The Goldilocks Enigma Is The Idea That

No Attempt To Explain The World, Either Scientifically Or Theologically, Can Be Considered Successful Until It Accounts For The Paradoxical Conjunction Of The Temporal And The Atemporal, Of Being And Becoming. And No Subject Conforms This Paradoical Conjuction More Starkly Than The Origin Of The Universe.

There Is For Me Powerful Evidence That There Is Something Going On Behind It All. . . It Seems As Though Somebody Has Fine Tuned Nature's Numbers To Make The Universe. . . The Impression Of Design Is Overwhelming.

What We Want Is Another Sample Of Life, Which Is Not On Our Tree Of Life At All. All Life That We've Studied So Far On Earth Belongs To The Same Tree. We Share Genes With Mushrooms And Oak Trees And Fish And Bacteria That Live In Volcanic Vents And So On That It's All The Same Life Descended From A Common Origin. What We Want Is A Second Tree Of Life. We Want Alien Life, Alien Not Necessarily In The Sense Of Having Come From Space, But Alien In The Sense Of Belonging To A Different Tree Altogether. That Is What We're Looking For, "life 2.0."

Should We Find A Second Form Of Life Right Here On Our Doorstep, We Could Be Confident That Life Is A Truly Cosmic Phenomenon. If So, There May Well Be Sentient Beings Somewhere In The Galaxy Wondering, As Do We, If They Are Not Alone In The Universe.

No Planet Is More Earth-like Than Earth Itself, So If Life Really Does Pop Up Readily In Earth-like Conditions, Then Surely It Should Have Arisen Many Times Right Here On Our Home Planet? And How Do We Know It Didn't? The Truth Is, Nobody Has Looked.