I have taken the title of this post from the title of a chapter in Stephen Hawking’s last book, which I have just read – “Brief Answers to the Big Questions“. This book was published posthumously. It is quite a good read in spite of our difference in knowing of God’s existence. He looks at the question from a scientific point of view. Seemingly, in my opinion, he starts out with the negative view and then tries to justify it scientifically.
It would probably take a whole book to refute all his arguments. I am rather left with the feeling that if that is the best an atheist can do, even someone with a brilliant mind like Stephen Hawking, then it adds to the probability of God’s existence. Kind of like I felt after reading “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.
In matters of science, I have to accept what Hawking says. I don’t know enough to be able to refute his scientific statements, but I can detect the gaping holes in his reasoning.
Beginning of the Universe
His belief, currently widely accepted, was that the universe started as a “singularity” which is a point of no size and infinite density. Think of it as a tiny object that has lots and lots and lots of mass (mass is what causes things to have weight in the presence of gravity – feathers don’t have much mass, lead weights do). Apparently the mass of the known universe is often quoted as 1053 kilograms (that is a number 1 with 53 zeros behind it). Then this singularity exploded with a Big Bang to form the universe as we know it. Observation shows that it is still expanding and this led to the idea that it was all together at some point billions of years ago.
Hawking states that time does not exist within a singularity.
I have no reason to dispute these “facts”, nor do I need to.
First Error – Laws
I quote from his chapter “Is There a God?”: “The universe is a machine governed by principles or laws …..These laws of nature will tell us whether we need a god to explain the universe at all. ……… Unlike laws made by humans, the laws of nature cannot be broken“. He then goes on to say: “These laws may, or may not, have been decreed by God, but he cannot intervene to break the laws, or they would not be laws.”. The big problem with this is his huge assumption that God is subject to the laws that he made for the universe.
Looking at it from a Christian point of view actually makes more sense. If there are “laws of nature” they were established by God to govern the creation and evolution of the universe. The fact that God made laws to govern the universe does not at all mean that He made any laws, of nature or anything else, to govern His own actions. God is a free agent not constrained by any imaginary laws. He is perfectly free to intervene in any way He pleases. The beauty, elegance and consistency of the “laws of nature” is more of an argument in favour of God’s existence than against it. Many scientists believe in God.
Hawking then makes the assumption that everything since the Big Bang is governed by the laws of nature and that there is therefore no need for God because Hawking thinks Him constrained by those same laws. This is of course a nonsense and completely denies reality.
The second part of this error is Hawking’s questioning whether “the laws of nature will tell us whether we need a god to explain the universe at all“. How can you question whether the laws that God made tell us whether we need God? If God didn’t make the laws of nature, how were they made? Bearing in mind that nothing existed prior to God, how could there be laws that governed matter and energy and the relationship between them before they existed, unless He made them?
Hawking would either have us believe that the laws that govern the universe were spontaneously created at the same time as the universe, or that they existed before the universe, even though there was nothing for them to govern prior to creation. I think that is much more of a stretch than believing that there is a God.
Second Error – Time
As stated above, time does not exist within a singularity. So Hawking leaps to the conclusion that there was “no time before the Big Bang ……….. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator because there was no time for a creator to have existed in.“. Absolute nonsense! There is no time within the singularity, but that is not to say there isn’t time outside it for God to “exist in”. For proof just look at black holes. As Hawking says, at the heart of a black hole is a singularity and there is no time within them, but we know there is time outside them because the rest of the universe goes on regardless and we couldn’t observe them if it didn’t. By extension, this means that there was as much time as the creator God wanted to “exist in” prior to the Big Bang, because He was obviously outside the singularity. Hawking’s argument just doesn’t hold water.
Conclusion
So as I see it, these are the two glaring errors. There is plenty more to disagree with in his “answer”, but that would take too long and someone more patient and painstaking than I. On a personal note, I was surprised that Hawking’s reasoning was so weak. He did try, whereas some atheists, realising the futility of trying to prove that God doesn’t exist, demand that we prove He does. We have no need to.
