In the 1990s, sf writer Neal Stephenson wrote some notes on the computing scene (linux-Microsoft culture wars were in the air, & I regret getting so caught up in that back then). I think this related to his novel Cryptonomicon. The links to those notes have disappeared AFAIK, but the part I’ve saved and quote below has been copied by a few others as well.
This imagines God sitting at a unix terminal running the “universe” program with different physics constants to see what kinds of universes are created. The context for this is the discussion as to whether our universe is a product of Intelligent Design in some form, or a random accident — and the recent discovery that even slight variations in these constants would produce a universe in which life was not possible. Quoting just the central paragraph because I think it’s so good:
I think that the message is very clear here: somewhere outside of and beyond our universe is an operating system, coded up over incalculable spans of time by some kind of hacker-demiurge. The cosmic operating system uses a command-line interface. It runs on something like a teletype, with lots of noise and heat; punched-out bits flutter down into its hopper like drifting stars. The demiurge sits at his teletype, pounding out one command line after another, specifying the values of fundamental constants of physics:
universe -G 6.672e-11 -e 1.602e-19 -h 6.626e-34 -protonmass 1.673e-27....
and when he’s finished typing out the command line, his right pinky hesitates above the ENTER key for an aeon or two, wondering what’s going to happen; then down it comes–and the WHACK you hear is another Big Bang.
I had forgotten about this until I watched today’s Bahá’í Faith — Modern Perspectives talk by Kendal Williams on the Sifter of Dust site — now on Youtube. He was talking about the compatibility of scientific and religious worldviews.
P.S. A more recent article on the friendliness of the structure of the universe for life is on The Atlantic as “Where Science and Miracles Meet” (porous paywall). But I think this field is still Early Days in our understanding.