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Your mention of hydrogen is an interesting note. In the bang concept of creation, the first stars were void of the heavier elements ... hydrogen, helium and lithium, are theorized to be the stuff of first stars. Only after these first stars were destroyed by using up their elements in fusion reactions did heavier elements come to exist in the spacetime realm. There is a small problem with this notion however, since heavier elements have 'coalesced' in the planets and lighter elements have coalesced in gas giant planets, while the lighter elements still run the fusion reactions on the sun. [The existence of neutron stars leftover from super novas and black holes lurking about explains the heavier elements to be coalesced in later solar systems, but the questions of why the future solar systems aligned as they have is still open for theories. There is a recent Discover magazine --or was it a Scientific American article?-- that discusses these questions more effectively than I could. You might find it of interest by doing a site search at the mag sites.] Now, as we discover planets around other stars, we're finding that other (some) solar systems have gas giants in tight orbits around the star ... out of place according to the current explanation of solar system formation.

The location of Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system have tended to do what was witnessed with the meteor impacts on Jupiter, they tend to sweep up debris sailing around or dropping out of distant location at the edge of our solar system. That sweeping action has allowed this planet to sustain life long enough for intelligent life to arise.

And that brings me to the central point of the anthropic principle, the notion that the balance of fundamental forces, so finely tuned at such improbable ratios, is essential to our intelligent life manifesting in the universe and that manifestation may be the reason the forces are so tuned ... so the universe may become aware or be sensed. Cosmologists apply the anthropic notion as a means to shortcut their search for a unifying theory of everything, kind of like peaking at the answer to a calculus problem then backing up in the calculations to find the proper equational flow.

peaking = peeking ... didn't meant o make that odd slip

And that brings me to the central point of the anthropic principle, the notion that the balance of fundamental forces, so finely tuned at such improbable ratios, is essential to our intelligent life manifesting in the universe and that manifestation may be the reason the forces are so tuned ... so the universe may become aware or be sensed. Cosmologists apply the anthropic notion as a means to shortcut their search for a unifying theory of everything, kind of like peaking at the answer to a calculus problem then backing up in the calculations to find the proper equational flow.

They will not find a unifying theory in a closed universe. That is precisely what drove Di Vinci bananas - and Kant - and Nietszche. Starting from Man (rationalism), the only conclusion one can come to is that men are mere machines (time+matter+energy+chance). If men are machines, then the mannishness of man is excluded; if the mannishness of man is excluded, then all of our thoughts, emotions, desires, hopes, dreams - are mere meaningless matter in motion, and nothing has any value or meaning. Nietszhe had to come to this conclusion and went insane as a result. You see, naturalists live lives of hopeless contradiction and endless dichotomy. Naturalists/atheists/rationalists insist that men are machines, but then they go home and hug their wives and love their children...as if a wife or children have intrinsic value - which they can't possibly within their worldview! It's a hopeless inescapable dichotomy! Indeed, if men are machines, then cruelty and non-cruelty must be equal! Yes, there is a God and only God can give meaning to this universe and this life.