So this is what goes on in these churches in Nigeria? See people spazzing out, shaking and convulsing. I'm still watching oh! Nigeria, I cry for you oh! My people need to wake up.

Bible ko, Quran ni.

Please stop spreading lies, carbon dating is proven science and fact.

The miseducation of the negro, it's a shame that you guys will stoop this low. While science improves your everyday lives in every conceivable way you hold on to desert myths of middle eastern people from the bronze age to explain your modern reality. I CRY FOR MY PEOPLE OH!

Would like to know your thoughts on this documentary:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/sunday-night/video/watch/26647412/

^^^We are unable to because people like you and other religious nuts are in the majority and dont allow us to build a truly secular and modern society which will benefit our progeny. What people believe is our business as it affects us all. What Africa needs is enlightenment and a new definition of who we are and were were we plan on going.

Dont mind the guy, this way of thinking is pervasive in their community, extreme xenophobia and derogatory worldviews, and they wonder why the are in the state they are in. Abeg go rest somewhere. I feel for reasonable Somali's that are sufferring and feel their pain and have contributed to helping out in the famine but any buffoon that comes on here posting nonsense will get checked real quick, operation fire for fire!

he is criticizing us who pray in arabic because it is the command we are eager to obey because are muslims not willing to disobey Allah.

And let me guess, you heard or read this "Command to pray in Arabic" from an Arab man or a book handed to your ancestors by the Arabs or did "god" directly speak to you? Very Interesting!

^^^(Elyas) is a dumba.ss and must be sufferring from brain malnourishment as a result of the 1991 famine thereby not aiding in the development of his brain to function in a post tribalistic society. I wont waste time with people like you.

Most Cape Verdeans are majority West african (ie >50% while many approach 90-100% as in the case of Ms Lopes).
Miss World 2001 was a full blooded Nigerian woman so please quit the nonsense.  Why don't you go worry about the decrepit state of your failed country with the famine and Al Shabaab before coming on a "Nigerian" website to lament about a contest?

Miss Angola Leila Lopes becomes the Second Black African to win Miss Universe. The first black African to win Miss Universe was Mpule Kwelagobe, of Botswana, crowned in 1999 at Chaguaramas, Trinidad & Tobago.


Sorry haters, Leila was born in Angola by Cape Verdean Parents. Cape verde is an Island off of West Africa and a member of ECOWAS!

Africa Stand up!

By Olumide Goodness Adeyinka

http://saharareporters.com/article/east-vs-west-indoctrination-and-world-divide-olumide-goodness-adeyinka

The obfuscating conundrum in which the world is roasting presently calls for sincere mediation and de-indoctrination therapy if the entire human race will ever enjoy a blissful co-existence based on rational and objective thought process instead of the present evil we all call school of thoughts in both political and economic parameters of global existence.

The subtle mannerism and profound methodology with which the invidious Easternism and the traitorous egocentric Westernism, as untrammeled power of world view, has crept into our psyche as a people is not only outrageous but seriously challenging and unquestionably threatening to our fragile institutions either as nations or kingdoms. The attendant division it has unleashed on our world can only be imagined. Human disasters all over the world are now viewed and explained on the platform of which divide you have come to adopt in life. Terrorism is simply explained off , so are wars and social upheavals in the most delicate parts of our common habitat.

Easternism is this article is simply the concepts that postulates Eastern mental universe anchored on the external orientation with the primary loyalty to Islamism or Arabism, which rhetorically is in congruent contradiction to Western ideologies and principles that is seemingly predicated on the doctrines supposedly hinged on Christianity. Whether we believe it or denounce it, Easternism has evolved as a universal ideology completely and precisely aimed at the goal of Arab/Islamic solidarity, collaboration and identity. This scenario is not new as it was first introduced as a tool to divide the civilized world into the East and West blocks. In 1928, a political newspaper Al-Siyasa al-usbu’iyya in Egypt predominantly advances the movement. It was a derivative, not intrinsic, concept to strengthen everything against the apparently well defined, homogenous and dominant West. In simple sense, the East only derives a meaning in contrast to the West.

