Finely-tuned universe wanted: Intelligent Designers need not apply.

[The Atheist]

One of the cornerstones of modern apologetics in the fine-tuning argument which, to many theists, leads them to conclude our universe could only have been created by an Intelligent Designer <cough>God</cough>. The argument asserts that if you adjust any of the numerous physical properties, from the mass of subatomic properties to the expansion rate of the universe (and many attributes in between), our universe would be incapable of sustaining life – especially intelligent life (namely humans… give or take). Theists often quote well known scientists who acknowledge the precise parameters our universe seems to conform to (usually neglecting to mention that these scientists don’t draw the same conclusions that they do), solidifying the theists’ conviction that our universe must have been intelligently designed.

However, if our “finely-tuned” universe is the only universe capable of supporting intelligent life, then a being creating our universe would have absolutely no design decisions to make. Universe creation would be an act of discovering the only physics which could work, not design. Thus, an intelligent designer would be completely limited by a host of physical laws he himself could not significantly manipulate if he wanted to sustain life. These constraints would absolutely limit even a God. On the other hand, if life could be sustained in a vast array of universes with very different parameters set at the whim of an omnipotent designer, then our particular universe could no longer be considered finely-tuned as it would merely be one of many universe types capable of sustaining life.

Stated more simply: If God himself cannot create life under any other conditions, then he designed nothing, but only discovered the one way in which a life-sustaining universe could be constructed. If God could create sustainable life in any type of universe, then our universe is nothing special and thus not finely-tuned.

I don't know. This argument seems like a lot of sophistry. And since I've never heard an ID advocate make some of these presumptions, I have to call this argument a straw man.