What Albert Einstein once was in our culture, is now occupied by the British physicist, Dr. Stephen Hawking. Einstein had replaced Newton as The Scientist Who Can Explain Everything To Us -- and now Hawking fills that role (ironically, Hawking for many years until retirement chaired the same professorship that Newton filled at Cambridge University).
That's why Dr. Hawking gets such big press today when he is quoted, from his new book, as stating, "Because there are laws such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue torch paper and set the universe going." (The English set fire to blue torch paper to get homegrown fireworks going.) In other words, as the headlines say, "God did not create the universe, says Hawking." And, also in other words, God probably does not exist. So Hawking says. What's going on here?
First of all, it's important to understand that Hawking himself, though he seemed to believe in God until recently, never claimed to be a Christian. Hawking's God, if He existed, was only there to "start the ball rolling," so to speak. In his 1988 bestseller "A Brief History of Time," Hawking wrote:
"With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve
according to a set of laws and does not intervene in a universe to break these laws....So long as the universe had a beginning, we
could suppose it had a creator."
So for Hawking, if there is a God, He is only there to give the universe a beginning, and cannot intervene once the laws of the universe are in place. This is the God of the Enlightenment philosphers of the 1700s; this is the Deists' God, a God who, after creating the universe, simply looks on, perhaps in wonder. This is not a God who is good, He just "is." This is not a God who cares about sin; in fact, sin does not even exist as a concept. This is not a God who is there to bring about any ending, either, nor a God who comes to us as Jesus, the Messiah, the Redeemer of the world.
In the arguments we who believe in God have with atheists, we should both talk to them of sin and salvation (and of Christ), AND of the fact that there IS a beginning to the world, and that there IS a God who began that world and still governs over it. At the same time, we must expose the holes in the scientific atheists' logic. Where are those holes? And are we insolent to be pointing out those holes to one so august as Dr. Hawking?
To answer the second question first: Dr. Hawking leaves his area of expertise, science, and ventures into theology (the study of God) when he begins to venture "expert" opinions on God. In other words, any believer can take him on, on this subject. So where is he mistaken? Well, it starts with what he assumes to be true.
Notice that Dr. Hawking talks of "the success of scientific theories in describing events," and that Science, through such success, somehow puts limits on God's role. It does nothing of the kind. If a guy named "Bill" were to put some dog food in a bowl on his kitchen floor, the noise from the bowl and the smell of the food would bring his pet dog running to the kitchen. Seeing this happen over and over, one could "posit" a "scientific law" that the noise and the smell would bring the dog running -- and the law would be proved correct, over and over again. But behind the law is the one who placed the food in the bowl and the bowl on the ground - the one who set up the conditions for the "law" to be successful -- the God-figure, "Bill" himself.
You see, all of these scientific laws only predict correctly "how" something will happen. They do not predict "why" something happens. Bill cares for his dog; that's why he feeds him, regularly. In a similar, predictable way, God the Creator cares for His creation; that's why He has set up this wonderful world, God is perfect, and He is so regular in performing His actions that laws can be built on them. God never did just "wind up the clock" and let it go; God is there in every intimate movement of every being and thing in the universe. That's why, when God challenges Job, the questions God asks involve the continual DOING of this and that: "Have you [Job] commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?" is just one example.
Yet without the belief in a God of revelation, and constant action, as seen in the Bible, the God that creates is hard to comprehend, is inscrutable -- and that just can't be tolerated by Hawking and others like him. If they can't understand Him, then He doesn't exist, and what they DO understand -- Science -- will replace Him. As Hawking says, "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God,' but it wouldn't be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions."
Funny, isn't it, that we who believe in God can, BECAUSE we dare to believe in God of the Bible, meet Him, and ask this "personal" God questions in prayer and in reading -- and, more importantly receive answers -- lots of them -- especially the reason WHY He made us, and made the universe: Because He loved us, ahead of time -- because "God is love." (1st John 4:8) Because God is love, He not only created us...and gave us Love in the form of Jesus...He also gave us our reason to live -- to love other people. To love over and over and over again.
David Hewitt
