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This chapter looks at two separate viewpoints which can be used as a foundation for the consideration of what long-term life persistence means for the evaluation of Gaia. As part of describing one view, it explains why atmospheric CO2 is susceptible to rapid change. As a consequence, the Earth could, in theory, quite easily have shifted to a state of freezing cold or of boiling heat within only a short interval of geologic time. In either case, if the shift was extreme enough, life can be expected to have been completely and irrevocably extinguished. That such a shift never took place, that all life never perished even once over such an immensity of time, seems an improbable outcome. The second view is based on the so-called anthropic principle. In contrast, it cautions that, given that humans are here, life must necessarily have survived.

Chapter 4 examines the impact of Arthur Peacocke's evolutionary cosmology, biology, epistemology, and methodology on Christian theology and demonstrates how these insights come to fruition in an understanding of a Triune God. A particular model concerning the God‐world relationship emerges from the interaction of these insights. The model is panentheism, which denotes that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe—a universe pervaded by pain, suffering, and death—but is not exhausted by the universe itself. Within this panentheistic paradigm, the Triune God is conceived as the transcendent Ground of Being who is immanently creative under the groaning of the cosmos and who becomes incarnate in the cruciformity of the cosmos with its ubiquitous suffering. It concludes with an analysis of Peacocke's proposals using fourfold criteria of intelligibility: fit with data, simplicity, fecundity, and pastoral efficacy.

The word ‘cosmology’ is derived from the Greek ‘cosmos’ which means the world as an orderly system. To the Greeks, the opposite of cosmos was ‘chaos’, and views the universe as consisting of two competing aspects: the orderly part that was governed by laws and which could be predicted, and the ‘random’ part which was disordered and unpredictable. With the rise of quantum theory and its applications to the theory of subatomic particles and their interactions, the cosmology has gradually ceded some of its territory to chaos. This chapter explores a few issues relating to the way uncertainty and unpredictability have forced their way into theories of the universe. These are the areas where a proper treatment of probability is vital. The cosmological ‘flatness problem’ is also discussed, along with the anthropic principle.

This chapter summarizes the most important developments in theoretical and observational cosmology from about 1970 to 2005. On the theoretical side, the inflationary scenario of the very early universe led to a minor revolution that strengthened the links between elementary particle physics and cosmology. No less important were observations from the late 1990s that indicated that the universe is in a state of accelerated expansion, driven by a mysterious form of dark energy. The chapter also deals with more speculative aspects of modern cosmology, such as the anthropic principle, the revival of cyclic cosmologies, hypotheses of varying constants of nature, and ideas of many universes. It ends with a summary discussion of some of the general themes that has characterized the history of cosmology.

This chapter discusses three fundamental questions which the majority of the physics community believes are not worthy of attention and a minority believes are crucial and in urgent need of attention. The first concerns the “anthropic principle”: to what extent is it an “explanation” of basic physical data, such as the dimensionality of space-time, the values of the fundamental constants, etc., to observe that were they appreciably different, human life and consciousness could not have evolved to the point of asking the question? The second has to do with the “arrow of time”: how is the everyday sense of the “flow” of time from past to future consistent with the invariance of the laws of physics under time reversal? The third problem is how to incorporate the occurrence of definite outcomes within the framework of quantum mechanics (the “quantum measurement problem”).

Like most religions, Christianity begins with claims about ultimate reality. Although many have tried to invalidate all questions of ultimacy, it turns out to be difficult to dismiss such questions without making versions of the very claims one is trying to dismiss. Biology after Darwin does not support the contention that the origin of human mind must be mind-like, but the “anthropic principle” in physics does point in this direction. Recent “multiverse” theories do not undercut but actually support the conclusion that the ultimate reality may be mind-like, and indeed even agent-like. The chapter speculates on what might impel an ultimate reality to create finite beings and how that reality might be related to human values.

This final chapter presents a collection of topics which relate to the status of science in society, and to its conflicts with other systems of thought. Topics covered include order and chaos, anthropic principles, empiricism versus realism, the sociology of science, and science the technology.

This chapter focuses on the notion that we need to take account of our own existence in thinking about certain problems. This notion lies behind a set of ideas that go under the name of the anthropic principle. There are several versions of the anthropic principle to be found in the literature: for example, an authoritative book on the subject by John Barrow and Frank Tipler defines ‘weak’, ‘strong’ and ‘final’ versions of the Cosmological Anthropic Principle. The chapter invokes the exclusively ‘weak’ anthropic arguments. The weak anthropic principle states simply that the universe, as we see it, must be compatible with our own existence.

There are conceptual tensions in Darwin's own writings on natural selection. It is not clear how far his reading of the theory still has teleological overtones or presupposes a direction of evolution towards greater complexity and perfection. What is clear is that in his application of the theory to humanity there is virtually no difference between Darwin himself and what has come to be denigrated as ‘social Darwinism’. It is also suggested that Darwinism may be compatible with a far more ‘anthropic’ reading of creation than interpreters like Monod suggest.

