But then Linde thought of another channel of communication between creator and creation—the only one possible, as far as he could tell. The creator, by manipulating the cosmic seed in the right way, has the power to ordain certain physical parameters of the universe he ushers into being. So says the theory. He can determine, for example, what the numerical ratio of the electron's mass to the proton's will be. Such ratios, called constants of nature, look like arbitrary numbers to us: There is no obvious reason they should take one value rather than another. (Why, for instance, is the strength of gravity in our universe determined by a number with the digits 6673?) But the creator, by fixing certain values for these dozens of constants, could write a subtle message into the very structure of the universe. And, as Linde hastened to point out, such a message would be legible only to physicists.All these ratios between the fundamental forces would either be uninteresting-looking on their own, or they'd look ironic in some way. If they look ironic to us, then we'd just take that as a cue that they must be causally related in some way to some more-fundamental force, instead of actually being "arbitrary".
But there's no reason why this fundamental relationship has to be a designed relationship. For example, if the relationship of force α to force β is π, what would that imply to us? That there's a Designer who is fascinated by the ratio of the circumference to the diameter? Or that the β force really does represent a circumference of something and the α really does represent that something's diameter? The fact that there's some ratio that happens to look interesting, by itself gives us NO clue.
And so the physicist will pursue the hypothesis that the interesting ratio is a clue to a shared (natural) causality, and the spiritualist will write a popular book claiming pursue the hypothesis that the interesting ratio is a clue to the Designer's psychology. <shrug>
Nope, I say that any Designer would have to understand the particular language that the inhabitants of His universe write, and imprint a message in that language. So I think that pretty much rules out our being able to detect such a God if He was a physicist-in-a-lab-type.
There is no obvious reason they should take one value rather than another. (Why, for instance, is the strength of gravity in our universe determined by a number with the digits 6673?)A. That's the physicist's PIN number for his debit card.