S9
Fine-tuning
25:2 says God "has created each thing and determined it with [precise] determination": the verse speaks of a world made to measure.
ٱلَّذِى لَهُۥ مُلْكُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَلَمْ يَتَّخِذْ وَلَدًا وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُۥ شَرِيكٌ فِى ٱلْمُلْكِ وَخَلَقَ كُلَّ شَىْءٍ فَقَدَّرَهُۥ تَقْدِيرًا٢
Transliteration: alladhī lahu mul'ku l-samāwāti wal-arḍi walam yattakhidh waladan walam yakun lahu sharīkun fī l-mul'ki wakhalaqa kulla shayin faqaddarahu taqdīran
He to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and who has not taken a son and has not had a partner in dominion and has created each thing and determined it with [precise] determination.
إِنَّا كُلَّ شَىْءٍ خَلَقْنَٰهُ بِقَدَرٍ٤٩
Transliteration: innā kulla shayin khalaqnāhu biqadarin
Indeed, all things We created with predestination.
Translation: Saheeh International
the second verse of Sura al-Furqān, Meccan. The verse is about God's sole lordship: no son, no partner, and everything made and measured by Him.
"Indeed, all things We created with predestination" (54:49), Meccan, near the end of Sura al-Qamar, after warnings to those who deny the Hour.
"And the earth - We have spread it and cast therein firmly set mountains and caused to grow therein [something] of every well-balanced thing" (15:19), Meccan.
Key words
Qaddarahu taqdīran (25:2): "determined it with [precise] determination", from qadr, measure. Bi-qadar (54:49): "with predestination" — the same root, meaning both measure and decree. Mawzūn (15:19): "well-balanced", literally "weighed".
What the verses say
That everything is made with a measure, and that this measure is God's. They do not mention physical constants.
Classical tafsir
Ibn Kathir on 25:2. "everything apart from Him is created and subject to Him".
Ibn Kathir on 54:49. He reads the verse as a statement about decree, not about physics, and reports that the Imams of the Sunnah "used this Ayah and similar Ayat and Hadiths to refute the Qadariyyah sect, who started their sect during the latter time of the Companions." He cites a report from Abu Hurayra (ra), attributed on the page to Imam Ahmad, Muslim, al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah (the Muslim number was not confirmed): "The idolators of the Quraysh came to the Messenger of Allah… arguing with him and discounting the Qadar", after which the verses were revealed. (The Qadariyya were an early group who denied that God decrees human acts.)
Al-Jalālayn on 54:49. Its comment is grammatical: "everything read inna kulla shay'in is in the accusative". (This page's explanation, not al-Jalālayn's: the accusative supports reading "We created everything with a measure" rather than "everything that We created is with a measure".)
Where they agree, and what they did not say. Both read qadar as God's measuring and decree over all things. Neither speaks of constants of nature or of a life-permitting universe; that reading is modern.
How it works
- What "fine-tuning" means. Established (as a description) Physicists have found that some constants of nature and initial conditions of the universe sit in ranges that permit life, and that small changes would, on current models, make life impossible. The SEP lists fine-tuned constants, conditions of the early universe, and laws (Friederich).
- The most famous case. Established The cosmological constant (the energy of empty space, which drives cosmic expansion): a naive estimate from quantum field theory is larger than the observed value "by an immense number of magnitudes" — "the discrepancy is between 10^50 and 10^123" depending on assumptions — "about 120 orders of magnitude" (SEP). Steven Weinberg (1987) argued that galaxies could form only if the vacuum energy was no more than a few orders of magnitude above its observed value (SEP).
- Three responses. Debated
- Design: life-permitting constants are more probable if there is a designer (Bayesian versions in the SEP; Sober and others object that observation selection effects undercut this, Kotzen and Weisberg reply).
- Multiverse: if there are very many universes with varying constants, at least one would permit life, and observers would find themselves in it.
- Brute fact or deeper law: the constants may be fixed by a deeper theory not yet known.
- Problems with the probabilities. Debated McGrew, McGrew and Vestrup (2001) argue that if a constant can take any real value, a uniform probability gives zero probability to any finite range, so "how unlikely" the life-permitting range is cannot be properly defined (SEP).
- Problems with the multiverse inference. Debated Ian Hacking (1987) charged that inferring many universes from our fine-tuned one commits the "inverse gambler's fallacy" (inferring many past rolls from one lucky roll); Roger White (2000) pressed a related point, that many other universes do not make it more likely that "this one" is life-permitting; McGrath, Manson and Thrush, Epstein and others defend the multiverse argument against the charge (SEP). Friederich concludes that "established standards of rationality may not allow us to decide whether the inference from fine-tuning to a multiverse is fallacious or not".
Points of awe
The constants of nature are measurable at all: the universe can be described in mathematics, and its numbers can be compared to what life requires.
Reflection
The Quran says God "created each thing and determined it with [precise] determination" (25:2). The Arabic word is qadr, measure. Things are not just made; they are made to a measure.
Physicists today talk about measure too. Some of nature's numbers sit in narrow ranges that allow stars, chemistry and life. What that means is argued over: a designer, many universes, or a deeper law we do not yet know. This page does not claim that the science proves God; the honest notes show why the argument is contested.
The reflection is simpler than the debate. The world we live in has a measure, and that measure can be read. We can write down the strength of gravity and the energy of empty space, and compare them with what life needs. For the commentators, qadar meant that nothing escapes God's measuring and decree. For a reader today, it can also mean that the world is intelligible: built in a way a mind can follow.
A believer can hold both: the measure in the verse, and the honesty of the debate. Neither needs the other to be overstated. The fitting response to a measured world is to measure carefully, and to remember who set the measure.
Questions readers ask next
Does fine-tuning prove God exists?
No. It is one of the stronger pointers in modern design arguments, but philosophers dispute the probabilities and the alternatives (multiverse, deeper law). The SEP sets out both sides.
What does qadar mean in 54:49?
Measure and decree. Ibn Kathir reads the verse as affirming God's decree over all things, against the Qadariyya who denied it.
What is the "inverse gambler's fallacy"?
Inferring many earlier trials from one surprising result — like assuming many dice were thrown before because the roll you saw was a double six. Hacking argued the multiverse inference makes this mistake; others dispute it.
Is the multiverse a scientific theory?
Some versions follow from theories such as inflation, but there is no direct evidence for other universes; the SEP treats the inference to them as debated.
Sources
- Saheeh International, via the Tanzil text — 25:2, 54:49, 15:19.
- Ibn Kathir, Tafsir (abridged English), and Tafsīr al-Jalālayn (English), on 54:49, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-49-sora-54.html; the Ibn Kathir quotation on 25:2.
- Simon Friederich, "Fine-Tuning", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 22 August 2017; substantively revised 26 February 2026), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fine-tuning/.
- Simon Friederich, "Reconsidering the inverse gambler's fallacy charge against the fine-tuning argument for the multiverse", Journal for General Philosophy of Science 50 (2019), pp. 29–41, abstract, https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/16785.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Fine-Tuning