A mind behind the laws of the universe: fine-tuning put to the test

A mind behind the laws of the universe: from fine-tuning to atomic weight

The thesis that a mind lies behind the laws governing the cosmos resurfaces whenever physics stumbles upon an inconvenient constant. The starting point is a compilation of the great theologians of the early Church —Gregory of Nancy, Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria— who, centuries apart, maintain the same thing: the order of the world betrays its author. The question is the usual one: if the world is spontaneous, what accounts for its order?

The Compendium of the Catechism settles it in point 53: the world was created for the glory of God, who wished to communicate his goodness, truth and beauty, and the ultimate end of Creation is that God, in Christ, be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). On that basis, it is repeated that the conflict between science and faith is, simply, nonexistent. The work of José Carlos González-Hurtado, which accumulates data from the experimental sciences, serves as ammunition for that idea.

Fine-tuning: constants calibrated for life

The star argument is that of fine-tuning. The conditions that permit life occur only under a very restricted set of values for the universal physical constants; if any one of them were slightly different, the universe would be little suited to the development of matter, astronomical structures and diversity. Some maintain that this coincidence cannot be the product of chance and that no scientist of middling prestige in the last 300 years has doubted design, although the claim owes more to a declaration of faith than to laboratory data.

The counteroffensive is not long in coming. The attack on detail is worth keeping in view, because that is where the matter becomes entertaining.

Why is atomic weight not a whole number?

The low blow came through arithmetic: if there is a designer, he is a bungler, because he was not even able to set atomic weights to a whole number. The technical reply demolishes the joke with force. Atomic weight cannot be a whole number because of isotopes and different nuclear binding energies; making it so would require those energies to be linear with the number of nucleons and would at the same time erase the richness of nuclear phenomena.

Anyone looking for whole numbers has atomic number. And there is an elegant way out: the quantization of physics would make it possible to express every magnitude in whole numbers by taking unit bases on the Planck scale. What seemed proof of divine botching ends up as a lesson in how an atomic nucleus works. Others reverse the analogy: if no one doubts that there is a mind behind the configuration of a computer program, why deny that mind behind the universe?

Free will, quantum observation and the problem of evil

The ground shifts toward free will. If everything is defined in advance, there can be no freedom, and a sufficiently powerful computer could work out any outcome in advance. From there comes the suspicion that the cosmos behaves like an experiment, or even like a design that saves bandwidth and only specifies results when someone observes them.

The problem of evil enters from another direction. That God does not want slaves but beings with a will who choose requires that the alternative exist; evil would be a necessary actor in the play. The defense is completed with eternity: if finite suffering is compared with an infinite good, the result is zero, so that what happens here would have relative weight. Against that, pure chance is claimed as the rule governing everything: the laws and everything we are arose from a chance event, and a coin tossed millions of times produces a pattern by sheer repetition. The argument from order, they reply, is better explained by that chance than by belief in a god who does not answer every question.

The faceless lawgiver and faith as a gift

In the most philosophical stretch, an intermediate figure appears: a pre-existing lawgiver, immaterial, who does not exist in our world but whose laws are fulfilled. His kingdom is not of this world; reason cannot reach him because he is neither reason nor cause, and the only thing we can know is his effect. There are laws, therefore there is a lawgiver; but not a creator, and not one to whom the immortality of the soul can be attached, which would be, on that reading, an error contrary to movement and evolution.

Against the attempt to prove God, the most repeated answer ends up being humility: the Infinite cannot be encompassed by a limited mind, nor can eternity be understood without a soul. Faith, it is said, is a gift not won by syllogisms; one can give reasons, but not be right. And the closing line that throws you: self-love does great harm, and it is humility that brings one closer to God.

There everything gets stuck. Physics does not close the question, theology does not fully open it either, and fine-tuning remains, depending on whom you ask, the signature of an author or the inevitable residue of having only one universe to look at.