"What I'm saying with my argument is that the odds that we ended up in a "set" of universes similar to ours is exactly 0."
I generally use the anthropic principle in the context of evolution and our existence on this planet—of all planets in the universe—versus our existence in this universe. You could certainly take it to that extreme, but it's a much deeper venture and we know so little concrete data about it.
How many universes are there? Is it an infinite set, as some suggest? We don't know. Do they differ in their stability or cosmological constants? We don't know. How many universes have there ever been? We don't know. How much time has ever existed? We don't know. Does time even exist outside the 4-dimensional space of our universe? We don't know that, either.
But we do have a very good theory about how we came about, as sentient lifeforms, on this specific planet around this specific sun in this specific universe. That's quite a lot, actually.
If you can prove anything mathematically about the probability of our universe's existence by random chance as opposed to some outside factor, then book your flight to Stockholm. My most humble hypothesis is that you will require more data to run those numbers; data that we do not yet have. You could make some guesses, but that's all they'll be.
In the end, it boils down to the age old endless question: originally it was "how were we created?"; then it was, "how was the Earth created?", then "how was the solar system created?", followed by galaxy, space, the universe, whatever's holding the universe, ad infinitum. At the ever-expanding edge of our knowledge, "God" seems as good a word as any to describe that mystery.
I generally use the anthropic principle in the context of evolution and our existence on this planet—of all planets in the universe—versus our existence in this universe. You could certainly take it to that extreme, but it's a much deeper venture and we know so little concrete data about it.
How many universes are there? Is it an infinite set, as some suggest? We don't know. Do they differ in their stability or cosmological constants? We don't know. How many universes have there ever been? We don't know. How much time has ever existed? We don't know. Does time even exist outside the 4-dimensional space of our universe? We don't know that, either.
But we do have a very good theory about how we came about, as sentient lifeforms, on this specific planet around this specific sun in this specific universe. That's quite a lot, actually.
If you can prove anything mathematically about the probability of our universe's existence by random chance as opposed to some outside factor, then book your flight to Stockholm. My most humble hypothesis is that you will require more data to run those numbers; data that we do not yet have. You could make some guesses, but that's all they'll be.
In the end, it boils down to the age old endless question: originally it was "how were we created?"; then it was, "how was the Earth created?", then "how was the solar system created?", followed by galaxy, space, the universe, whatever's holding the universe, ad infinitum. At the ever-expanding edge of our knowledge, "God" seems as good a word as any to describe that mystery.