not work like they do and so life would never eveolve etc. – but they are just stating that the reason we are here is because the conditions in this Universe (and some cosmologistsbelieve there are an infinte number of parallel universes – theories like the “Multiverse”) allow us to exist and be intelligent.

      So we exist because conditions are just right – not the other way around.

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