An Open Letter to University Presidents
10 min read
Is there a compelling, science-based argument that God exists? Check this one out.
At some stage, nearly everyone ponders the fundamental question: Does God exist? While we each explore our own paths to answer this question, many turn to science as the ultimate guide for unraveling life's most profound mysteries.
Is there a compelling, science-based argument that God exists?
In this essay, we’ll argue that recent discoveries in modern physics provide an argument that strongly suggests that an intelligent designer, God, is behind the universe and its laws. While this particular argument is based upon discoveries that are only a few decades old, the basic form of the argument follows in the footsteps of the age-old design argument.
The Design Argument essentially says that highly organized or complex phenomena in the universe suggest that an intelligent agent caused them.
The argument was clearly formulated by the 11th-century Spanish Rabbi, Bahya ibn Paquda, in his book, Duties of the Heart, as follows:
There are some people who claim that the world came into being by chance, without a Creator who created it and without a Maker who formed it. It is amazing to me how a rational, healthy human being could entertain such a notion. If such a person heard someone else saying the same thing about a water wheel, which turns to irrigate part of a field or a garden, saying that it came to be without a craftsman who designed it and toiled to assemble it and placed each part for a useful purpose - the hearer would be greatly amazed about him, consider him a complete fool, and be swift to call him a liar and reject his words. And since he would reject such a notion for a mere simple, insignificant water wheel, which requires but little ingenuity and which improves but a small portion of the earth - how could he permit himself to entertain such a notion for the entire universe which encompasses the earth and everything in it, and which exhibits a wisdom that no rational human intellect is capable of fathoming, and which is prepared for the benefit of the whole earth and everything on it. How could one claim that it came to be without purposeful intent and thought of a capable wise Being?
Countless people throughout the ages have shared the basic intuition behind this argument - that the amazing design in our universe implies a designer. But not all intuitions are true. To help ground this intuition, many philosophers, theologians, and scientists have worked on formulating it as an argument. Such attempts go way back to ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, and later to thinkers in the Middle Ages from different religious backgrounds like Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians.
In more recent times (1802), William Paley proposed his famous analogy, comparing the complexity of life to a watch. Just as one would never believe that a watch happened to emerge by chance without a skilled watchmaker, Paley argued that the same is certainly true for our entire universe which is much more complex than a single watch. This idea was very popular until Charles Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Darwin showed how complex life forms could develop from simpler ones through natural processes like natural selection and survival of the fittest. Modern-day biologist, Richard Dawkins, following in the footsteps of Darwin, likened evolution to a blind watchmaker that creates new life forms without any need for intelligence.
Just as one would never believe that a watch happened to emerge by chance without a skilled watchmaker, Paley argued that the same is certainly true for our entire universe which is much more complex than a single watch.
While many people are under the impression that modern science has undermined the design argument, the truth is the exact opposite. While the formulation of the design argument exclusively from biology has faced its challenges, it is a mistake to view biology in a vacuum, as life is predicated upon chemistry, which itself is ultimately rooted in physics, the bedrock of the scientific enterprise. Therefore, if design would be manifest in the very laws of physics themselves (Spoiler Alert: It is!), that would provide a much more solid foundation for the design argument and its implication of an intelligent cause of our universe.
The best version of the design argument from modern physics is found in the fine-tuning of the constants of nature. The constants are approximately 25 unchanging numbers that are built into the basic fabric of our universe and determine the quantities of our laws of nature. For example, one constant is approximately 9.109×10−31, the mass of an electron (in kilograms). You can think of this as determining the weight of every single electron, a fundamental building block in the universe. Another constant, the fine structure constant (1/137.035999084), determines how strongly a negatively charged electron is attracted to a positively charged proton.
Being that scientists seek to make sense of the world around us and develop theories that can explain everything in it, they face the big question of how to explain these seemingly arbitrary numbers. In other words, how can any theory of nature determine precise numbers like the fine structure constant - 1/137.035999084? While this question might seem unimportant to a layperson, in 1985 the great physicist, Richard Feynman, famously dubbed this problem “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics.”
