Intelligent Design and The Anthropic principle

More follow up to the earlier post on intelligent design: The New York Times published this article today discussing the substantive arguments made by the proponents of intelligent design.

Also, the fundamental idea isn't new. Various forms of the so-called "anthropic principle" have been around for many years. The principle tries to answer the question of why so many fundamental physical constants in our universe are precisely what they have to be in order for life to have arisen on Earth. In it's "weak" form, the principle merely says that the physical constants in the universe must be such that life can form in the universe, else we wouldn't be here to talk about why universal physical constants are the way they are -- not (in my view) a particularly satisfying principle, but there you go. Other "forms" of the principle go off in wilder directions, and some have used the principle to argue for some sort of intelligent creation of the universe. Good overviews are here and here.