Pete (The Virtual Vicar)

What are you doing for Lent? This year Lent begins in March. Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. Lent comes from the Anglo Saxon word lencten, which means "spring." The forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. Lent is a time of repentance, fasting and preparation for the coming of Easter. It is a time of self-examination and reflection. In the early church, Lent was a time to prepare new converts for baptism. Today, Christians focus on their relationship with God, often choosing to give up something or to volunteer to do work for the church or other charity work. Sundays in Lent are not counted in the forty days because each Sunday represents a "mini-Easter" and the reverent spirit of Lent is tempered with joyful anticipation of the Resurrection.The choice to observe Lent is a personal on

The universe is fine tuned such that life can exist within it.  Life is defined by scientists to mean taking in food, extracting energy, growing, adapting to the environment and reproducing. Certain quantities have to be just right for the universe to permit life.  For example, when the universe began there needed to be a certain amount of disorder (entropy).  The entropy at the beginning of the universe needed to be just right to result in a universe that would allow life. The laws of nature can be expressed as mathematical equations.  In these equations are symbols that stand for unchanging quantities called constants.  If these constants were even slightly different, the same laws of nature would result in a very different universe. The current estimate of the age of the universe is 100 000 000 000 000 000 seconds. The current estimate of the number of subatomic particles in the universe is 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000