Are You Religious?

[Markus]

...and no particular reason why such universe would have survived this long either.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

What I'm unable to accept is the idea that this universe is the chance result of an astronomical chain reaction of contingencies when it could instead be an astronomical chain reaction of intelligent planning.

There might be billions of universes in which it isn't possible for life to exist. We obviously are not in one of those universes.

The reason our universe is so perfect is because it has to be. There's really no luck or planning involved.

If God can exist forever, I don't see why matter can't exist forever. Both are equally incompatible with what we "know" about beginnings and ends (actually, doesn't science hold that energy and matter are never destroyed, only transferred?).

There's no problems with matter not being destroyed AFAIK. But there is the problem of what God was doing during the infinite years before he created our universe.