This chapter provides the necessary philosophical background by defining teleological thinking and why it is a problem, and distinguishes conditional teleological explanations, which are acceptable, from purposive and deterministic teleological explanations, which are not. It discusses Georges Cuvier's principle of the conditions for existence, arguing that this principle is a conditional teleological principle, and concludes by noting certain parallels between the principle of the conditions for existence and the weak anthropic principle.

Difficulties in invoking God in any explanatory role are pursued in connection with the possibility of miracles and the argument from design. The anthropic principle and the significance of ‘fine tuning’ are discussed, along with confusions concerning the laws of Nature. Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion is touched upon briefly.

The vastness of the Universe gives strong support for the possibility of other intelligent life around other stars. At the same time, anthropic balances in the laws and circumstances of the Universe are a reminder of how special life may be. This chapter explores the tension between these arguments, reflecting on the Drake equation's attempt to give a probability to the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. In addition, the size of the Universe poses a fundamental problem for SETI—that is there may be civilizations out there who are too far away for us ever to know of their existence.

Chapter 9 sums up the cumulative evidence from preceding chapters and addresses (without resolution) the underlying question of how to interpret the existence of a universe so finely tuned. The chapter’s central science vs. religion theme contrasts conceptions of a Creator, who established conditions for life, with the anthropic principle, which claims that it is inevitable that living observers find physical attributes that are tuned to support life in their universe. The concepts of eternal inflation, the multiverse, and the string theory landscape of myriad possible vacuum states are introduced. The astronomical odds against landing in a universe built on a string theory vacuum capable of supporting life are contrasted with the vastly superior odds of finding a planet in our universe within the habitable zone of a living star. The testability of the multiverse concept is discussed in the framework of Karl Popper’s criterion of scientific falsifiability.

Many of our perceptions about the properties of life at the planetary scale are biased by “observer self-selection”—the fact that we are able to observe the Earth only because life has persisted on it for billions of years and complex observers have evolved here. To account for this bias, it is necessary to be aware of the implicit assumptions we make. This chapter follows the consequences of assuming a variant of the “anthropic principle,” that the Earth is typical of planets that evolve observers. Such planets may, however, be very unusual in comparison with most planets, or even most planets that evolve life. Based on this assumption, the chapter presents defensible speculations.

According to Swinburne’s Bayesian argument from temporal order, the fact that our universe is ordered by relatively simple laws of nature is more probable if God exists than if he does not. If God does not exist, a completely chaotic universe allegedly is a priori more probable than a universe ordered by simple laws. However, this design argument from temporal order cannot be considered in isolation from the cosmological argument. With regard to each of three possible cosmological scenarios it can be shown that the argument from temporal order is unconvincing. Concerning design arguments from spatial order, Swinburne acknowledges that arguments on the basis of the functionality of organisms should be abandoned. Instead, he focuses on fine-tuning arguments. But neither the fine-tuning argument from logically possible universes nor the fine-tuning argument from complexity are convincing C-inductive arguments, which avoid the risk of God-of-the-gaps, even if they are supported by the argument from beauty.

The argument from design is presented as a dialogue. One person presents traditional arguments from design, the other person counters them. Starting from ‘Paley’s watch’ and the Darwinian reply, it moves rapidly beyond that to the more subtle stance that theology, in fact, typically takes in this area (this was true even in Paley’s day but is widely ignored), and some modern ideas such as the anthropic cosmological principle. It is acknowledged that all arguments from design can achieve only a little on their own, but the reader is encouraged to get beyond them.

The problems of “criticality” and causality: Why is the Universe so flat and incomprehensibly homogeneous or uniform? The analogy of the surface of an inflating balloon. Fixed angular distances and varying physical distances. Possible but unpalatable initial conditions. The fate of open or close universes. The visible Universe, for us or for a diStant E.T. In passing, the “anthropic principle.”

Today the laws of physics are often seen as evidence for a naturalistic worldview. However, historically, physics was usually considered compatible with belief in God. Foundations of physics such as thermodynamics, uniformity of nature, and causality were seen as religiously based by physicists such as James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson, Lord Kelvin. These were usually interpreted as evidence of design by a creative deity. In the late nineteenth century, John Tyndall and other scientific naturalists made the argument that these foundations were more sympathetic to a non-religious understanding of the natural world. With the success of this approach, twentieth-century religious physicists tended to stress non-material and experiential connections rather than looking for evidence of design. Later parts of that century saw a revival of natural theological arguments in the form of the anthropic principle and the fine-tuning problem. While modern physics is naturalistic, this was not inevitable and there were several alternative approaches common in earlier times.