A Science-Based Argument For Hashem

By Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer | PhysicsToGod.com

In our previous article, we outlined three reasons why it’s worthwhile for bnei Torah to seek evidence for Hashem in the world of science. First, this knowledge can equip us to respond to the apikorsus that’s so prevalent in today’s modern world. Second, transforming the secondhand knowledge received through mesorahinto firsthand understanding can deepen and strengthen our emunah in Hashem. Third, the more we understand the wisdom in Hashem’s universe, the more we are inspired with love and awe of Hashem.

In this article, we begin our presentation of the fine-tuning argument for Hashem’s existence by exploring a profound mystery that lies at the heart of modern physics. It’s crucial to grasp this mystery because everything that follows depends on fully appreciating it.

In the next and final article, we’ll explain how the discovery of fine-tuning (that we’ll explain next time) offers a critical clue that points directly to the true solution—one that provides compelling evidence that Hashem intentionally and intelligently designed the universe.

Don’t worry if you have a very limited grasp of modern science. We’ll fill you in on everything you need to know and clearly explain all the basic concepts.

The Basics: Fundamental Physics, the Constants, and a Theory of Everything

To understand the mystery, we need to know three important ideas:

Fundamental Physics: This is the study of the most basic building blocks of everything. Tiny particles like electrons make up all matter, and they follow simple rules called the laws of nature, like gravity.

Constants of Nature: These are around 25 fixed numbers that describe things like how heavy particles are or how strongly they interact. Scientists didn’t make them up or derive them from any equation. They just measure them. Two examples are the mass of an electron (how heavy it is) and something called the fine-structure constant (a number that affects how strongly two electrons repel each other).

Theory of Everything: Scientists have long dreamt of finding one extremely simple and elegant law that explains everything in the universe, from atoms to galaxies. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg wrote all about this pursuit in his well-known book, Dreams of a Final Theory.

Richard Feynman’s Great Mystery: Why These Numbers?

So here’s the mystery: Why do the constants of nature have the exact values they do? Why is the fine-structure constant something weird like 1/137.035999139 instead of just 2 or 10?

Think of it like a moral code that includes a rule for giving charity. If someone told you, “Give exactly 13.743627% of your money to charity,” you’d say, “That’s oddly specific!” It doesn’t seem like a natural or reasonable number.

That’s what the constants of nature are like. Really exact and seemingly random.

Scientists had two possible ideas to explain them, but neither of them was very satisfying:

1.         Maybe the constants are just brute facts of nature, with no deeper reason behind them. But that would make the much sought-after “Theory of Everything” less like one simple, elegant law and more like a long, messy list of weird numbers no one understands. This would be like suggesting that 13.743627% is an unexplained brute fact in your moral code. Not very satisfying.

2.         Maybe there’s a deeper law that explains why the constants have these values. That sounds nice, but how plausible was it that physicists could find one simple law that could produce 25 exact numbers, down to the last decimal point? Scientists couldn’t even crack a single number, let alone all 25 of them!

This would be like saying, “All the rules of morality come from one simple rule: Treat others the way you want to be treated.” That’s elegant. But since the rules also say, “Give exactly 13.743627% of your money to charity,” it’s hard to see how that specific number could possibly come from the simple rule. The same thing happens in physics. The constants seem too messy and too exact to be derived from a simple, deeper theory.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman clearly spelled out the mystery in his 1985 book QED(page 127). Listen to what he wrote about the fine-structure constant (you don’t have to know exactly what this is):

It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than 50 years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it. Immediately, you’d like to know where this number for a coupling comes from? … Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics, a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the hand of G-d wrote that number, and we don’t know how He pushed His pencil. We know what kind of dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately. But we don’t know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out without putting it in secretly.

It’s important to recognize that Feynman’s mystery has nothing to do with what’s known as fine-tuning. You can see this clearly because, until now, we haven’t even mentioned fine-tuning. In fact, you might still have no idea what it is!

Yet, if you pause and reflect, you can still appreciate the profound mystery that Feynman said all good theoretical physicists should worry about.

In short, the mystery is this: If science aims to explain everything in the universe, how can it possibly account for these 25 seemingly random numbers?

{What is the “G-d of the Gaps” Mistake?

Before moving on to our next article, there’s an important point to understand. At this stage in the story, it would have been completely mistaken to say, “We don’t know why the constants have those values, so G-d must have chosen them.” While that might feel like an answer, it actually falls into a well-known mistake called the “G-d of the Gaps” fallacy—where someone fills a gap in scientific knowledge with “G-d” instead of honestly saying, “We don’t yet know.”

Feynman, who was an atheist, didn’t literally mean that “the hand of G-d wrote that number.” He was metaphorically expressing just how astonishing and unexplainable the number seemed.)

In situations like this, the more intellectually honest, and often more fruitful, approach is to keep searching to see whether science can uncover a deeper explanation. That’s exactly what scientists were still hoping for when Feynman raised this question in 1985. As it turns out, over the next few decades, a remarkable clue emerged. And that brings us to the next stage of the story, which we’ll present in the final article of this series. n

Rabbi Elie Feder PhD, a Rebbe at Yeshiva Bnei Torah and a math professor at Kingsborough Community College, is the author of Gematria Refigured (2022) and Happiness in the Face of Adversity (2024). Rabbi Aaron Zimmer holds a degree in physics and is a retired commodity futures trader. They both received smicha from Rabbi Yisroel Chait, and together host the Physics to God podcast, which presents a rational, science-based case for the existence of G-d.