Here is a clear and cogent response to Stephen Hawking’s new book that attempts to explain the universe without God.

John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science.

As a scientist I’m certain Stephen Hawking is wrong. You can’t explain the universe without God

By Professor John Lennox  <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Professor+John+Lennox+>

According to Stephen Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being

There’s no denying that Stephen Hawking is intellectually bold as well as physically heroic. And in his latest book, the renowned physicist mounts an audacious challenge to the traditional religious belief in the divine creation of the universe.

According to Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, he argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws ‘because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.’

Unfortunately, while Hawking’s argument is being hailed as controversial and ground-breaking, it is hardly new.

For years, other scientists have made similar claims, maintaining that the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the world around us can be interpreted solely by reference to physical laws such as gravity.

It is a simplistic approach, yet in our secular age it is one that seems to have resonance with a skeptical public.

But, as both a scientist and a Christian, I would say that Hawking’s claim is misguided. He asks us to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict.

But contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.

What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.

To use a simple analogy, Isaac Newton’s laws of motion in themselves never sent a snooker ball racing across the green baize. That can only be done by people using a snooker cue and the actions of their own arms.

Hawking’s argument appears to me even more illogical when he says the existence of gravity means the creation of the universe was inevitable. But how did gravity exist in the first place? Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth?

Similarly, when Hawking argues, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, that it was only necessary for ‘the blue touch paper’ to be lit to ‘set the universe going’, the question must be: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not God?

Much of the rationale behind Hawking’s argument lies in the idea that there is a deep-seated conflict between science and religion. But this is not a discord I recognise.

For me, as a Christian believer, the beauty of the scientific laws only reinforces my faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. The more I understand science, the more I believe in God because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication and integrity of his creation.

The very reason science flourished so vigorously in the 16th and 17th centuries was precisely because of the belief that the laws of nature which were then being discovered and defined reflected the influence of a divine law-giver.

One of the fundamental themes of Christianity is that the universe was built according to a rational, intelligent design. Far from being at odds with science, the Christian faith actually makes perfect scientific sense.

Some years ago, the scientist Joseph Needham made an epic study of technological development in China. He wanted to find out why China, for all its early gifts of innovation, had fallen so far behind Europe in the advancement of science.

He reluctantly came to the conclusion that European science had been spurred on by the widespread belief in a rational creative force, known as God, which made all scientific laws comprehensible.

Despite this, Hawking, like so many other critics of religion, wants us to believe we are nothing but a random collection of molecules, the end product of a mindless process.

This, if true, would undermine the very rationality we need to study science. If the brain were really the result of an unguided process, then there is no reason to believe in its capacity to tell us the truth.

We live in an information age. When we see a few letters of the alphabet spelling our name in the sand, our immediate response is to recognise the work of an intelligent agent. How much more likely, then, is an intelligent creator behind the human DNA, the colossal biological database that contains no fewer than 3.5 billion ‘letters’?

It is fascinating that Hawking, in attacking religion, feels compelled to put so much emphasis on the Big Bang theory. Because, even if the non-believers don’t like it, the Big Bang fits in exactly with the Christian narrative of creation.

That is why, before the Big Bang gained currency, so many scientists were keen to dismiss it, since it seemed to support the Bible story. Some clung to Aristotle’s view of the ‘eternal universe’ without beginning or end; but this theory, and later variants of it, are now deeply discredited.

But support for the existence of God moves far beyond the realm of science. Within the Christian faith, there is also the powerful evidence that God revealed himself to mankind through Jesus Christ two millennia ago. This is well-documented not just in the scriptures and other testimony but also in a wealth of archaeological findings.

Moreover, the religious experiences of millions of believers cannot lightly be dismissed. I myself and my own family can testify to the uplifting influence faith has had on our lives, something which defies the idea we are nothing more than a random collection of molecules.

Just as strong is the obvious reality that we are moral beings, capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. There is no scientific route to such ethics.

Physics cannot inspire our concern for others, or the spirit of altruism that has existed in human societies since the dawn of time.

The existence of a common pool of moral values points to the existence of transcendent force beyond mere scientific laws. Indeed, the message of atheism has always been a curiously depressing one, portraying us as selfish creatures bent on nothing more than survival and self-gratification.

Hawking also thinks that the potential existence of other lifeforms in the universe undermines the traditional religious conviction that we are living on a unique, God-created planet. But there is no proof that other lifeforms are out there, and Hawking certainly does not present any.

It always amuses me that atheists often argue for the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence beyond earth. Yet they are only too eager to denounce the possibility that we already have a vast, intelligent being out there: God.

