Typically I try to ignore the uninformed ramblings of the atheistic scientific community when it comes to matters of God and origins. But I think it’s time to get back to regular writing and focusing more on science, though I will continue on with politics. I read a recent article at Tech Times where Stephen Hawking (once again) declared that science provides a “more convincing explanation” for the universe than God. Of course, the article, which you can find here, starts off with the expected charge that for Christians, the Bible is sufficient to explain the story of creation through some all-powerful flip of the hand of God. Perhaps some Christians do believe that, but it is certainly not the view of Christians who are engaged in science and the discussion of origins of the universe, galaxies, solar systems, biospheres, and biological organisms. Personally, I am a Christian because of the historical testimony of the Bible, and the fact that Jesus Christ walked this earth 2000 years ago. He is not a myth but a real person, and the only thing truly in dispute is if he actually raised from the dead. If he did not raise from the dead, then Christianity is false, and I’m perfectly willing to accept that.
Nonetheless, I don’t depend on the Bible as a book of science. It is a book about God’s relationship to man, and is not a scientific text. What I believe is that science simply confirms the biblical story, particularly the creation of the universe ex nihilo (i.e., out of nothing). Hawking certainly believes as I do that the universe had a beginning 13.7 billion years ago, and that it was created from a singularity. He has no knowledge of what happened before that, no matter how brilliant his math is. He notes in the article that the creation of the world is scientifically explainable and has nothing to do with God, but his logic is terribly poor on two fronts. First, science doesn’t explain the universe and its contents. What science does for the most part is describe the universe and its contents, and is always provisional because new discoveries are always being made. I can imagine five hundred years from now scientists will look back on Stephen Hawking and see just how quaint his work was since it was revised numerous times. Perhaps they will say it was good for its time, but he was a man of his times and he couldn’t escape that so he did the best he could given the technology available at that time.
The second flaw in Hawking’s reasoning is the fact that whether he can explain the universe or not, the ability to explain something is in no way related to what caused it. Even Newton, a theist, could not explain gravity though he could mathematically describe it. Forensic science today can explain human agency in a crime scene in startling detail because all sorts of evidence is left behind as the result of agency that cannot be explained by law and chance. You wouldn’t expect the forensic scientist to then declare no one committed the crime because they could explain what happened in excruciating detail. You would expect them to say they have detected agency even though they don’t know who the agent or agents were. It’s the same with the universe. Perhaps we don’t know who the agent was or even if there was an agent, but what we do know is that we don’t see organized complexity on this earth outside the biological world unless there is human agency. So it is entirely reasonable to believe the universe had some ordering principle or agent that brought about its complexity. That does not imply that the agent is necessarily beneficent or benevolent, but it is a reasonable inference that should not be disparaged, particularly by the purely philosophical, and not scientific, musings of Stephen Hawking.
The point is Hawking doesn’t know if there is a God or some organizing principle in the universe. It is fine that he is an atheist and he is entitled to his belief, but to make pronouncements that there is no God to those who believe otherwise is simply not for him to judge unless he has proof of his position. Likewise, it’s not my place to judge someone who doesn’t believe there is a God. People who believe in God are not making up fairy tales or are afraid of the dark, as Hawking asserts. They make a simple inference from the design they see in nature and in everyday things that other humans make. So I can’t think of a more condescending and detestable thing for Hawking to say about his fellow man, as if we’re all simply rubes that need to bow down to his superior intelligence. Hawking can no more tell us how or why the universe came about than he can tell us why his body has been ravaged by such an awful disease as ALS. My only hope is that this man does not ultimately end up losing his soul too. May God bless Hawking.
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