Religion and evolution

[Thats my opinion]

9. The anthropic principle

postulates that life as we know it is the produce of scientific realities that allow life as we know it. Thus the claim that this is a circular argument that therefore has little special merit. Hawking, and others, reject the fallacy and rely on what we know about physical reality. To quote him:

"Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse from those that go on expanding forever, that even now, 10 thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller even by one part in 100 thousand million million the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size."
Hawking "A Brief History of Time.... page 138


His argument continues with the converse. If the universe had been greater by even one part of a million, stars and planets could not have been able to form. so the universe as we know it rests upon a knife edge of improbability.

or Hawking A Brief History".... p.144
"It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as an act of God who intended to create beings like us." And Hawking is hardly a theist!