Article by Cameron Spink

 

"What this all goes to show is that nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists."

John Lennox

 

It seems very popular for an "eminent scientist" to bring a book out that claims that they have made God obsolete. It's safe to say that most of the time this seems to be a publicity ploy in an attempt to sell copies. Usually humanistic scientists don't bring anything new to the debate (see Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion). Occasionally, though, a scientist postulates a new reason for God's non-existence. This leads us to Stephen Hawking's newest book The Grand Design which seeks to convince us, the readers, that God is not needed because of "a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing".

 

Of course, such a challenge can not go unimpeded and two of the most eminent Christian apologists have taken up Hawking's (and co-author Leonard Mlodinow's) challenge. As an initial point The Grand Design claims that philosophy is obsolete:

 

Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. It has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly in physics. As a result scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

The Grand Design, pg 5

 

This claim seems similar to Richard Dawkins and one can't help feeling that such an assertion is merely an attempt to discredit those who would vehemently disagree with the findings of the author. William Lane Craig, as a Christian philosopher, provides a measured response:

 

The most important conclusions drawn in [The Grand Design] are philosophical, not scientific. Why, then, do they pronounce philosophy dead and claim as scientists to be bearing the torch of discovery? Simply because that enables them to cloak their amateurish philosophizing with the mantle of scientific authority and so avoid the hard work of actually arguing for, rather than merely asserting, their philosophical viewpoints.

The Grand Design - Truth Or Fiction? - William Lane Craig

Beyond that, apologist and Oxford Mathematics lecturer, Professor John Lennox, has written a short book entitled God And Stephen Hawking which spends 96 pages describing some mistakes that are made in The Grand Design. Of note Lennox states:

 

It is seldom that one finds in a single statement two distinct levels of contradiction, but Hawking appears to have constructed such a statement. He says the universe comes from a nothing that turns out to be a something (self-contradiction number one), and then he says the universe creates itself (self-contradiction number two). But that is not all. His notion that a law of nature (gravity) explains the existence of the universe is also self-contradictory, since a law of nature, by definition, surely depends for its own existence on the prior existence of the nature it purports to describe.

God and Stephen Hawking, pg 31 - John Lennox

 

This book is cheap and short and is well worth the handful of dollars it costs. However, if one did not want to purchase it then check out John Lennox's hour long lecture which goes over his main assertions in the book:

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It is not just Christian apologists who have disagreed with Hawkings book. Many humanist scientists are unhappy with the way Stephen Hawkings has used the M-theory, from physics, to declare the extinction of God. One such physicist who is not taken by The Grand Design is Roger Penrose who is adamant that the inability to observationally test M-theory is an extreme shortcoming of the theory:

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I will leave the final word up to Professor David Gross, whose field is particle physics and string theory and he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics (again, he is not a theist):

 

One thing that is sure to generate sales for a book of this kind is to somehow drag in religion. The book's rather conventional claim that "God is unnecessary" for explaining physics and early universe cosmology has provided a lot of publicity for the book. I'm in favor of naturalism and leaving God out of physics as much as the next person, but if you're the sort who wants to go to battle in the science/religion wars, why you would choose to take up such a dubious weapon as M-theory mystifies me.

Hawking Gives Up - David Gross