How can any theory of nature determine precise numbers like the fine structure constant - 1/137.035999084? The great physicist, Richard Feynman, famously dubbed this problem “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics.”
The great clue to solving the mystery of the constants came from the surprising discovery of fine-tuning - the fact that the specific values of the constants are not arbitrary, but are highly fine-tuned to allow our complex universe to emerge. In the latter half of the 20th century, scientists discovered that if these numbers were slightly different, there would be no atoms, molecules, planets, life, stars, or galaxies.
The most remarkable case of fine-tuning surfaced with the 1998 discovery that the cosmological constant (a number that determines the expansion rate of the universe) was fine-tuned to about 120 decimal places! If it was even a little bigger, then the early universe would have expanded too quickly and galaxies would never have been able to form. Likewise, if it were a little smaller, then the early universe would have collapsed on itself, preventing galaxies' emergence.
Despite the universally accepted recognition of fine-tuning, the problem remained how to interpret this amazing discovery. No one - theists and atheists alike - thinks that it could be a lucky coincidence - the odds are simply too incomprehensibly small. Yet, the straightforward interpretation is clear: the scientific knowledge that the constants are fine-tuned directly indicates that the cause of the constants is intelligent. This follows from the definition of intelligence as the selection of one possibility from a set of larger possibilities for the purpose of achieving an objective.
Many scientists loathe to accept the existence of an intelligent cause; it sounds too similar to the God they automatically reject as impossible. Their most prominent alternative is the multiverse, which posits the existence of an infinite number of unobservable parallel universes, each with different values for the constants. Given all these universes, it would be no surprise that we find ourselves in a universe with the right constants of nature. After all, the universes with the wrong constants don’t have any intelligent observers to wonder about these questions in the first place.
Some immediately dismiss the multiverse for being speculative and unscientific.
Some immediately dismiss the multiverse for being speculative and unscientific. After all, it clearly deviates from the well-established scientific method rooted in the process of hypothesis, experimentation, and observation. Even though we are sympathetic to this serious charge, we think it’s helpful to to see why, even in its own framework, the multiverse fails to be a good scientific explanation for fine-tuning.
For a multiverse theory to be able to explain fine-tuning without an intelligent cause, it must establish three premises:
It’s fairly obvious why multiverse scientists must justify the first two premises. If there aren’t a massive number of universes, then it will still be unlikely for the constants of nature to have the right values by chance alone. And if there are infinitely many universes but they all have the same fine-tuned constants, obviously nothing is gained.
The need for the last premise is a bit more subtle. The best way to see why it’s necessary is to notice that without this premise, an infinite varied multiverse could literally explain anything and everything. This is because it predicts that everything possible will occur somewhere in the infinite varied multiverse. (To take this to an extreme, it even predicts a universe in which a heavenly voice declares to all humanity that all multiverse theories are false!) But the problem is that a theory that can explain anything and everything, in truth explains nothing at all. Seen from this perspective, a multiverse theory based exclusively on the first two premises fails to be able to explain anything in particular, such as the observed values for the constants of nature. (This is in contrast to the theory of an intelligent cause which explains a universe with order, structure, and complexity, but would fail to explain chaos and disorder.)
Multiverse scientists can get out of this problem if they can establish the third premise - that our universe is a typical, or a likely universe with intelligent observers. If so, scientists would only be able to explain our universe as a result of random chance but wouldn’t be able to equally explain all other possible universes with intelligent observers (like those with heavenly voices falsifying the multiverse).
The difficulty with rescuing the multiverse and establishing this third premise is that it’s impossible to naturally determine which universes are typical in an infinite varied multiverse. This is because not only does an infinite varied multiverse contain every possible universe, it contains an infinite number of copies of every type of universe. In the words of physicist Alan Guth, “In an eternally inflating universe, anything that can happen will happen; in fact, it will happen an infinite number of times.”
The problem is that if there are truly an infinite number of every type of universe, it becomes impossible to compute probabilities in a straight-forward manner, a necessary step for determining which universes are typical. This is the crux of the devastating measure problem and is the reason why some scientists reject the multiverse as being nonscientific.
