Book: Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe

[TimM]

In this thread, jason_t mentioned the book Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe, by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee. I decided to read this book and post a review and critique of the "Rare Earth Hypothesis".

Anyone with an interest in the history of our planet should enjoy reading this book, even if one does not agree with the conclusions. Note that while at least one other author has taken the Rare Earth Hypothesis and turned it into an argument in favor of intelligent design, there is no mention of this in Rare Earth. There is, however, an article for sale on Amazon.com suggesting that "the authors were influenced by an individual with a strong 'Earth-is-unique' religious views". I have chosen not to read this article before forming my own opinion. In any case, this is not the right way to go about refuting a hypothesis. It is better to attack the authors' arguments, rather than their motivations for making those arguments.

No matter how rare the conditions allowing complex life prove to be, this alone can never be an argument in favor of intelligent design. Those conditions have to exist for anyone to actually notice. That we notice them here on Earth tells us nothing beyond the fact that those conditions are possible.

So that I don't have to do it all at once, I plan on making additional posts to this thread responding to some of the "Rare Earth Factors" - conditions the authors suggest are both rare and necessary for complex multi-cellular life to form. My general opinion is that while some of these concerns are valid, many of the factors may be neither as rare nor as necessary as the authors imply.