At least Hawking limited his reasons for not believing in God to one chapter, whereas Richard Dawkins found it necessary to write a whole book of bad argument and non sequiturs to state the reasons for his atheism. It seems to me that scientists would be better to limit themselves to studying the wonders of God’s creation rather than trying, and failing, to explain that it wasn’t His creation. Slightly ironic that Hawking’s ashes reside in Westminster Abbey, a place dedicated to the glory of God.
There is obviously a problem that we cannot prove or disprove the being of God with repeatable experiments, which are what science demands. So we look at the evidence. Jesus repeatedly rejected the requests of sceptics to show “proof” of who He was. He left them to consider the evidence for themselves. Christians believe there is plenty of evidence. We find our own experience and others’ experience of the Holy Spirit compelling. We see miracles and answers to prayers rather than coincidences because there are so many of them. We believe in the resurrection of Jesus, not just because the Holy Spirit and scripture tell us so. Even after this length of time and with no contemporary news reports, we do know that His crucifixion left his disciples fearful and demoralised, and then His resurrection and the Holy Spirit energised them to preach the Gospel and even die for it. People are not generally prepared to suffer and die for something they don’t know to be true.
As Gamaliel said to the Sanhedrin “But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (Acts 5 v.39) . And that was 2,000 years ago and the Gospel is still going strong, in spite of the many attacks against it. It is worth reading the whole chapter because he describes sects that vanished when their leaders were killed, and therefore the expectation that Christianity would vanish unless it were from God. Paul experienced a miraculous conversion and got to know the disciples and wrote about it in his Epistles, and Luke travelled with Paul and wrote about it in the Acts of the Apostles and was motivated to write the Gospel account that bears his name .
And as Paul so succinctly put it in one of his letters: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3 v.19). Which is one way of saying that God is immeasurably more powerful and wise than we are. Atheists using their “wisdom” to argue that He doesn’t exist would do well to bear this in mind. He created the universe and all the “laws” that govern its evolution. Awesome!
You will note that I have steered clear of Biblical creation as outlined in Genesis, because all I set out to do was demonstrate Hawking’s faulty reasoning. I am inclined to accept the Big Bang, or something like it, as the beginning of the universe. In fact, it completely blows my mind to think that God could create a singularity from which our planet evolved with all the life and resources that we need. Sad to say, we are not very smart and are in danger of mucking it all up even more than we have already.
I realise that faith has more to do with our receptiveness and the Holy Spirit than with intellectual argument. The best that argument can do is open someone’s mind to a point where they search for themselves and ask for help – “So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Luke 11 v.9).
Addendum
I am reading Hawking’s book “A Brief History Of Time” and interesting it is too. I mention this as an addendum here because he essentially contradicts what he wrote in his answer to the question “Is There A God?”.
One of his arguments is that the Big Bang was the beginning of time, so there was no time before it for God to exist in. But in “A Brief History Of Time” he plainly states that there was time before the Big Bang, and only that the Big Bang is taken to be the beginning of time because it coincides with the beginning of the universe and that what happened before is not relevant to the mathematical and physical analysis of the universe.
Therefore taking the beginning of the universe as the beginning of time is a purely human construct for human convenience, because we know nothing of what went before. To then conclude in a different book that there was no time in which God could exist is patently ridiculous.
Hawking should really have limited himself to the mathematics of God’s creation. He was certainly no philosopher if even I can pick holes in his logic. Richard Dawkins is equally ignorant of philosophy, which is why his book “The God Delusion” is such rubbish.
On the other hand, Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, and he wrote “Why I Am Not A Christian”. Looking where to buy that book, I came across another with the same title by another philosopher, Richard Carrier. So I seem to have set myself the challenge of reading their books and seeing whether their arguments hold water.
I certainly believe my faith is up to this challenge – and I couldn’t have confidence in it if it wasn’t. I’ll keep you posted!
On the other hand, I wouldn’t want it thought that faith is an intellectual exercise, because it most definitely isn’t. But if men are going to use their intellect to challenge it, then they need to be challenged.