By 1932, the Journal of the Eastern Bond Society in its editorial on “Eastern Idea” presented a retrospective concept denoting “Asia and Africa in comparison to the western idea of Europe and America”. The definition and identity is more or less circumstantial in its derivation. Hence Easternism is a form of expression of the character peculiar with the violent battle between Imperialism and freedom, or between the West and the East. So the concept is more of reactivism rather than a sincere bond of internal solidarity. The weakness of Easternism is that it only rallies against the West rather than evolve a developmental agenda that will empower the solidarity and emancipate the people or nations within its scope of identity. This is the reason for the implosion currently happening in the Arab springs lately, because for too long the West has been published as the problem but now their people see the leaders of Arab as the real problems. I will come back to this later.

Westernism is a concept that has its root in Greco-Roman civilization and the advent of Christianity. It simply refers to the nations of the West and its influence and control over other nations. The concept of Westernism postulates Western mental world and the total absorption of its values and norm. The West could also be defined on the basis of the Renaissance, The Protestant Reformation, The Enlightenment and The Expansive Colonialism of the 16th and 17th century. Westernism is a term used broadly to represent heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, artifacts and technologies of the people of the West. Whichever way you prefer to look at it, the West is simply the Imperialist world of domination and conquest. The East sees it as the evil incarnation of our world. The West is seen as an empire that employs “expansionist doctrine”. The domination of the West definitely confers on it the emblems of hatred and articles of disaffection by not so successful entities.

Much of anti-West rhetoric sees the finger of the West in havocs and destructions in its quest to the pursuit of mostly selfish aims at the detriment of other nations. However, the West believes their only antidote to widespread criticism of policies and control is the pride with which they attend every issue and the arrogance of conduct and candor. I will not digress in my approach at the topic above anyway.

Colonialism remains the single most unforgivable sin of the West, with which the East portrays a sign of solidarity to the third world nations especially with grievances on the continued exploitation of their labor and resources even at post-colonial state. A great sense of outrage emerged at the imperialistic nature of America as the front-runner of the Western agenda, with its sincerely selfish foreign policy among nations of the world. Another major scourge of the West is the cultural imperialism through which traditional values of developing countries are eroded substantially by their “Modernization”. I particularly detest it myself.

In the middle of this contest of relevance and domination are many of us who have no other means of defining our world, our existence, our perception, our understanding, our views, our culture, our history, our beliefs, our opinions, our dispositions, our tastes, our focus and ultimately our reasons for being humans in the first place. So many of us are infernally consumed by the story lines of the Western or Eastern tale tellers who presents the other one as bad and only theirs are good. The harsh reality of the extent of our rancorous and resentful discourse in political and social concerns leaves a bomb in the middle of both divide. An average Muslim and Christian have completely lost everything that made them human first before their acceptance of devotion to their avowed faith. All over, it is either one is fuelled by the doctrines of the concept of Westernism or Easternism. The acerbity of our loyalty to the system of believes now defines our world, unfortunately.



We now have two worlds. One is created by the lust and passion for control and dominance of the landscape of the Earth at the expense of peace and understanding. This world is the Western World that bludgeons its way ruthlessly through the social and political will of sovereignties. The other world is created by a severe, hugely violent, and hatred-filled, terrorist-inclined order that works in total opposition to the dominating West. The Eastern World is simply a reactive world engaged in a violent “liberation” of the world from the Imperialist West. Behind the two worlds are ill-driven agenda postulated and advanced by men that have no regards or respect for human liberty and choice.

A critical look at both worlds suggests an evil been attacked by a greater evil, and the real world stands still with winds of violence and waves of fear visited upon it by ordinary men who has no regard for God and no respect for men but eternally consumed with the passions of exterminating each other and waiting for the last man standing.

