Have you read or come across the ideas of James N Gardners book "Biocosm"? I obtained a copy of this book and it's a great read! Not sure I can fully accept his 'Selfish Biocosm' thesis, but it's perhaps the most mind-blowing and ambitious physical hypotheses I've ever come across!
I've lent it to a number of friends, both atheist ad deist. Most approached it with knowing smirk, but once they were into it became highly enthusiastic about the depth of the ideas.
He looks at evidence for the universe being "bio-friendly" eg physics paprameters which appear to be specifically tweaked for evolution of life and intelligence to occur, and hypothesises what this would mean in a cyclic universe.
His idea - an evolutionary process like the one we see around us could have occured in the previous universe cycle(s), and over billions of years of technological development the inhabitants gained the knowledge and control over inanimate matter to be able to 'tweak' the physical parameters themselves.
So in this theory the universe itself is not designed so much as it is terraformed, and evidence for this terraforming is indistuinguishable from evidence for design.
His idea is naturalistic and also darwinian in that terraformed universes are subsequently more likely to give rise to intelligent life which can further terraform and guarantee the stability of the universe, his title 'self biocosm' is drawn from Dawkins 'selfish gene'. So universes with intelligent life have a selective advantage, yet there isn't any mystical sense to the theory.
Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.
Edited by jasonlang, : had authors middle initial wrong. D'oh!