Looking forward to the August 27 release of the new and expanded edition of The Privileged Planet, philosopher Jay Richards had a great conversation on Uncommon Knowledge with host Peter Robinson and cosmologists Luke Barnes and Brian Keating. The original 2004 edition of Dr. Richards’s book (with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez) argued that there is a striking overlap between the narrow conditions for planetary habitability and the narrow conditions for scientific discovery, pointing to an intelligent designer’s plans for us. 

How has the argument held up? With the discovery of large numbers of exoplanets in the intervening twenty years, does Earth look as privileged as it did? What about all those exoplanets swarming out there, beyond our solar system, that you hear about like a persistent drum beat in the science media? Oh, here’s a new one that came up on Space.com just today, some 455 light years away.

The situation, it turns out, has not changed. Indeed, the most “Earth-like planet” to our knowledge is still right next-door. Says Richards (at 36:25):

If you want to know what’s the most Earth-like planet other than Earth that we know about, still 5,000 extrasolar planet discoveries in, it’s Mars. It’s a round and otherwise habitable system. Its orbit is very similar to ours. It’s comparable in size. When our book first came out in 2004, with every new extrasolar planet discovery a science writer would call and say, “What about this? You said we had a privileged planet.” And we’d say, “Our argument is not that there’s only one Earth-like planet. That’s not it.” This kept happening. Finally I remember I told a reporter, “Call me when we find a planet outside our solar system that’s at least as Earth-like as Mars is.” We still haven’t done it.

All those exoplanets, and not one looks more like Earth than does our rocky, red, and thoroughly desolate neighbor. Earth is still privileged, and if anything it looks even more so. You can pre-order of The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery now.