Let me come home to Nigeria now. It is so disheartening to see how Nigerians view issues of world history and contemporary occurrences. Even those who have not left the shores of Nigeria ever sees with the eyes of deception championed by the two worlds. Everything Western is evil but yet their technology and their songs are good to them. All Eastern culture and representations are bad yet Dubai is a great land to visit; their gold is good to put on. The Western News Media are portrayed as evil driven by an agenda as perceived by a man who is corruptly indoctrinated by the East yet he has all their channels in the secrecy of his home. The Eastern News Media is also seen by a corruptly Westernized man as only tellers of errors and defender of terrorism yet he watches Al-Jezeera with somber reflection in the corners of his abode.

The truth is both can be good if only balance is introduced. After all, nature itself teaches balance in everything we do. There is nothing absolutely evil about either the West or the East except their rivalry for domination and the indoctrination of extremism that is malignantly dividing the world. A man who has no intellect should be redefined as one who is passionately consumed by the excessive lies of the extremism of either world. An illiterate is one, though educated in letters, but ignorant in the wisdom of denouncing evil when seen. As humans, we have the prerogative of objectivity not to consume anything hook, line and sinker. I live in the West but not consumed with the passion of defending it against all sense of equity and balance. I criticize when evident evil is done by the West and commend when good comes from them.

The most annoying thing about the negative influences of both the West and the East is when Religion becomes intricately interwoven with it. The truth must be told here. East and West does not represent any religion but a parochial agenda. Certain perceive Islam as evil including all its practioners and will not realize it is also part of the concept of the West. Many also see Christians as the first enemy to be consumed because it is part of the teachings of Easternism. We are now at a crossroad where there is absolute intolerance and disrespect for lives and property because we live in two different Worlds of East and West consumed in the rivalry of dominating us. It is obvious from the writings on the wall that Easternism only wishes to possess a relative domination or at least a balance with the arrogance of the West. There is nothing to suggest it will bring a better alternative because it is also selfishly driven and ruthlessly disrespectful. Believe me sincerely; both West and East are just mere same identity competing for our servitude. Both have no plans for us as Nigerians or Africans but absolutely entrenched in their quest to wrestle power and dominate forever.

I heard a statement recently that goes like this “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”. The discussions that followed that statement brought the monster out of some of the discussants. Evil is no longer seen as evil but explained on the doctrines that pro-Easterners should see terrorism as freedom fighting and pro-Westerners should see it the other way. Evil is evil, and cannot be called any other name by any school of thoughts.

Finally, in our quest for self-control and actualization, we as individuals must cultivate the excellence of freeing our minds from the innuendoes of doctrines that perpetuates us in servitude and bondage. The West and the East has divided us for too long and it is high time we left their indoctrination. Our loquacious verbiage of petty parochial thinking should stop as we embrace a broadminded scope of understanding the world. Let us think first as humans and not as Easternized or Westernized folks.

For those  who continue to look to the Middle East for guidance, morality and the framework for building of a modern civil society (it's time for homegrown ideas). I'll let you be the judge:

Video on CNN: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/12/a-decade-after-911-enduring-lessons-for-the-arab-world/?hpt=hp_bn3

A decade after 9/11: Enduring lessons for the Arab world
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

Let me tell you about the most influential book to be published since 9/11, at least according to me. It's actually not a book but a report - a United Nations report written by a committee. I'm talking about the Arab Development Report published in 2002.

After 9/11, in the midst of the discussion of what was happening in the Arab world, why it was the source of this terrorism, the UN Development Program's head, Mark Malloch Brown, commissioned a study of the Arab world looking at political, economic and social issues. But he insisted it be researched and written by Arabs so there was no accusation of an outsider's bias or neocolonialism. The result was a brutally frank document that was a sensation. It was downloaded off the internet 1 million times.


The report documented the stunning decay of the Arab world. If you want to explore the conditions that produced al Qaeda, read this report. Take a look at some of the most damning statistics. When the nonprofit Freedom House rated world regions on a broad range of political and civil rights, Arab countries came last. Look at the economy - the UNDP report highlighted that the entire Arab League put together - that is 22 countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt - had a smaller GDP than Spain. Fifteen percent of Arabs were unemployed compared to a global average of 6 percent at the time.

