http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-05-19/thermodynamics-intelligent-living-universe"We cannot know, and therefore will likely never know, why the Universe came into existence, whether it has a purpose, and what, if any "thing" preceded it – whether there is a Divine Will or a Cosmic Intelligence "outside" of physical space. But there are some things we now do know.
We know that the universal "big bang" occurred 13.7 billion years ago (though it could have been a "big bounce" following the contraction of another universe). And we know that life as we know it has existed, at least locally, in this universe for roughly a third of that time. Ponder that for a moment. We (the royal "we" as life incarnate) are a third as old as the entire physical universe. You might think we would have matured by now!
Of all the "laws" of nature we've uncovered (or invented), the one that seems most universal is the Second Law of Thermodynamics: that all energetic systems move irreversibly and inexorably toward maximum entropy (molecular chaos) – that the universe winds down. In fact, it is this directional flow of things from order to disorder that gives us the notion of an arrow of time. While this may appear to be a simplification of the infinite complexity of the universe, it is the nature of the scientific endeavor to find simple laws governing complex processes."