"the big bang had to happen EXACTLY as it did in order for 'life' to be. If there was one iota of a variation in how it all occurred... the universe as we know it would not be here... it would have expanded so fast as to blow itself apart... or, had it not expanded as fast as it did, it would have collasped in on itself."
Here is where I will diverge from you a bit Corri. I understand the argument, but there are a few underlying assumptions that need to be addressed. When you say "life", what do you mean? You mean life as it exists on this Earth. Saying that life could not exist if the current conditions weren't exactly as we observe them is akin to saying that I wouldn't be here if I wasn't born.
As far as the universe itself is concerned, we can speculate on what would happen if we tweaked some of the fundamental parameters of the universe (Planck's constant, gravitational constant, speed of light in a vacuum, permitivity and permeability of free space, etc.), but we really don't know what would happen, because we can't do it. Remember, those fundamental constants are HUMAN INVENTIONS designed to help us explain observations. Who is to say that the fundamental constants might not be tied together in some complementary way (i.e. change one and another changes to balance it)? Or who is to say that if we tweak the constants, we don't come up with a whole new set of rules. The Anthropic Principal is a nice hypothesis, but it is IMHO self-defeating because it uses human-created models to show that a human-infested universe is inevitable.
"There are fluctuations out there which physicists cannot explain... some parts of the universe expand more quickly than others... and this makes no sense to physicists... it should all expand 'uniformily.' The Inflation Theory, if I understand it all to some degree at least, explains these 'fluctuations.'"
Close. Many of the hypotheses now are leaning toward dark matter "seeds" that created the early universe fluctuations and that inflation helped smooth them out in our little corner of the unverse, helping things to procede to the galaxy/star model we see today. The inflation model helps explain why the fluctuations are at the observed level, and also helps explain the overall density of the universe.
"You should probably read about Causality, too."
YES! Anyone who hasn't taken the time to ponder the predictions of Relativity really should jump down that rabbit hole. It is fun and enlightening.
"I know. I think about this sh!t."
Ditto.
Chrome
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