Then there's education: In 2002, 65 million adults, one of every four Arabs, were illiterate. One of out of every two Arab women couldn't read or write. And for the few Arab readers, there wasn't much choice. The entire region was translating just 330 books a year - one fifth the amount that Greece translates every year. All these statistics showed how the Arab world was worse off than everywhere except Sub-Saharan Africa.


Now, what caught my attention this week, almost a decade later, is that much of the data in that report is unchanged or barely changed. On jobs, the region now suffers some of the highest unemployment rates in the world. And the raw number of Arabs who can't read or write has actually increased. Other indicators have worsened, too. Somalia is now suffering from a deadly famine. And the last decade, Sudan's Darfur region becomes the mass crimes against humanity - one could go on.

In case you've been keeping track, the only real indicator of the Arab world's health that has actually improved since the UNDP report was published is its GDP. The Arab League's combined gross domestic product has quadrupled.

But here's the revealing statistic: The price of oil almost rose at the same rate. And that kind of oil-produced growth doesn't trickle down and it certainly doesn't help the tens of millions of Arabs in the region's most populous countries like Egypt and Syria that have little oil. According to World Bank data, it has taken three decades for the average Arab person's income to double since 1980. Meanwhile, inflation helped market prices double in just the first seven of those 30 years.

And so, now, we have the Arab Spring - from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, repressive dictators are being toppled by people power. There's no doubt that this is great news. But remember, all other Arab regimes have managed to remain in power through a mix of repression and bribery. From Jordan to Oman to Saudi Arabia and Syria, increasing subsidies might delay popular resentment but it won't change the facts on the ground. And the crucial point is that even democracy will only succeed if these underlying social statistics on literacy and jobs and women's rights improves.

Ten years on from 9/11, the Arab world remains in denial. A recent Pew study shows the majorities in all Muslim states think that Arabs were not responsible for the attacks of September the 11th. Three out of four Egyptians hold that belief, for example. Now, that is simply nonsense. Instead of bizarre conspiracy theories, the Arab world needs to focus on the dire statistics the UNDP highlighted almost a decade ago.

The Arab spring is a first step for those countries that it has touched, but it needs to be a springboard for 300 million Arabs to look deep within and address the fundamentals that their leaders have neglected for decades - education, women's rights, economic reforms, jobs and real freedom.

[flash=200,200]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTRtIxN1kjY[/flash]


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTRtIxN1kjY

Chei!! they have finished you guys, disgraced your doctrine. It still behooves me that grown men and women can actually believe in this nonsense. Christians fundamentalists you are not far off with the fairytales but dang you defn won this debate!! Sex after the human body has decomposed, houris, jinns (genies), irrational garbage from some desert bedouins.
I'll give the Muslims a B for effort as they attempted to divert the topic to the flaws in the bible, but even that is getting old.
Frosbel the crusader (and the Christian fundamentalists) 1 vs. The Nairaland Mujahadeen crew 0.
You guys cornered them and delivered a deadly right hook!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/attention-governor-perry-evolution-is-a-fact/2011/08/23/gIQAuIFUYJ_blog.html

Q. Texas governor and GOP candidate Rick Perry, at a campaign event this week, told a boy that evolution is ”just a theory” with “gaps” and that in Texas they teach “both creationism and evolution.” Perry later added “God is how we got here.” According to a 2009 Gallup study , only 38 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution. If a majority of Americans are skeptical or unsure about evolution, should schools teach it as a mere “theory”? Why is evolution so threatening to religion?


