On the Unlikeliness of Life: Why We’re Still Lucky to Be Alive Today (Simon Boas, July 23, 2025, LitHub)
I think, whether you believe in divine creation or solely in physics (though the two are really not incompatible), there can be no dispute about how fortuitous it is that we are here today as free, conscious entities, able to think and experience and love. Whether it is because some loving, omnipotent, unoriginated Being consciously decided to make the particular farting, mewling, grasping masterpiece that is you, or because a set of cosmic coincidences aligned so perfectly and yet so improbably that Simon Boas resulted, being alive at all is something we don’t appreciate nearly enough.
There can be no dispute about how fortuitous it is that we are here today as free, conscious entities, able to think and experience and love.
I’ve always approached this issue much more from the empirical, scientific side, and yet the conclusion is the same. Any physicist can explain the origins of the universe from a description of big bangs and spacetime and matter, but will also attest to two things: that none of this would have existed but for some pretty spectacular ‘Goldilocks’ coincidences (not too hot and not too cold); and that there are myriad things which not only can’t be explained now, but which may never be.
The universe is fine-tuned for us to exist.
…”Luck is the residue of design.”