Hawking’s new fusillade cannot shake the foundations of a faith that is based on evidence.

God’s Undertaker: Has science Buried God? by John Lennox is out now (Lion Hudson, £8.99).

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1308599/Stephen-Hawking-wrong-You-explain-universe-God.html#ixzz0yabn9HCT <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1308599/Stephen-Hawking-wrong-You-explain-universe-God.html#ixzz0yabn9HCT>

Follow: http://twitter.com/kennethboa
Connect on Facebook: Kenneth Boa

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

Science confirms the truth of Hebrews 11:1. Everything that appears to be solid turns out to not be solid at the atomic level. It actually consists of whirling fields of mysterious energies and forces. So that everything that is seen is made up of that which is not seen. For example, Einstein’s most famous equation tells us that energy (what we don’t see) and mass (what we do see) are equivalent. That is, they consist of the same basic stuff, but in different forms. Matter is simply slowed-down energy or compressed energy. And when matter is accelerated at the speed of light squared it becomes energy. And what is energy? No one knows. It seems that every time we learn something new in science we encounter something else far more mysterious. A healthy faith is needed in science too.

Returning now to Hebrews11:6, we not only read that, “Without faith it is impossible to please [God],” but also that he who comes to God must believe two things: (1) “. . . that he is,” and (2) “. . . that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.” The rest of the chapter tells the stories of the men and women who exercised their faith by pursuing the “unseen” and the “not yet” above the things that are “seen” and “now here.” As verse 13 says, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.” In Alexandre Dumas’ classic The Count of Monte Cristo, the final two words in the book are “Wait and hope.” That’s the theme of Hebrews chapter 11: “Wait” – the future is going to be better than you can possibly imagine. And “hope” – the future is in the hands of our trustworthy God. That kind of faith has 20/20 vision.

• “Wait” – the future is going to be better than you can possibly imagine. And “hope” – the future is in the hands of our trustworthy God.

Follow: http://twitter.com/kennethboa
Connect on Facebook: Kenneth Boa

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

The third option and is that of design. Here, I like to use the analogy of the turtle on a fence post. Imagine that you are walking through the countryside and you spy a turtle perched on top of a fence post. You ask yourself how did it get there? Your options: Perhaps it is necessity; by nature it had to be there. But, upon reflection, you immediately realize that it doesn’t have to be there. So, you move to the second option: perhaps it is chance. It is conceivable that a tornado picked up the turtle and gently deposited him on the top of the post by sheer accident. But, as with our hard-typing monkeys, what may be logically conceivable is not always mathematically achievable. In fact, the chances that the turtle’s presence on the post can be accounted for via the happy accident of a violent, 150 mile-an-hour tornado are so remote that it raises questions about the stubbornness of the claimant. But if it is not required to be there, and if it didn’t get there by accident, then the only option left is that of design. Some intelligent force must have intervened. We know that the little brain of the turtle couldn’t have figured out a way to climb up there, so the only logical explanation left is that somebody must have put it there.

When we apply this same reasoning to a world that is resplendent with beauty, intelligence, and complexity, we can see how a scientist can become a more complete scientist if he starts his work by worshipping the One whose handiwork he daily explores and investigates. In the presence of the Creator, the scientist, the theologian, and the child are all allies. My conviction is that if you have the ears to hear, everything in nature points beyond itself to wondrous spiritual truth.

• God has ordained the created order in such a way that everything in it points beyond to spiritual truth for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

Follow: http://twitter.com/kennethboa
Connect on Facebook: Kenneth Boa

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

The second option is that it was chance. It just happened to be this way. This is the option held by most scientists: given enough time, even the most improbable things can happen. But if you put some actual numbers to this position, they never add up. I think it was George Bernard Shaw who hypothesized that if you gave him a million monkeys, all typing on a million typewriters, eventually one of them would type out a play of Shakespeare. At first it sounds plausible, given enough time. After all, with enough time many unlikely have happened. But let’s put some real numbers to this hypothetical scenario. If we assume there are forty keys on the typewriters, that spaces and upper and lower case do not count, that the monkeys are typing at the equivalent of a hundred words a minute 24 hours a day, that you have a million monkeys typing, and that there are only four letters in every word, how long would it take one of the monkeys to correctly type the first word? The mathematics of probability predicts that it would be a matter of a few seconds. To get the second word, meaning that any one of the monkeys would have to get all eight letters of both the first word and the second word in sequence, it would take about five days. To get the third word, i.e., twelve consecutive letters in sequence, it would take approximately 100 years. To get the fourth word, i.e., 16 letters in the correct sequence, it would take about a 100 billion years (most astronomers estimate the age of the universe to be 13.7 billion years). Yet the information contained in one strand of human DNA is far greater than all the combined plays of Shakespeare. If you do the math honestly, you soon realize that the first sentence of the play would never be written.

