You may say – and some people actually say – that the anthropic reasoning is not similar to religion, but instead, it is analogous to Darwin’s theory because the Universe “compete” much like the animals, and there is no explicit God there. Well, it is as analogous as much as the evolutionary theory itself is analogous to creationism, but not more. Darwin’s theory has pretty well-defined rules and mechanisms. The animals are doing all these familiar things and they live together – and compete – according to some schemes that are deeply rooted in biology, chemistry, and physics – and that we can predict.

On the other hand, the arena of very many Universes that “compete” has no testable rules like that, and therefore it mimicks religion. (Of course, if someone could derive really exact rules that govern the Universes in the multiverse, the situation would change.)

— The anthropic lack of principles

— Lubos Motl

2012.03.02 Friday ACHK