by Dr. T.D. Singh

Dr. Thoudam Damodara Singh (1937-2006), also known as Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami is the founding director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He was one of the world’s pioneer exponents of science-spirituality dialogue and inter-faith peace initiatives. He identified the cause of many of the problems in the world today such as terrorism, environmental issues, and social and religious conflict to be due to a lack of understanding between the fields of empirical science and religion. As the International Director of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, he wrote more than thirty books, gave hundreds of talks and seminars, and organized numerous scholarly discussions and international conferences on topics related to the science and spirituality nexus.

T.D. Singh Dialogue on Science and Religion

Intelligent Design and Fine-tuning

Excerpt from a conversation between Dr. T. D. Singh and Charles Townes (Nobel Laureate, Physics)

Dr. T.D. Singh (TDS): First of all, I would like to say that besides being a great scientist you are well-known for appreciating religious and spiritual values in scientific works. When discussions of the various conceptions of God are brought out in science and religion dialogue, they are often unclear. Can you, as a scientist, say anything about the understanding of God?

Charles H Townes (CHT): Well, understanding God is certainly very difficult. I would say there is some spiritual force out there that has planned this universe and is affecting us, and I feel a very close personal interaction. It is very important to me.

TDS: What about the argument within the scientific communities that the universe is fine-tuned? You yourself have mentioned that our universe is very special and unique. The fundamental constants, especially, are made in such a unique way; any slight change in these constants might lead to a completely different type of universe. The universe as we know it would be completely different. I’d like to say that this type of interpretation could be taken as a theistic interpretation of empirical observations; the constants have been empirically observed, and from we can reach a conclusion. Would you like to comment on whether this interpretation is acceptable?

CHT:  Well, it is certainly very clear that this universe is very special. It is remarkable and highly improbable that its creation is random. So how did it happen? Well, there are several possibilities. One possibility is that it was planned by a fantastic intelligence you might call God, who planned the universe and the laws of physics. People who don’t want to believe in a spiritual being might say, “The only explanation is that we agree that it is highly improbable, but maybe there is an infinite number of universes, all having different laws of physics, and the only one that happened to turn out right is this one. Since this is the only one that turned out right, that is the reason we are here.” That is, of course, just imagination, since we don’t know of these universes; we can’t do any scientific testing to find out if they are out there. Now the other difficulty with that is, why is that the laws of physics would change from one universe to another? We don’t know what makes the laws of physics the way they are – it is a great puzzle. Maybe the simplest concept is that this was all planned by a superior intelligence somehow. However, one can make other postulates such as the existence of an infinite number of universes, or that somehow the laws of physics have to be the way they are, although we don’t know why they have to be that way.

TDS: Now if we adopt that conception or understanding, then we could say that all scientific knowledge, or knowledge per se, could be understood as divinely inspired.

Excerpt from a conversation between Dr. T. D. Singh and Prof. Michael J. Behe

TDS: Your views about life, especially on the Darwinian conception of evolution, are quite strong. I there are very few scientists like you in the world who speak so strongly with great commitment. In the Indian religious tradition, called Vedanta, we also have a different type of conception than the Darwinian viewpoint on evolution of life.

One thing I find very interesting while interacting with many physicists is that they often talk of “fine-tuning” regarding the physical constants of the universe. They acknowledge that the world is fine-tuned; however, they don’t speak of any conception of God. They don’t directly say God. They use the word “fine-tuning” in terms of the values of the physical constants like the speed of light, Planck’s constant, gravitational constant, etc. Even the masses of electrons and protons are arranged in such a way that nature is very fine-tuned. They don’t say anything directly about God. But in your analysis you say that there is an intelligent design and thus a designer. To me fine-tuning and intelligent design aren’t that much different, at least from the spiritual perspective. I was wondering if you could give a brief explanation of intelligent design. Is “intelligent design” the same thing as “fine-tuning”?

 Michael J. Behe (MJB): Is intelligent design the same thing as fine-tuning? I think they can be understood in different ways. With fine-tuning, one is saying that the conditions of the universe are sufficient to permit life. That is, if the universal condition were a little different, life couldn’t exist. But when you say that something was designed, you’re looking at the thing itself, not outside factors, and saying how the parts of the system itself and the structure itself are put together strongly suggesting that somebody arranged them in a certain way. So we might say that, for example, you had a lawn mower to cut the grass. You might say that the laws of the universe are necessary for the lawn mower to work. And if the charge on the electron was different, or the chemical reactivity of oxygen and gasoline were much different, then this structure wouldn’t be able to work. So the laws of the universe permit it to work, and they might even be simply necessary for it to work. If they had changed just a little bit, the lawn mower might not work. But that fine-tuning is not enough to explain why the lawn mower works. You would have to say that this particular bolt had to be this shape, and the start plug had to be this shape, and there are no general laws, not even any general initial constants, that explain the lawn mower. And in my thinking, many of the structures of biology are more like the lawn mower. Universal laws, and constants, and so on, are required for them to work, but they are not sufficient to explain how they got to be the way they are…

TDS: What you are saying is that an intelligent being is there behind these physical constants. I think fine-tuning could be considered to be a part within the intelligent design scheme. In other words, in the intelligent design scheme of the creation of an object, every part or organ has to be fine-tuned. For example, the human eye is a product of complete design and it is fine-tuned in the sense that the eye-ball, the retina, the transmission of the signal to the optical lobe of the brain – all have to be exactly the way they are made. Even the design of the whole human body with its seventy-five trillion cells, working in a fine-tuned and symbiotic manner, is a startling example. The working of each cell with its marvelous membrane structure, continuous protein formation, production of energy rich ATP molecules, etc., is amazingly fine-tuned.

Fundamental Constants of the Universe