• Inference to the best explanation is what science should be about, regardless of where the inference leads.

Follow: http://twitter.com/kennethboa
Connect on Facebook: Kenneth Boa

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man, that You take thought of him?  And the son of man, that You care for him?”  From the time David wrote those words until the invention of the telescope in the early seventeenth century, only a few thousand stars were visible to the unaided eye, and the universe appeared far less impressive than we now know it to be.  Even until the second decade of our century, it was thought that the Milky Way galaxy was synonymous with the universe.  Now this alone would be awesome in its scope, since our spiral galaxy contains over two hundred billion stars and extends to a diameter of 100,000 light years (remember that a light second is over 186,000 miles; light from the sun to the earth traverses a distance of about 93 million miles in eight seconds).  But more recent developments in astronomy have revealed that our galaxy is a member of a local cluster of some twenty galaxies, and that this local cluster is but one member of a massive supercluster of thousands of galaxies.  So many of these superclusters are known to exist that the number of galaxies is etimated to be in the hundreds of billions.  What is man, indeed!  The God who created these stars and calls them all by name (Isa. 40:26) is unimaginably awesome; His wisdom, beauty, power, and dominion are beyond human comprehension.  And yet He has deigned to seek intimacy with the people on this puny planet and has given them great dignity and destiny: “Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and crown him with glory and majesty” (Psalm 8:5).  While these words are applicable to all people, they find their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:6-8).

Follow: http://twitter.com/kennethboa
Connect on Facebook: Kenneth Boa

This is an unprecedented technological breakthrough in solar imagery. It gives us new insights into the marvel of our sun which is perfectly fine-tuned for life on earth. We are privileged in our time to see the wonders of creation in ways previously unimagined.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrmUUcr4HXg

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/first-light.html

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

God has removed the sin barrier. Now comes his invitation. Twice the writer of Hebrews implores us to “draw near:” “Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need” (4:16). And, “ . . . let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (10:22). The call goes forth, yet we hesitate, lingering at the entrance, reluctant to push on inside. The years pass and we grow old and tired of milling around in the outer courts of our bodily temple. What hinders us? Have we so quickly forgotten who it is that waits for us? Is he not the Father who is mighty and awesome in presence, the maker of things visible and invisible in Heaven and Earth? Is he not the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, being of one substance with the Father? Is he not the Spirit that is holy, the one who proceeds from the Father and Son, and who empowers and indwells?

The need for divine communion is desperate. Tozer observes that, “The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God is in us.” The truths of the ancient creeds roll off our tongues so easily, while the Person of whom they speak waits within. And who is it that we keep waiting? It is the . . .

“One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father. And the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.”

It is a holy Trinity of Persons in one God, for . . .

“ . . . we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal and the majesty co-eternal.”

• What are the implications of the biblical teaching on the Trinity in your thinking and life?

Going Home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2aLSat3h0w

Abide With Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V7VDJGZhyQ&feature=related

Air (Bach)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztN8G8gLADw&feature=related

There are many ways to avoid God, and two of the best, as Pascal observed centuries ago, are distraction and indifference.

“Looking for God—or Heaven—by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare’s plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters… My point is that, if God does exist, He is related to the universe more as an author is related to a play than as one object in the universe is related to another…How, then, it may be asked, can we either reach or avoid Him? The avoiding, in many times and places, has proved so difficult that a very large part of the human race failed to achieve it. But in our own time and place it is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health, and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep your radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or snobbish appeal.”

- C. S. Lewis, “The Seeing Eye”

I am launching a blog that will be a bit different, insofar as it will consist of several elements. The first of these is a group of articles based on a series that I have adapted from my 11-part CD teaching on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

The second element is a series of prayers based on my forthcoming book, Transforming Prayers.

In addition to these and other resources, I plan to make occasional posts related to a variety of issues and ideas.

“Blogging at the Nexus of Worldview, Spiritual Formation, Culture, and Leadership” summarizes the varied approach I want to take.

Below you will see a list of the categories I hope to touch on in the days ahead.

Feel free to add your comments and dialog about the issues discussed here. I will do my best to read all your comments because your thoughts are important to me. I cannot promise I’ll be able to respond to everyone as my time is generally very full. I look forward to our time ahead.
-Ken