I am a great admirer of Professor Stephen Hawkins. Indeed, like many others I guess, I tried to read and understand his book “A Brief History of Time” (which sold 9 million copies) and totally failed. I still have it and may well try to read it again in the future. He recently made a pronouncement on God in which he says: “There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe.” He goes on to say: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
My main question to him would be who designed the Law of Gravity or set in motion the creation of something from nothing. Did it just spring into being of itself? Spontaneous Creation possibly? It seems to me, as one more or less totally ignorant of Science at this level, that there must have been some source from which the Law of Gravity and other laws which govern the universe started. We call that source “God” the all powerful, the almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, who we know as “Our Father” through the revelation of His Son Jesus. I think many of us find it very difficult to comprehend the power that God yields; in the words of J. B. Phillips “is your (our) God too small?”.
””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””Many thanks to all those who have enquired about Ann. She went to the hospital on Tuesday for her post-op consultation and everything is going along well. She will not be able to put weight on her leg for another 5 weeks but she has now mastered the art of using crutches.
It is important to remember that these statements from Prof. Hawking on religion are not new - his book 'The First Three Minutes' covers the same sentiments.
ReplyDelete“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing"
The problem with his argument is that the above is not a scientific statement (i.e. not emperically verifiable) but philosophic speculation on his part. Adding the veneer of gravity does not change this.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
I suspect that this 'wind-up clock' type view of God and the universe, popular with the Deists, is also a source of his views.
I might blog about Prof. Hawking acually given the amount of attention his book is generating on the religious blogs.
Of Course 'The First Three Minutes' was in fact written by another eminent physician S. Weinberg. The Brief History was the book I had in mind.
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