The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery

"The Privileged Planet" required some effort to get my head around but it was well worth it. Whatever your stand regarding a Creator, this book is a great read. If you are an atheist, read it so you can understand your adversary's point of view and you can hold up your end of the argument. If you are one of faith in a Creator, the book helps validate your stance; it just helps things make sense.
I think a good way to describe the book is to use the same analogy the authors used on page 267. The following passage was used to explain the Weak Anthropic Principle: "Another analogy is the popular story of the firing squad. Imagine an American intelligence officer, captured by the Nazi SS during World War II, who is sentenced to death by a firing squad. Because of this officer's importance, the SS assign fifty of Germany's finest sharpshooters to his execution. After lining him up against a wall, the sharpshooters take their position three meters away. Upon firing, however, the officer discovers that every sharpshooter has missed, and that instead, their fifty bullets have made a perfect outline of his body on the wall behind him.
"What would we think if the officer reflected upon this situation, and then responded, "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see this. If the sharpshooters hadn't missed, I wouldn't be here to observe it"? We would rightly wonder what he is doing in intelligence, since the more sensible explanation would be that, for some reason, the execution had been rigged. Perhaps the sharpshooters had been ordered to miss, or they had colluded with one another for some unknown reason. In short, the best explanation would be that the event was the product of intelligent design. Shrugging one's shoulders and concluding that it's a chance occurrence is just dense."
And so be it with the universe as well.

I am about 100 pages into this book and am enjoying it. The ideas are interesting and thought provoking. There is a great deal of evidence provided.
At times it is abit challenging for someone without a science background but it is, overall, accesible for most.

Certainly a convincing argument so far.

I found the Privelaged Planet to be profoundly credible in that while enlisting the best of science, and scientists who were neutral in their research...they laid out the obvious and logical conclusions without any apology or level of theological deductions. This was so very well done and deeply inspiring; as is all of authentic research and discovery.

Dr. Lynn Cerullo

Very concentrated stuff that overwhelms. Things we take for granted all point to the Privileged Planet. For example, if the axis of the earth were not tilted to a 23.5 degree angle, Seattle would have weather like Siberia. The awesome nature of so many facts and how beyond comprehension it all is even though the fact can be so simply stated. We can know without understanding or comprehending. What a perspective! These people talking about global warming or climate change are like ants scurrying around on their ant hill.

An awe inspiring product bearing witness to the uniqueness of planet earth in our large universe. The earth The Privileged Planet is also the best place in the universe for scientific discovery.