Posted by Gremlin [12.255.181.7 - 12-255-181-7.client.attbi.com] on 12 July 2002 at 01.57.24 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Yeah, I'd say we are making some headway posted by Jurassosaurus on 12 July 2002 at 01.37.00 ZuluTime:

Complete waste of time. Presuming--simply because the existing structure of helium works as well as it does--that it couldn't work at all is the worst form of sophistry. It impresses me about as much as the laughable assertion that all life on Earth will die instantly if the planet tilts by one degree, or that a nuclear war will blow the planet out of orbit round Sol and send it crashing into Alpha Centauri.
     Obviously, butterfly effects can be tiny enough to be practically immesurable, and insignificant events can snowball into the difference between the formation of a glacier and the formation of a desert--or maybe even planets and galaxies. But to suggest that life can only exist if everything remains in some sort of predefined eternal balance is arrogant beyond full comprehension. If the universe were as fragile as anthropics have been pushed to suggest, you'd kill every multicellular lifeform in Africa if you sneezed in Ohio.
     Why are we here? Because Venus is too hot and Mars is too cold. If things had worked out differently 3.9 billion years ago, we'd ask why we lived on Saturn.