Does humanity exist to serve some ultimate, transcendent purpose? Conventional scientific wisdom gives the answer as a definitive no.
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According to [physicist Lawrence Krauss], the fact that we evolved on this planet is just a “cosmic accident”, and people who believe otherwise are probably suffering from some kind of religious delusion.
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[Physicist] Lee Smolin’s theory of cosmological natural selection, which he first proposed in 1992 and presented most fully in his book The Life of the Cosmos [focuses] on the idea that our universe exists as just one in a vast population of replicating universes: a multiverse (this idea is becoming increasingly conventional and non-controversial among physicists). In a multiverse, Smolin reasoned, universe designs that were better at self-replication would achieve greater representation. And if black holes were the mechanism of self-replication, he reasoned further, then selection would favor universes that contained more black holes. From this perspective, life is merely the accidental by-product of processes ‘designed’ by cosmological natural selection to produce black holes.Related on the SLP
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The bottom line [..] is: life is more likely than black holes (or anything else) to be a mechanism of universe replication.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Does Science Really Say There’s No Purpose to Life?
