Fine-Tuning and Torah: The Overlooked Connection

August 26, 2025 - 2 Elul 5785

I have deep respect for notable Christian scientists such as John Lennox and Stephen Meyer. These brilliant (and personable) thinkers make cogent, powerful arguments that a rational mind, a Creator, "most likely" exists, based on the fine-tuning of the universe. They show with great clarity that the universe is not an accident, but the work of a purposeful mind.

Yet I find it puzzling that they stop short of the logical conclusion. Come and reason: If God so carefully ordered the physical world on a set of highly precise and functional laws, would He not similarly establish the spiritual world on a set of laws as well? Would He not, in His infinite wisdom, create a parity between the "hardware and software," just as the firmament is ordered above, so the human realm must be ordered below?

Thus, this is where the agreement ends. I am perplexed (and slightly disappointed) when such careful thinkers affirm a God who is concerned with finely tuned constraints in the physical world, yet sets aside such order and precision in the spiritual world. It seems like a misapplication of their reason to claim that God would uphold the laws of nature in the firmament while dismissing them in the domain of Man.

I'm speaking about the commandments, the "spiritual constants" that enable human beings to live in communion with God. The Torah itself affirms this unbreakable link between the fixed order of creation and the permanence of the Torah. As Jeremiah declares, "If these laws depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall cease from being a nation before Me for all time. Thus says the Lord: ‘If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below searched out, then I too will cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done,’ declares the Lord." (Jeremiah 31:35-36) If there are fixed and permanent laws in the physical world, there must also be fixed and permanent laws in the spiritual world.

This sheds new light on a familiar Christian critique. The Christian Scriptures include the peculiar charge that the rabbis placed “heavy burdens” upon the people. While Jews do not believe these commandments apply to non-Jews, for Jews they are not burdens but calibrations. Engineers impose precise specifications on bridges not to oppress but to preserve life. Traffic lights prevent chaos and accidents at busy intersections. In the same way, the Torah’s precision safeguards a relationship with God. To loosen or abolish it is not to free humanity but to destabilize the very structure that makes a relationship with God possible in the first place.