Stephen Hawking’s Final Salvo Against God
By Nancy Pearcey
October 26, 2018
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/n...vo-against-god
Steven Hawking belongs to that breed of atheist who builds his reputation in a
narrow specialty, then uses his
fame as a platform to pronounce on other pressing questions where he has
no particular expertise –
like questions about God.
Hawking’s final book
“Brief Answers to Big Questions” was published posthumously with material pulled from interviews, essays, speeches, and questions often asked of the famous physicist.
Many news reports focused on the most important of the Big Questions:
Is there a God? Hawking’s Brief Answer: No. “I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science.” After all, he argues, “If you accept, as I do, that the laws of nature are fixed, then it doesn't take long to ask: What role is there for God?”
Is Hawking right that
scientific laws rule out any role for God?
Despite being a brilliant physicist,
he seemed unaware that his objection has already been answered—most famously by the popular literature professor
C.S. Lewis, himself a former atheist, who taught at both Oxford and Cambridge University.
In his book “
Miracles,” Lewis concedes that, at first glance, the regularity of nature does seem to rule out the possibility that God is able to act into the world.
But not so fast. Natural laws tell us only what happens if nothing interferes. People playing a game of pool are applying the laws of physics, which decree that when a billiard ball hits another one, the second ball will start moving. But the laws do not tell what will happen if a mischievous child grabs the ball.
The laws are still true, of course, but the child has interfered with the physics.
Humans interfere with natural processes all the time, yet we do not
break any laws of nature. We cut down trees to make houses, we weave plant fiber into cloth, we smelt metals to build bridges, we turn sand into silicon chips for computers. Through technology, we are constantly accomplishing things that nature on its own could not produce.
But do we break a single law of nature? No....
...In fact, historically, it was
Christianity that gave rise to the
concept of scientific laws in the first place. No other ancient culture, east or west, spoke of
laws in relation to the physical cosmos.
The distinguished historian A. R. Hall says
the use of the word law in the context of natural events “would have been unintelligible in antiquity,
whereas the Hebraic and Christian belief in a deity who was at once Creator and Law-giver rendered it valid.”...
...The Christian view of the cosmos is confirmed by our ordinary, everyday experience. As we see humans harnessing natural forces through technology—or even performing mundane tasks like cooking dinner and driving cars—it is obvious that personal free agents are perfectly capable of working within a universe operating by fixed laws.
The early scientists were right: The
lawful order in nature does not disprove God. Just the opposite—
it confirms the existence of a Law-giver.
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Originally Posted by fuego