While there is much more to say about fine-tuning and about why the multiverse is a bad philosophical theory, to fully clinch the argument it’s even more important to formulate a clear, coherent, compelling idea of God that answers commonly raised questions against the theory of an intelligent cause. Nevertheless, we hope this basic presentation can help you appreciate that the fine-tuning argument from modern physics is a prime representative of the ancient design argument in the modern world.
For a more detailed version of this argument as well as two additional design arguments from modern physics, see https://www.physicstogod.com/3-proofs-of-god-from-science.
Darwin did not show that complex life forms develop from simple ones. All Darwin showed was that various species adapt to their environment. However, Darwin did not find any species evolving to become a different species. The discovery of genetics and DNA shows that evolution is impossible. If humans and other species were formed from a sludge in a swamp, then where did the DNA come from?
3 ancient texts
"I AM the Source of Everything; From Me the entire Creation flows. Knowing this, the wise worship Me with all their Hearts."
The Bhagavad Gita ~ Chapter 10 Verse 8.
"Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and say unto them 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you', and they shall say to me, 'What is His Name?' What shall I say unto them?"
And God said unto Moses "I AM THAT I AM".
And He said "Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel 'I AM has sent me unto you.'"
Exodus 13-14.
"Something Mysteriously Exists,
Before Heaven and Earth.
In Silence and Void,
Standing Alone and Unchanging.
Ever Present & Moving in Everything,
It may be seen as Mother of World.
I do not know a name for It, so I call it The Way"
Tao Te Ching V25 - Lao Tsu.
"Consciousness is a fundamental feature of the Universe."
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
Max Planck ~ physicist, 'father of quantum theory'
"Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."
Erwin Schrodinger ~ physicist, quantum theory
In my opinion, once multiverse scientists justified your first 2 premises, i.e. There is such a massive number of universes with varying values of the constants that it is likely for the constants of nature to have the right values by chance alone, that, in and of its own would imply intelligent design. Because what would be orchestrating such existence in a way that all variables are covered?
But, it is hard for me to call such a multiverse theory science. If you think of the sheer amount of universes needed to cover every single possible option, we won't even have enough hard-drives in our universe onto which to record just the number of the amount of universes needed. Furthermore, it would require additional universes to constantly sprout into existence in exponentially growing figures
It's a bit more subtle than you're making it seem, but we definitely agree that the multiverse is not a good scientific theory.
If there is only one solution for this design problem, as amazing as that fact is, doesn't it undermine the argument that the design is "intelligent"? The designer had no choice!
Is pi = 3.14159... "by design" or simply because it IS that value? Similarly, the "designer" had no choice.
You’re confusing two different things. Just because there is only one solution to the design argument (God), doesn’t imply that an intelligent God could only make one type of universe.
Also, you are confusing a determined mathematical constant (pi) with fundamental physical constants which are completely undetermined but are rather set by the choice of an intelligent agent.
Perhaps you are the one who is confused when you assert that physical constants are completely undetermined. Perhaps we lack the understanding that physical constants just ARE in the same way that mathematical constants just ARE.
You assert that an intelligent God could make another type of universe. Perhaps in this alternate universe, the Earth wouldn't be round? What is the intelligent designer's freedom to choose derived from? What are the constraints on His design?
If the Creator is constrained to a single design, then your argument that it is "intelligent" is void.
The reason why we begin the argument with Richard Feynman mystery of the constants is because there is no logical reason why the constants must have their value. While it's not impossible that there is some logical reason why the fine structure constant must be 1/137.039999084, there is still no reason to think it's the case. Most importantly, it would be an amazing coincidence if the numbers logically had to be specific numbers that just so happen to be within the limited range that allows for a complex universe to exist.
Again, as Feynman himself pointed out, this is entirely different from a mathematical constant like pi.
Aren't you contradicting your own statement: ""scientists discovered that if these numbers were slightly different, there would be no atoms, molecules, planets, life, stars, or galaxies"
This is a constraint.
