In Store Now ? ?God and Stephen Hawking? ? Baker Book House Church ...

This past week we received a little book in called God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway? by John Lennox. I?d seen Lennox?s name but had never read anything by him so I picked this book up and thought I would give it a quick look over (it?s only 96 pages).?In the span of just a few pages I was hooked. The book is a rebuttal of Hawking?s most recent book The Grand Design. Lennox is professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College.

In the first chapter he targets Hawking?s view of God and his view of philosophy?both of which are seen as inadequate. More than one reviewer of Hawking?s book has noted his hubris at pronouncing philosophy as dead and his charge that philosophers have not kept up with science. Lennox says he?s wrong on the latter and self-contradictory on the former since he engages in philosophy himself throughout his own book without even realizing it.?Lennox writes: ?Philosophy may be dead according to Hawking, but he seems to?believe in giving it an immediate resurrection!? (22) Hawking?s view of God is seen as inadequate because he has a?distorted view of God as a deity of the ?God in the gaps.? While this view was quite popular with the ancient Greeks it is certainly not true of philosophers today and was never true?in the?Judaic-Christian philosophy. Hawking needs to bring himself up to date with the current state of?philosophical theism.

In the second chapter Lennox looks at?one of Hawking?s most impressive?declarations: ?Because there is a law of gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing.? I had heard other people claim that physics had finally proved that something can come from nothing so I read this chapter with particular interest. I quickly learned that what a physicist means by ?nothing? and what a philosopher means are?very different. Lennox hits the nail on the head: ?Indeed, one might add for good measure the fact that when physicists talk about ?nothing?, they often appear to mean a quantum?vacuum, which is manifestly not nothing. In fact, Hawking is surely alluding to this when he writes: ?We are the product of?quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.? (30)?Lennox rightly observes that if gravity is the cause of the existence of the universe then it patently came from something, not nothing. Hawking further says that the universe ?can and will create itself from nothing.??This is no helpful since in order for the universe to create itself it must exist in order to do so which is?a contradiction. Lennox writes with humor that ?philosophers just might be tempted to comment: so that is what comes of saying philosophy is dead!? (31)?And?Lennox could not be more right when he says ?What?this all goes to show is that nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists.? (32) This is profoundly true. Too many lay people hear?someone of Hawking?s stature talk about the universe creating itself out of nothing and simply believe it must be true because he said it.

The second chapter also includes a great discussion on the laws of nature. It is here where Lennox points out that??theories and laws cannot?even cause anything, let alone create it.? (40)??

?The sun rises in the east every day, but this law does not create the sun; nor the planet earth, with east and west. The law is descriptive and predictive, but it is not creative. Similarly Newton?s law of gravitation does not create gravity or the matter on which gravity acts. In fact, Newton?s law of gravity does not even explain gravity, as Newton himself realized.? (40-41)

I thought the following illustration was extremely good.

?However, in the world in which most of us live, the simple law of arithmetic by itself, 1+1=2, never brought anything into being. It certainly has never put any money into my bank account. If I put ?1,000 into the bank, and later another ?1,000, the laws of arithmetic will rationally explain how it is that I now have ?2,000 in the bank. But if I never put any money into the bank myself, and simply leave it to the laws of arithmetic to bring money into being in my bank account, I shall remain permanently bankrupt.? (41-42)

Hawking?s appeal to gravity as the cause of the universe therefore fails on two accounts: it doesn?t explain where the gravity came from and gravity, as a law, has no creative powers.

Chapter three deals with the very current and popular notion of the multiverse. The concept of the multiverse is Hawking?s response to the apparent intricate design of the universe which supports life.

?The idea is, roughly speaking, that there are several many-world scenarios, and so many universes (some suggest infinitely many, whatever that means) that anything that can happen will happen in some universe. It is not surprising then, so the argument goes, that there is at least one universe like ours.? (48-49)

The argument also fails for two reasons. First, it does not and cannot rule God out. One must ask where these infinite number of universes originated. Hence, we are back to square one. Secondly, there are?physicists who are not impressed with the theory. Among them Lennox mentions Sir Roger Penrose (a former collaborator?of Hawking?s) and John Polkinghorne. Lennox also briefly deals with Hawking?s ?M-theory.? The discussion does get a bit technical but you take away from the discussion that it is very much a controversial theory which by no means enjoys any kind of consensus among physicists.

In tomorrow?s post I will cover the final two chapters and offer some final thoughts.

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I am a 1997 graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield Illinois. I majored in Christian Theology with a cognate in Church History. I have worked for Baker Book House since September 2000.

Source: http://bbhchurchconnection.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/in-store-now-god-and-stephen-hawking/

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