A. There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.
The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.
[b]A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.[/b]

Darwin’s idea is arguably the most powerful ever to occur to a human mind. The power of a scientific theory may be measured as a ratio: the number of facts that it explains divided by the number of assumptions it needs to postulate in order to do the explaining. A theory that assumes most of what it is trying to explain is a bad theory. That is why the creationist or ‘intelligent design’ theory is such a rotten theory.
[b]What any theory of life needs to explain is functional complexity. Complexity can be measured as statistical improbability, and living things are statistically improbable in a very particular direction: the direction of functional efficiency. The body of a bird is not just a prodigiously complicated machine, with its trillions of cells - each one in itself a marvel of miniaturized complexity - all conspiring together to make muscle or bone, kidney or brain. Its interlocking parts also conspire to make it good for something - in the case of most birds, good for flying. An aero-engineer is struck dumb with admiration for the bird as flying machine: its feathered flight-surfaces and ailerons sensitively adjusted in real time by the on-board computer which is the brain; the breast muscles, which are the engines, the ligaments, tendons and lightweight bony struts all exactly suited to the task. And the whole machine is immensely improbable in the sense that, if you randomly shook up the parts over and over again, never in a million years would they fall into the right shape to fly like a swallow, soar like a vulture, or ride the oceanic up-draughts like a wandering albatross. Any theory of life has to explain how the laws of physics can give rise to a complex flying machine like a bird or a bat or a pterosaur, a complex swimming machine like a tarpon or a dolphin, a complex burrowing machine like a mole, a complex climbing machine like a monkey, or a complex thinking machine like a person.
Darwin explained all of this with one brilliantly simple idea - natural selection, driving gradual evolution over immensities of geological time. His is a good theory because of the huge ratio of what it explains (all the complexity of life) divided by what it needs to assume (simply the nonrandom survival of hereditary information through many generations). The rival theory to explain the functional complexity of life - creationism - is about as bad a theory as has ever been proposed. What it postulates (an intelligent designer) is even more complex, even more statistically improbable than what it explains. In fact it is such a bad theory it doesn’t deserve to be called a theory at all, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.[/b]

The simplicity of Darwin’s idea, then, is a virtue for three reasons. First, and most important, it is the signature of its immense power as a theory, when compared with the mass of disparate facts that it explains - everything about life including our own existence. Second, it makes it easy for children to understand (in addition to the obvious virtue of being true!), which means that it could be taught in the early years of school. And finally, it makes it extremely beautiful, one of the most beautiful ideas anyone ever had as well as arguably the most powerful. To die in ignorance of its elegance, and power to explain our own existence, is a tragic loss, comparable to dying without ever having experienced great music, great literature, or a beautiful sunset.
There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.

Richard Dawkins wrote this response to Governor Perry for On Faith, the Washington Post’s forum for news and

The chickens are coming home to roost - may the govt of the US suffer the same pain and misery they are currently inflicting on the people of libya - long live muammar gadaffi

Why the resentment? The "People of Libya" welcomed NATO airstrikes against strategic Ghaddafi targets.

Juju is NOT real! Herbalism on the other hand may have some credence. You can heal the sick and possibly kill people with herbs and minerals from the earth but defn not with sacrificing chickens, spirits, witches and putting curses or prayers on people.

It is an inhumane and discriminatory aspect of Igbo culture and thus should be abolished. My 2cents

Atheists, Agnostics, Deists, Freethinkers, Humanists and anyone who is just not a blind follower of any belief system 1 and  Religionists, Fundamentalists, Traditionalists, blind followers of Faith 0

I am proud of this Nairaland community of FREETHINKERS!!!

Emisun Well Said!!!

religion is one of the determinants of African underdevelopment. and it's even worst in our universities as our so called science students don't believe in the scientific method as the method of establishing truth. in our universities as our so called science students don't believe in the scientific method as the method of establishing truth.

Religion will continue to lose the debate on a 1000 fronts. Lol, best these religious people follow the path of the da lai lama and concede to the superiority of science and reason over age old myths and story telling.

What a shame, people need to wake up. Traditional rituals and christian prophets involved in mental bondage of girls that go to Europe for prostituion.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw-aaFPLOdw&feature=player_embedded#!

