Our Amazing Solar System

I got to thinking about the solar system, and the galaxies and the universe and just how vast and amazing it really is, and I did some research. Here are a few facts I found.

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The Goldilocks Zone 1
An area of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its home star so that its surface is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water, and, thus, life. For our planetary system that zone is:
from 67,000,000 to 141,000,000 miles (107,826,048 to 226,917,504 km),
or, a total distance of 74,000,000 miles (or 119,091,456 km),
Or just 2.01 percent of the solar system.

Average Distances of Planets from the Sun

Planet	Miles 3	km 2	AU 3	Relative 4
Mercury	35,983,606	57,910,000	0.39	1.00
Venus	67,232,363	108,200,000	0.72	1.87
Earth	92,957,130	149,600,000	1.00	2.58
Mars	141,635,350	227,940,000	1.52	3.94
Jupiter	483,631,840	778,330,000	5.20	13.44
Saturn	888,187,982	1,429,400,000	9.55	24.68
Uranus	1,783,950,479	2,870,990,000	19.19	49.58
Neptune	2,798,842,261	4,504,300,000	30.11	77.78
Pluto	3,674,490,973	5,913,520,000	39.53	102.12

Notes:
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_zone
2 http://nineplanets.org/data.html
3 calculated from km data
4 http://solargeometry.com/DistCalc.htm

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So, as we see above, the Goldilocks Zone, or the Habitable Zone of our solar system is about 2% of it--something that would be statistically impossible to happen randomly. And yet, here we are.

The second part (Average Distances of Planets from the Sun) gives us an idea of just how huge and empty the solar system is. The chart below shows the planetary distances compared to one another. Another excellent exercise for this is The Thousand Yard Model, which I highly encourage you to get with 10 friends and try.

Some people would have us believe that all of this is the way it is because of random, accidental events in the history of the universe that we are just barely beginning to even begin to understand. On the other hand, others believe that there is some highly intelligent being controlling, constructing and in charge of it all. According to Ockham's Razor, the simpler explanation is most likely the correct one. And this is one reason why I believe in God.