Sublime

Like any theory that relies for its predictions on random distributions from which you can observe only one instance—ours—anthropic

The ecosystem would make much more sense if it wasn’t designed by a unitary Who, but, rather, created by a horde of deities—say from the Hindu or Shinto religions. This handily explains both the ubiquitous purposefulnesses, and the ubiquitous conflicts: More than one deity acted, often at cross-purposes. The fox and rabbit were both designed, but

Were the Australian extinction an isolated event, we could grant humans the benefit of the doubt. But the historical record makes Homo sapiens look like an ecological serial killer.

these essays on Bonhoeffer’s social thought are motivated by an anthropological concern: When we consider the rapid scientific advances of genetics and globally recurring human atrocities, does it not become apparent that human dignity requires a transcendent reference point?

the human self too is inevitably disenchanted. Ultimately it becomes, like everything else, a mere object of material forces and efficient causes: a sociobiological pawn, a selfish gene, a meme machine,

However, they found that that stipulation barely made a difference; the theory complemented with the anthropic principle ended up predicting a universe with just one galaxy—ours—and nothing in any way resembling a universe teeming with galaxies like the one we observe.

Here we are on the only known living planet, born into its most hospitable era which, thanks to the odd way we happen to be circling the sun right now, is set to run and run. We would have to be crazy to kick ourselves out of the Holocene’s sweet spot, but that is, of course, exactly what we have been doing.

this is a problem for anthropic multiverse cosmology. Because in the absence of a clear-cut criterion that specifies the correct reference class of multiverse inhabitants, all theoretical predictions of anthropic multiverse cosmology become ambiguous.