Cosmology: our galaxy is an oddball (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 13:18 (2585 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I know what a cycle means. I'm discussing THIS universe in this possible cycle, not all the past ones. No infinity of galaxies in this one.

dhw: It makes no difference to the argument. Firstly, you have not explained why you think your God created all these individually different galaxies if his aim was to produce one that would allow life (same problem as the whale and the weaverbird’s nest, if his aim was to produce Homo sapiens). Secondly, quite apart from the fact that we don’t know if THIS universe is finite or not, you can still have an infinity of cycles and galaxies, which means that eventually there is bound to be one that can meet the requirements for life. I am not saying this is so. I am merely defending the atheist case against your theistic proposal.

DAVID: I have no idea why the universe is so big. All I know is our galaxy is special.

Agreed, but according to the article, “it is likely that each [galaxy] will be, in some way, peculiar”. So each galaxy is likely to be special. And if this is true, and if we are faced with the possibility of an infinite number of different galaxies, the odds are that eventually at least one of those different galaxies would produce the special conditions necessary for life.