This is kind of old but thought it was very interesting.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575467921609024244.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle




Why God Did Not Create the Universe
There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required

By STEPHEN HAWKING And LEONARD MLODINOW
According to Viking mythology, eclipses occur when two wolves, Skoll and Hati, catch the sun or moon. At the onset of an eclipse people would make lots of noise, hoping to scare the wolves away. After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.

Ignorance of nature's ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world. But eventually, people turned to philosophy, that is, to the use of reason—with a good dose of intuition—to decipher their universe. Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test—in other words, modern science.

Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that, unlike our homes on a bad day, the universe is not just a conglomeration of objects each going its own way. Everything in the universe follows laws, without exception.

View Full Image

Emma Hardy for The Wall Street Journal

Stephen Hawking at his office at Cambridge University on Sept. 2.
Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not "arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature." Instead, he maintained that the order in the universe was "created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition." The discovery recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of some grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.

Many improbable occurrences conspired to create Earth's human-friendly design, and they would indeed be puzzling if ours were the only solar system in the universe. But today we know of hundreds of other solar systems, and few doubt that there exist countless more among the billions of stars in our galaxy. Planets of all sorts exist, and obviously, when the beings on a planet that supports life examine the world around them, they are bound to find that their environment satisfies the conditions they require to exist.

News Hub: Hubble Takes Baby Pictures of Universe
6:51

The Hubble Space Telescope snaps new images of the oldest galaxies ever seen. A senior scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explains to WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz and Simon Constable how he did it-and what it means.
It is possible to turn that last statement into a scientific principle: The fact of our being restricts the characteristics of the kind of environment in which we find ourselves. For example, if we did not know the distance from the Earth to the sun, the fact that beings like us exist would allow us to put bounds on how small or great the Earth-sun separation could be. We need liquid water to exist, and if the Earth were too close, it would all boil off; if it were too far, it would freeze. That principle is called the "weak" anthropic principle.

The weak anthropic principle is not very controversial. But there is a stronger form that is regarded with disdain among some physicists. The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints, not just on our environment, but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves.

The idea arose because it is not only the peculiar characteristics of our solar system that seem oddly conducive to the development of human life, but also the characteristics of our entire universe—and its laws. They appear to have a design that is both tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is much more difficult to explain.


Stephen Youll

The tale of how the primordial universe of hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium evolved to a universe harboring at least one world with intelligent life like us is a tale of many chapters. The forces of nature had to be such that heavier elements—especially carbon—could be produced from the primordial elements, and remain stable for at least billions of years. Those heavy elements were formed in the furnaces we call stars, so the forces first had to allow stars and galaxies to form. Those in turn grew from the seeds of tiny inhomogeneities in the early universe.

Even all that is not enough: The dynamics of the stars had to be such that some would eventually explode, precisely in a way that could disperse the heavier elements through space. In addition, the laws of nature had to dictate that those remnants could recondense into a new generation of stars, these surrounded by planets incorporating the newly formed heavy elements.

By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner. Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5% in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4% in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Also, most of the fundamental constants appearing in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life. For example, if protons were 0.2% heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms.

If one assumes that a few hundred million years in stable orbit is necessary for planetary life to evolve, the number of space dimensions is also fixed by our existence. That is because, according to the laws of gravity, it is only in three dimensions that stable elliptical orbits are possible. In any but three dimensions even a small disturbance, such as that produced by the pull of the other planets, would send a planet off its circular orbit, and cause it to spiral either into or away from the sun.

The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way.

Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed "in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design."

That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. That multiverse idea is not a notion invented to account for the miracle of fine tuning. It is a consequence predicted by many theories in modern cosmology. If it is true it reduces the strong anthropic principle to the weak one, putting the fine tunings of physical law on the same footing as the environmental factors, for it means that our cosmic habitat—now the entire observable universe—is just one of many.

Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the cosmos, this makes us in a sense the lords of creation.

Absolutely hilarious video