This can't be determined by counting the nu. of cells a human brain and subtracting from that the number of brain cells in a gorillas head.

(People can read, gorillas can't.)

Perhaps Caleb' s sort-of long word could be a verbottack.

Is Anthony related to Vladimir ?

Russian-born pianist, (1904 - 89). Became famous very young . Settled in US and married Toscanini's daughter (famous Italian conductor). Career interrupted by illness returned to performing in mid-1960s with a very famous concert at Carnegie Hall. Noted exponent of Chopin and Scarlatti (numerical value of exponent unknown!).

Christopher,

I've just read an article by Paul Davies on how our Universe has to be finely tuned for live to exist in it.

One of the arguments that he presents is that it is so improbable that an universe such as ours could occur by chance - UNLESS there had been / are many other Universes. Hence a highly improbable Universe becomes much more 'probable' if there'd been trillions of others as then some very low probability events would be expected to occur by chance.

I have some sympathy for this argument. However, I think chance here should be thought of in the following terms. Imagine there is a trillion-sided dice that must be rolled once. It is rolled and the number 1,537,273,266 appears. That particular number is highly improbable even though the occurrence of a number is a certainty. So if there was only one 'throw of the dice' to create a Universe then whatever Universe was created is highly unlikely and also (by existing) a certainty (because a Universe must exist) after the roll of the dice.

(There is a counter-argument here - I'll leave it to you to figure out if you're interested.)

Paul Davies preferred solution is that immediately after the BIig Bang the Universe was in a highly unstable state (even at the physical laws level) & that over time it' settled into a stable state in which life was muich probable.

But assumerly this is only because there must have been certain heterogeneity & simultaneously the potential for future stability that enabled the Universe to last long enough to settle into any state of stability. Hence I don't see how this is really an alternative to the Multiverse idea PD kind of rejects (his 'rejection' is that (like postulating a God or Intelligent Designer)
the Multiverse proposal postulates something 'external' to the Universe - wheareas the 'settling-down' proposal assumes no processes that are not intrinsic to the Universe.

What exactly is Oblivion Gambling ? Is it like Russian Roulette ?
And surely googlewhack is a limited concept if it's relies on the words being listed on google? Perhaps there should be another term.

In googlewhack the term always refers to someone or something (like those for ENRON). Who or what could oblivion gambling refer to ?

Herr Majestic Kaiser, given to us by God do you think the belief that there is life elsewhere in the Universe is another examples of atheists looking for some being(s) beyond us ?

I don't agree with your psychological assumption. First, multiple universes does not imply some higher than ourselves any more or less than a single universe (& there's clearly at least one!). Second, such a higher being would have to have some / all of the characteristics of God(s) as believed by the faithful. This would include some creative power, & maybe some continuing influence on the world (unless a Spinozoan/ Einstenian God who only makes the 'clock' and puts it in motion).

However, if we think of people postulating the existence of God as an attempt to bring order / explanation to the experienced world then your suggestion may have more credibility. Except then it doesn't only hold for untestable claims such as the existence of mulitiple Universes an for more earthly things such as Freudian Psychology (see Karl Popper) but also for science in general.

Since the scientific revolution of the 17thC, science itself has taken on the explanatory power that religion once had (unless you are a fundamentalist who still believes that personal relevation from God + sacred texts are true in the same sense that a scientific Law is). To me, science is the process of taking God out of the explanation and using only processes etc. that are within the system.

However, science is not simply just a set of Laws that have been esentially empirically 'proven', but also a set of assumptions about how the UNiverse works (such assumptions are meta-theories that underly the interpretation of experimental data / observations etc. and guide the development of scientific theories and the testable hypotheses that can be deduced from the theories).

Perhaps an example of a scientific metatheory is that for an extremely improbable event to occur there 'must' have been many trials in which more probable events occurred. This can be seen in the saying that X had one in a N chances of happening. If we believe this (& I think many scientists do) then highly improbable events like the Big Bang, life arising somewhere in the Universe, the existence of Minds suggests that either there were many other 'trials' in which more probable events happened & either that these more probable events have stopped or co-exist with the extremely improbable state that we experience.

BY this argument, it should be expected that many scientists believe that there could be (has been / will be etc.) many examples of other universes and intelligent life.