Anyway... I'm more interested in how you connect this to the notion that this same intelligence performed miracles for the Israelites a small number of millennia ago, billions of years after Creation. Does your Theory allow for miracles which violate the Creator's own physical laws?
We aren't claiming God is constrained, or forced, to make atoms, molecules, planets, life, stars, or galaxies. He chose to, but he could have chosen not to.
This argument doesn't prove that God did miracles in the past. It would be possible to argue that since He fixed the laws of nature He could therefore change them, but the fine-tuning argument doesn't demonstrate that He ever did that.
Concerning your last point, there is no reason to posit that the intelligent cause is constrained. After all, the cause of everything can not be constrained by anything external to it.
We live in a bipolar universe, but imagine a universe based on a pentapolar system? I am not gifted in mathematics but others who are could describe such a world.
Quantum physics implies that the universe isn't even real, but if the universe was cognisant or created by a designer it can be explained, see; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQTLDJVN
Your intelligent designer produced our solar system with a finite life; the sun, a nuclear furnace, as it consumes its fuel, will expand and destroy the earth and the rest of the solar system. Your intelligent designer also produced genetic defects, harmful bacteria and viruses with devastating effects on human beings and numerous other examples of poor design. The habitability of the earth for humans, is in many ways the result of chance occurrences, such as the elimination of dinosaurs rather than the efforts of an intelligent designer. I prefer an evolutionary explanation for the complexity of organic life. Meanwhile we have no useful idea of the origin of the universe.
We never argued that the universe is specifically fine-tuned for intelligent life. We said that the constants are fine-tuned for atoms, molecules, planets, life, stars, galaxies, etc. There is nothing about the way we formulated that argument that brings in the problem of evil.
Perhaps you are thinking of something you heard someone ask against the way some other people formulate the argument. (For more, you can see a discussion we had that fleshes out the three different formulations of the fine-tuning argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W-zjOhN6Aw)
Ironically, it is multiverse scientists who must maintain that the universe appears fined tuned for intelligent life. This is a complete 180 from the usual historical debates between atheistic scientists and those who believe in God.
@Richard
You basically argue that you are more intelligent than the intelligent designer. The known argument of if I were God I'd do a better job.
I believe that if the designer was intelligent enough to do what He did, He likely has good reason for designing those factors which I see as poor design.
So I do what an intelligent being does, i.e. ask the designer why He did things?
And believe it or not, but all the answers are there in the Torah. You won't find the answers by arguing on a forum on the internet. You will find the answers if you humbly study the Torah in depth and stick to the authentic Mesorah.
"So I do what an intelligent being does, i.e. ask the designer why He did things?" - fine, go ask your designer! You may well believe that all answers are in the Torah. I don't.
Finding the answers in the Torah is not a "believe", it is a fact that I have found the answers.
Who ever said that human life should be infinite? As for evolution, give me an example of one species that evolved from other species. BTW, why there are one-cell living organisms? Why they don't evolve?
"Who ever said that human life should be infinite?" Dunno.
"As for evolution, give me an example of one species that evolved from other species." Species evolve until they have new members that can longer interbreed with the earlier menbers - you then have a new species. Examples are the various species of dinosaur and the present day birds that evolved from dinosaurs. "BTW, why there are one-cell living organisms? Why they don't evolve" - they have done, but that does not mean the earlier version no longer exists. According to nih.gov, multicellular organisms evolved from unicellular eukaryotes at least 1.7 billion years ago.
Response to multiverse:
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/855853/jewish/Where-Are-All-the-Worlds.htm
It is entirely possible that universes fine-tuned in different ways give rise to differently structured and functioning intelligent observers. That in itself does not mitigate against a Creator; the Creator may indeed have created variants of our universe.
It's entirely possible that there are many fine tuned universes "out there" that an intelligent God created. But their existence is entirely speculative and beyond science with no relevance to the fine tuning argument. So while a religious person might choose to believe in them for one reason or another, it wouldn't help atheistic scientists escape the conclusion of an intelligent cause.
It actually isn’t meant to; it’s meant to show that postulating multiverses doesn’t necessarily eliminate a Creator - as you say.
