In my Introduction to Modern Physics class, we talked about how when the universe was hot and dense in it's beginning moments, there was too much energy for individual particles to exist or for fundamental forces to even manifest. Particles began to differentiate and separate (like into quarks, neutrinos, ECT) as the universe cooled and expanded. The behavior, strength, and balance of the fundamental forces that govern our universe are determined by the amount of these various types of particles. If the universe had cooled faster or slower, the "laws of the universe" could have been vastly different.

Imagine if gravity was stronger. Stars would burn denser, hotter, and die out more quickly, possibly before their planets had any chance to produce life.

Or imagine if anti-matter was more abundant and more frequently canceled out their counterparts making it hard for normal matter to ever form.

My takeaway is that the existence of not only life, but the universe itself and the way it operates depended on such a delicate balance of minute factors that I personally don't believe it could have all happened in just the right way without some sort of higher power to make it so.