Given Occam’s Razor, I believe it can be shown logically that highly-intelligent life most likely is rare in the universe. The reasons have nothing to do with how many planets can sustain life. All we need to do is look at Earth and the history of life on this planet to see that life is rare in this universe—or, in fact, any conceivable universe(s). I shall only summarize the arguments, since the full reasoning is incredibly tedious. I will be starting with the faulty assumption that life evolved apart from God’s design, since if God designed life we can have no idea how common advanced life is elsewhere. (From now on in this post, I shall be using “advanced life” to refer only to beings with human-like intelligence.)
The basis for the argument is two simple facts: (1) human life evolved on Earth almost as soon as is conceivable, and the evolutionary path was replete with fortuitous circumstances and advancements, as many evolutionists will candidly admit[1]; and (2) Darwinian evolution by definition is not optimal and life evolves without purpose or desire for increases in complexity.
Because advanced life (humans) evolved so rapidly on Earth, relative to the full spectrum of conceivable time frames, Occam’s Razor suggests that advanced life had to evolve quickly or it would never have evolved at all. (One possible reason would be that the conditions for life may rarely last more than about 5 billion years before all life is destroyed by some extinction event.) We see, then, that the simplest answer is that almost wherever advanced life exists it will have evolved quickly. Lower forms of life may be abundant in the universe, but the vast majority of these planets would undergo complete extinction before advanced life could evolve.
Now, even if you allow for an infinite number of universes, Occam’s Razor would also strongly suggest that advanced life is not common in any of these alternate universes—or else the odds tell us that we should have been living in such a universe.
Under the faulty assumption of us being a cosmic accident, this means that one way or another it looks like we won the cosmic lottery where the odds were majorly stacked against us. Either (1) against the odds, we randomly ended up in a universe where advanced life is very rare, even though there are other universes where advanced life is common; or, (2) somehow the fundamental properties of the universe/multiverse allowed for the unlikely existence of advanced life forms—but just barely. Likely, if the fundamental properties of reality were altered even slightly then advanced life could not exist in any universe.
Bottom line: taking God out of the picture invariably makes the odds of our existence to be highly unlikely. It leads to the conclusion that life is probably rare in the universe(s). Finally, it leads to the conclusion that there probably is a God who designed life on Earth.
The basis for the argument is two simple facts: (1) human life evolved on Earth almost as soon as is conceivable, and the evolutionary path was replete with fortuitous circumstances and advancements, as many evolutionists will candidly admit[1]; and (2) Darwinian evolution by definition is not optimal and life evolves without purpose or desire for increases in complexity.
Because advanced life (humans) evolved so rapidly on Earth, relative to the full spectrum of conceivable time frames, Occam’s Razor suggests that advanced life had to evolve quickly or it would never have evolved at all. (One possible reason would be that the conditions for life may rarely last more than about 5 billion years before all life is destroyed by some extinction event.) We see, then, that the simplest answer is that almost wherever advanced life exists it will have evolved quickly. Lower forms of life may be abundant in the universe, but the vast majority of these planets would undergo complete extinction before advanced life could evolve.
Now, even if you allow for an infinite number of universes, Occam’s Razor would also strongly suggest that advanced life is not common in any of these alternate universes—or else the odds tell us that we should have been living in such a universe.
Under the faulty assumption of us being a cosmic accident, this means that one way or another it looks like we won the cosmic lottery where the odds were majorly stacked against us. Either (1) against the odds, we randomly ended up in a universe where advanced life is very rare, even though there are other universes where advanced life is common; or, (2) somehow the fundamental properties of the universe/multiverse allowed for the unlikely existence of advanced life forms—but just barely. Likely, if the fundamental properties of reality were altered even slightly then advanced life could not exist in any universe.
Bottom line: taking God out of the picture invariably makes the odds of our existence to be highly unlikely. It leads to the conclusion that life is probably rare in the universe(s). Finally, it leads to the conclusion that there probably is a God who designed life on Earth.
