The Fine-Tuning of the Universe: Between Random Chance, the Multiverse Hypothesis, and the Qur’anic Witness of Deliberate Creation

Science says that 13.8 billion years ago, everything you see today—all stars, all galaxies, all matter, and all energy—was compressed into a single point smaller than an atom. Then, something happened, and the universe erupted into existence.

But the question that causes every honest scientist to pause is: What was before that point?

The shocking answer from physics is: Nothing. No time, no space, no matter, no energy. Time itself was born with the Big Bang. Thus, asking “what was before it?” [is illogical in this context].

Here begins the real question: Is this fine-tuning a coincidence or a Will?

When the universe was born, there were specific physical values defined with indescribable precision:

The gravitational constant,

The speed of light,

The mass of an electron,

The strength of the nuclear force.

If gravity had been stronger by a fraction of one part in a hundred thousand million billion (10^17), it would have collapsed immediately, and not a single star would have been born. Conversely, if it had been weaker by the same amount, matter would have dispersed into space, and nothing would have ever aggregated.

The famous physicist Roger Penrose says that the probability of the universe being so finely tuned by chance is one in ten raised to the power of ten raised to the 123rd power (1 in 10^(10^123))—a number larger than the total number of atoms in the entire universe.

Scientists call this phenomenon “fine-tuning,” and they divide into two groups in explaining it:

An atheistic group that says it is a mere coincidence in an endless sea of universes.

A theistic group that says this cannot be random.

The first group proposed the “Multiverse Theory,” meaning our universe is not alone. There are infinite universes, each with its own laws. By chance—the same chance they use to explain the emergence and diversity of life on Earth—we happen to be in the universe whose laws allow for life. However, this theory, clever and elusive as it may seem, involves a deep flaw: it cannot be proven or disproven. Anything that cannot be tested is not science in the strict sense. Therefore, when science resorts to the multiverse, it is actually resorting to a philosophy of “belief in non-belief”: a faith in that which is not seen or measured. By doing so, it engages in the exact practice it criticizes.

Conclusion

What the Quran states, what the Prophetic Hadiths affirm, and what science has proven do not differ.

Dr. Mohamed Bourbab
President of the Global Authority for Scholars of Scientific Miracles [in the Quran and Sunnah]