[renormalised (Carl)]

Or maybe, the Universe (or any universe) is just the playground which life itself creates in order to grow and learn through physical existence.

Look at it in this way...how non trivial/random, beautiful and elegant are the underlying structure, the constants and mathematical constructs of the Universe. So finely balanced and precise. As if it were designed and yet if you put this to any scientist these days, they'd laugh at you...start quoting about the weak and/or strong anthropic principle and say they find no evidence for it to be anything other than some random chance occurrence. A "fluke of nature", "the natural outcome of the laws of physics", if you will. Having to consider that the Universe is not some random, chance event but that it may have been staged brings up some rather unpalatable ideas for scientists. It invokes a creator (now I can hear the creationists singing with joy about this....don't open your mouths yet, fellas. You've completely misinterpreted/misunderstood everything right from the start). However, there is no need for a specific being or entity to have been a "creator", not in the sense of a religious interpretation of what creation means. There's no "God" sitting on a throne somewhere waving his or her wand and making everything "according to their likeness". What if, since we are invoking the notion that all life is interconnected, on a higher level of consciousness/intelligence/being, all life is in fact the one living entity, but with countless parts making up all the living beings in existence. That living entity would have abilities and intelligence far beyond anything we could even dream of ourselves. Our minds would barely be able to touch it, but only because we choose not to. We live by what we see, and yet there is so much of the Universe that we don't see. We've become enamoured of the materialistic way of viewing things and our science is dependent upon it. What if we're missing 99% of everything just because we refuse to look beyond some small little box of reality, just because it offends our sensibilities. Because we can't test for something doesn't mean it's not testable. It just means we haven't the capabilities yet to test it. Remember, we're still evolving, but at different rates depending on what you're looking at. And just because we haven't figured out a way of observing or testing something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There's also the corollary of that statement too, but that's the beauty of science. We can actually do something about finding out about it through study and careful measurement, intuition and leaps of logic. Religion, on the other hand, requires us to follow the dictates of others based on blind faith, with no supporting evidence (or very little, except for that which is twisted into a semblance of evidence). It relies on fear and insecurity, and is exploited by those wishing to have power over those who feel fear and insecurity. Yet they are the least secure and most fearful.