In judo, one uses the opponent’s own strength to unbalance him. That’s what mathematician John Lennox does in God and Stephen Hawking, a compelling refutation of Stephen Hawking’s book The Grand Design.
In layman’s terms, and using careful logic, Lennox exposes the flaws and foolishness in Hawking’s proposal that the laws of physics themselves brought the universe into being.
First Lennox clarifies that the God-debate is not between science and religion. After all, many great scientists of the past and present were and are Christian. Rather, the debate is between theism and atheism…and it interests a lot of people, as is evident from the best-selling status of some of the books involved.
In God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway? Lennox analyses Hawking’s assertions:
- First of all, Hawking dismisses philosophy, but most of his book, The Grand Design, is about the basic questions of philosophy.
- Hawking asserts that God is merely a primitive relic of mankind’s age-old deification of nature, ignoring the fact that three of the major world religions soundly denounce the worship of nature. What’s more, their writings did so long before the Greeks began to reject their gods in favor of science.
- Flying in the face of logic and philosophy, Hawking states that the laws of nature created nature. In fact “this illogical notion of the universe creating itself…appears to be a key argument…in The Grand Design.” On the other hand, Lennox, along with many of the greatest scientists of history, asserts that the laws of nature point to God.
- One way to get around the necessity of believing in a designer of our amazingly designed universe is to assume that an incredible number of universes exist. In that case, says Hawking, any sort of universe, including our well-designed one, is possible. Besides the fact that this idea has serious scientific short-comings (it is highly speculative and inherently untestable), it also logically leads to some ironic results that must dismay atheists. What’s more, believing in the idea of multitudes of universes requires at least as much faith as believing in God.
- Lennox also analyses Hawking’s ideas about rationality and miracles, such as this loaded statement: “Now that we know the laws of nature, miracles are impossible.”
Throughout his book Lennox ably refutes the idea that atheism is the default intellectual position by pointing out Hawking’s logical inconsistencies, his ignorance of the nature of God, his misunderstanding of basic concepts of philosophy, and even some issues with his science. Truly, when a person ignores the evidence for God in creation, he is blinded and his “thinking becomes futile.” May Stephen Hawking read this book and learn to know the God who created the universe, including him.
As a physicist, I was thrilled to review God and Stephen Hawking. It is lucid, logical, and mostly well-written. It clearly shows the inconsistencies of Hawking’s The Grand Design and outlines some of the contradictions inherent in the atheist viewpoint. Although not light reading, this book should be well within the grasp of any interested reader, and will amply repay any effort put into it.
I highly recommend God and Stephen Hawking to anyone interested in Christianity, atheism, apologetics, modern thought, science, education or philosophy. It is indispensible reading for Christian teens planning to attend university as well as for anyone currently at university.
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This is the kind of book I would recommend for your teen’s science and math reading.
Disclosure I received a free copy of God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway? from Litfuse in order to give you my honest opinion of it.
This is my 23rd book in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge.
Philosophy is dead. Is Logic dead also?
“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.”
– Stephen Hawking in “The Grand Design”
“As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously 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.”
– Stephen Hawking, Ibid
Here three questions can be asked:
1) Which one came first, universe, or laws of gravity and quantum theory?
2) If the universe came first, then how was there spontaneous creation without the laws of gravity and quantum theory?
3) If the laws of gravity and quantum theory came first, then Hawking has merely substituted God with quantum theory and laws of gravity. These two together can be called Hawking’s “Unconscious God”. Therefore we can legitimately ask the question: Who, or what, created Hawking’s unconscious God?
Not only this, but there are other problems also. If the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes spontaneously appearing from nothing, then initially there was nothing. Then wherefrom appear those laws of gravity and quantum theory to allow universes appearing spontaneously from nothing? In which container were those two laws of nature?
Now regarding the M-theory: I have already written something on multiverse theory (not yet published anywhere). There I have come to the conclusion that if there are an infinite number of universes, then only within that infinite number of universes there will certainly be at least one universe in which life will emerge. If the number of universes is only 10 to the power 500, then it is very much unlikely that any one of them will support life, because no universe will know which set of values the other universes have already taken, and if everything is left on chance, then there is every probability that all the universes will take only those set of values that will not support life. There will be no mechanism that will prevent any universe from taking the same set of values that have already been taken by other universes. There will be no mechanism that will take an overview of all the universes already generated, and seeing that in none of them life has actually emerged will move the things in such a way that at least one universe going to be generated afterwards will definitely get the value of the parameters just right for the emergence of life. Only in case of an infinite number of universes this problem will not be there. This is because if we subtract 10 to the power 500 from infinity, then also we will get infinity. If we subtract infinity from infinity, still then we will be left with infinity. So we are always left with an infinite number of universes out of which in at least one universe life will definitely emerge. Therefore if M-theory shows that it can possibly have 10 to the power 500 number of solutions, and that thus there might be 10 to the power 500 number of universes in each of which physical laws would be different, then it is really a poor theory, because it cannot give us any assurance that life will certainly emerge in at least one universe. So instead of M-theory we need another theory that will actually have an infinite number of solutions.
