Church of The Holy Spirit

Hawking and God

In Stephen Hawking’s new book, he says that it’s no longer necessary 
to believe in a God who “lit the blue touch paper of the Big Bang”,
because the laws of quantum physics and gravity were sufficient to
cause the start of the universe.  Richard Dawkins has acclaimed this
as “a coup de grace” in the argument against the existence of God. Physics, he says, has now caught up with evolutionary biology in supplying answers which eliminate the need for a Divinity.

But there are many scientists who do believe in God and indeed we
can trace the development of modern science from the conviction that God created the universe to function according to laws of conceptual beauty and order which reflect his own wisdom, power and love. The
pre-Christian pagan religions saw the universe as emerging out of the conflicting violence and lust of several gods who we would see today
as morally debased.  Scientific progress could not very easily be made with this worldview, which saw the earth as an arbitrary, chaotic and frightening place, and where the priority was to try to appease these malevolent forces that shaped reality.

The higher Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle saw the logical necessity of one supreme power or principle rather than many
conflicting deities, but tended to think we could discover scientific
answers through theoretical reasoning alone. It was biblically informed Christians like Roger Bacon who developed the tradition of empirical research and experiment because they believed that the universe was
not governed by impersonal logic but a Creator who desired that His creatures explore and delight in his ordered but fascinating creation.
In Genesis it says that God brought the animals to Adam for him to
name them. (i.e. research and classify them). The scientific laws we know today were derived from the essential combination of
observation, experimentation, rational thought and a sense of awe and wonder. Even scientists or naturalist explorers who are atheists often seem to display this ‘awe and wonder’ at the world around them.

Many philosophers (including atheists) have already pointed out flaws
in Hawking’s argument. Where do these timeless laws that are
supposed to have given rise to the universe/multiverse come from, if
not from the character of an intelligent, timeless Creator? Hawking cannot possibly claim that nothing brought something out of nothing.
He seems to be saying that something (timeless gravitational laws) brought something out of something (space time quantum vacuums).
In order for his argument to work these laws themselves have to stand alone as eternal deductions of how things have to be and the
something (rather than nothing) on which these laws operated to
produce the universe also had to be pre-existent.  But these laws turn out to be theories drawn from scientific understanding of how this universe works and he ignores the metaphysical question “why should there be something (even tiny quantum vacuums) rather than nothing?”

It’s a staggering claim that Hawking is making – that he understands
the eternal basis upon which the Universe emerged 13.7 billion years
ago and continues to be sustained to this day. A humbler person
would acknowledge that we have left the realm of science and entered the realm of religious philosophy. And if he understood something of what Christians really believe, he would know that God never has been for us merely a ‘first cause’ postulation, the necessary ‘lighter of the
blue touch paper’ but is known as the one who sustains all things all
the time by his power and glory and the one for whom and through
whom we exist – the very’ ground of our being’ (Paul Tillich)

Science and religious philosophy are two distinct disciplines, and to
invoke scientific reasoning to prove or disprove the existence of God is
to make a category mistake. However, this does not mean that faith in
God is irrational or that there is no evidence for God’s existence.

The kind of proof though which establishes scientific or historical theories, or which leads to the conviction of people for criminal offences in a court of law, even if declared to be “beyond reasonable doubt” belongs to a category of knowledge which falls short of the deeper appreciation of eternal truth, experienced by the believer. St Paul said that ‘the eternal power and divine nature of God are clearly apparent from the creation’ of which we are a part, so that to disbelieve in God
is a morally culpable perversity, not a respectable hypothesis.
(Romans  1 v20).

Christians believe in God because we believe in truth, beauty and love, even when these qualities are tarnished in the world we live in. To believers, God is known at a deeper level than as a theory to explain
gaps in scientific theory, or even as a psychological necessity. The evidence of supra-rationality is all around us if we look for it.  God is
‘the ground of our being.’ To reject God is ultimately to reject
ourselves.  

Martin Kuhrt,

Vicar, Church of the Holy Spirit, Bedgrove