If we could work out what the physics of an alternative universe was and create the same conditions artificially we could presumably open a “gateway” between universes. Whether such a thing is technically feasible - or would be safe to do if it were - is another matter. It makes for entertaining science fiction, at any rate.
An intelligent creator is inconsistent with an infinite number of universes that are disordered (and in which order only appears by change in the infinite garbage. That god is infinitely powerful, yet not intelligent.
But you are right that an intelligent God could create an infinite number of ordered, structured, complex universes.
First and foremost, one has to define what is meant by "God". There is a massive logical leap from the premise that there was a Creator to the belief that there is a Supreme Being who intervenes in the affairs of man in various ways such as delivering scriptures (thereby transcending the physical laws of His own Creation).
Physics in no way validates religions that depend on prophets and scriptures for their authority. It is that authority that needs to be argued scientifically.
The fine tuning argument on its own can't prove divine providence, but it can lay the foundation for a further argument to build upon. It's still worthwhile and important to take the first step and show that by using science and philosophy we can know that God exists. After you do that you can evaluate the further issue of divine providence.
The problem with any version of the Argument from Design is that it destroys its own first premisse. The first premisse is, "We can distinguish between designed objects and non-designed objects." The conclusion is, "Therefore, the entire Universe is designed." But if everything is designed, then the original premisse is false. Therefore, the argument is logically a failure and cannot stand.
We are not saying that everything has to be designed. Rather, we observe that our universe is designed. If there truly existed a multiverse containing infinitely many chaotic universes, each with random laws and constants, and our one structured universe happened to have the right laws and constants which allowed it emerge from the infinite chaos, that multiverse wouldn't exhibit design. But our observed universe does exhibit design on all orders of magnitude - from the tiniest elementary particles to the largest galaxies.
Who or what designed the designer? And how do we know who or what the designer is or are? What does the designer look like? Why isn’t it Gaea? Uranus? Other creation gods? How intelligent is the designer? Why must it, he, she be mysterious? Why does the designer require all this praying?
Great questions! In the final paragraph above, we say, "While there is much more to say about fine-tuning and about why the multiverse is a bad philosophical theory, to fully clinch the argument it’s even more important to formulate a clear, coherent, compelling idea of God that answers commonly raised questions against the theory of an intelligent cause."
In the third series of our podcast, Physics to God, we plan to address most of your questions and more. While it will take some time until we get there, we think it's important to build the argument step by step.
To give a short answer, the God that the design argument points to must be one simple God with no parts (Yichud Hashem). Any other idea of god will fall prey to the question of "Who designed the complex designer?"
With infinite time, which is a given, all the constants could have developed randomly. The idea that there is a hand behind the universe is a concept that some cannot put away. This is based on the fact that there is a human hand behind all of the developments that we enjoy today. Randomness is a very difficult concept to accept given that we live in such a complex world and that nothing happens or is developed without a human intervention. There are accidents which have interesting results, but this would advance the concept of randomness.
I think you are advocating for the multiverse explanation of the apparent fine tuning of the constants. We discuss in the article briefly why that argument doesn't work. For a more in-depth discussion of the multiverse's flaws, you can check back later this year for season 2 on the "Physics to God" podcast.
How do you evaluate a metaphysical God with physical means? in essence God is unknowable.
It’s true that God’s simple essence can’t be understood by analyzing it into components like we can do with all other complex things. But we can understand and evaluate God’s actions in the physical universe.
Janice, all theories about an ultimate designer of the universe come up against the question of who designed the designer. Maybe Rabbis Feder and Zimmer have a novel answer to this conundrum.......
Richard - As we said above,
"In the third series of our podcast, Physics to God, we plan to address most of your questions and more. While it will take some time until we get there, we think it's important to build the argument step by step.
To give a short answer, the God that the design argument points to must be one simple God with no parts (Yichud Hashem). Any other idea of god will fall prey to the question of "Who designed the complex designer?"
Since He has no parts, the question who designed Him is inapplicable.
Kol hakavod Elie and Aaron!
Thanks