Now the next question to be pondered is this: How did the scientists come to know that an entire universe could come out of nothing? Or, how did they come to know that anything at all could come out of nothing? Were they present at that moment when the universe was being born? As that was not the case at all, therefore they did not get that idea being present at the creation event. Rather they got this idea being present here on this very earth. They have created a vacuum artificially, and then they have observed that virtual particles (electron-positron pairs) are still appearing spontaneously out of that vacuum and then disappearing again. From that observation they have first speculated, and then ultimately theorized, that an entire universe could also come out of nothing. But here their entire logic is flawed. These scientists are all born and brought up within the Christian tradition. Maybe they have downright rejected the Christian world-view, but they cannot say that they are all ignorant of that world-view. According to that world-view God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. So as per Christian belief-system, and not only as per Christian belief-system, but as per other belief-systems also, God is everywhere. So when these scientists are saying that the void is a real void, God is already dead and non-existent for them. But these scientists know very well that non-existence of God will not be finally established until and unless it is shown that the origin of the universe can also be explained without invoking God. Creation event is the ultimate event where God will have to be made redundant, and if that can be done successfully then that will prove beyond any reasonable doubt that God does not exist. So how have they accomplished that job, the job of making God redundant in case of creation event? These were the steps:
1) God is non-existent, and so, the void is a real void. Without the pre-supposition that God does not exist, it cannot be concluded that the void is a real void.
2) As virtual particles can come out of the void, so also the entire universe. Our universe has actually originated from the void due to a quantum fluctuation in it.
3) This shows that God was not necessary to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going, as because there was no creation event.
4) This further shows that God does not exist.
So here what is to be proved has been proved based on the assumption that it has already been proved. Philosophy is already dead for these scientists. Is it that logic is also dead for them?
Wow! Thank you very much for this detailed discussion. It highlights some of the concepts touched on in the book God and Stephen Hawking.
Annie Kate
May God be merciful and insist to Stephen (Hawking) that he Hawking humble himself and accept God on God’s terms. May Hawking follow the evidence already given by God and not use his (Hawking’s) cleverness to avoid what he instinctively knows to be the truth, that is that Jesus died to save Stephen himself.
Then I would also like to add for any honest seekers of truth among your readers that, by using our usual method of ascertaining truth, we should all become happy disciples of Jesus. But first, if you don’t first have the intention of obeying what you find to be the truth, you will not find it or you will perish having found it and having not submitted to it. Jesus put us all on trial (kindly, for our good) when He said, ” If any man has (first) purposed to obey the will of God (once he has found it), that man shall be assured of the teaching (that is the teaching of Jesus) that it is of God (and therefore true.)” Unless you first have the intention of following where the evidence leads you, God does not guarantee to show you the truth; in fact God says in Thessalonians that He sends delusion to people who do not have enough love for the truth to obey it once they have discovered it.
And let me add as helpful. The Bible is the world’s ‘eternal’ best seller. It claims about 3,800 times to be from God to mankind. For the honest man this should lead him/her to absolutely devour the Bible with little or no need to doubt it because of its sheer unmatched fame. Try writing a book that will beat the Bible. You will make far more money than poor Dawkins and Hawking with their good sellers. You would be fabulously rich! Unthinkably rich. But you would need to be able to foretell the future, to transform hopeless drunks and ordinary sinners, to name just a few things you can’t do nor has anyone else but Jesus succeeded in doing.
Next and finally, usually we look for evidence of a thing or idea or person being fit for our trust and adherence. Even in a marriage partner we don’t usually require a high standard before desiring to marry a person. Usually we don’t wait until we can prove what we expect to believe. When there’s a certain amount of strong evidence we take it as proof that the subject of our trust is worthy of that trust after just a few tests. Remember that Jesus got Himself in as the central character and hero in the Bible. This makes Him the most desired character of the ages. How much more proof do you require to trust Him? Beware of our enemy Satan who might lie to you in cases like you wanting to marry an attractive atheist,this causing you to seek evidence against Jesus. Wrong motive; it will produce a living hell for you. Choose God’s little heaven while you live here and His real Heaven after your death. Note that Helen Keller, despite having the handicaps and misfortune to be blind deaf and dumb, expressed her faith in words like this, “I am grateful to God for my disabilities because through them I have found myself, my lifework, and my God.” Jesus loved you so much He sacrificed Himself for you on the Cross. He said He would rise again after three days and He did just that. His friends had difficulty believing He had risen again even though they saw Him but his enemies that crucified Him had no difficulty believing His resurrection. Jesus’ body eluded their clutches in a blaze of glory that flawed the soldiers guarding His tomb, and Jesus’ resurrection made it impossible for them to produce the body. So Jesus’ enemies bribed the soldiers handsomely to lie, saying, “Jesus disciples stole the body while we soldier guards were sleeping”. Who knows what’s happening when they are asleep? Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Believe in Jesus and possess eternal life.