Got Life?
Life did not win a cosmic lottery by getting this planet. This planet won the cosmic meritocracy by being suitable to be granted life.
There is a school of thought that says it is so unlikely for any given planet to be suitable for life, that it must be a miracle that life got any planet at all. That would be true, if life existed pre-planet, as if it were house-hunting, or waiting to be gifted with a planet. When you realize that life didn't get a planet, but that this planet got life, the "luck of the draw" concept no longer fits the context. Frankly, with the number of stars in this universe, it was inevitable that such a world happen sooner or later. It would be more miraculous if it didn't. Wherever conditions are suitable for life is where life is going to inevitably end up developing given enough eons. The inevitable result of this particular set of accidental conditions was that life forms would sit in comfortable chairs on television programs expressing amazement that their environment matches them so perfectly.
This is backwards. In reality, they match their environment perfectly. Their purposes are the outcome of their environment. This world is so beautiful not because we got lucky (to be lucky, one would have to already exist), but because we evolved standards of beauty to match whatever environment we happened to develop in. If life evolved on Titan, it would think the smell of methane was beautiful. If our planet could talk, perhaps it would be amazed that life happens to be suitable for it. Just as there are different forms of planet, there could be different forms of life.
There is a school of thought that says it is so unlikely for any given planet to be suitable for life, that it must be a miracle that life got any planet at all. That would be true, if life existed pre-planet, as if it were house-hunting, or waiting to be gifted with a planet. When you realize that life didn't get a planet, but that this planet got life, the "luck of the draw" concept no longer fits the context. Frankly, with the number of stars in this universe, it was inevitable that such a world happen sooner or later. It would be more miraculous if it didn't. Wherever conditions are suitable for life is where life is going to inevitably end up developing given enough eons. The inevitable result of this particular set of accidental conditions was that life forms would sit in comfortable chairs on television programs expressing amazement that their environment matches them so perfectly.
This is backwards. In reality, they match their environment perfectly. Their purposes are the outcome of their environment. This world is so beautiful not because we got lucky (to be lucky, one would have to already exist), but because we evolved standards of beauty to match whatever environment we happened to develop in. If life evolved on Titan, it would think the smell of methane was beautiful. If our planet could talk, perhaps it would be amazed that life happens to be suitable for it. Just as there are different forms of planet, there could be different forms of life.