The Anthropic Principle

There was an article in the Guardian earlier this week on the Anthropic Principle. This says something along the lines that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with the fact that we, as a carbon-based life form, exist at this particular place and time.

 

Personally, I just take it as a truism that if the fundamental constants of the universe were different, then we wouldn’t be here, so the fact that we are here is simply a result of the particular values of the fundamental constants. But then I read the readers’ letters in the Guardian today, where apparently some people believe that the Anthropic Principle is evidence for the existence of a god doing the tweaking of the values – the so-called Fine-Tuned Universe. I just don’t see the connection between the two. In fact, it seems to me that the Anthropic Principle actually undermines the proposition for Intelligent Design (which basically boils down to GodDidIt). Certainly, I see no evidence for it.