God and Stephen Hawking 2ND EDITION: Whose Design is it Anyway?

By John C Lennox

“It is a grandiose claim to have banished God. With such a lot at stake we surely need to ask Hawking to produce evidence to establish his claim. Do his arguments really stand up to close scrutiny? I think we have a right to know.”

The Grand Design and Brief Answers to Big Questions by eminent scientist the late Stephen Hawking were blockbusting contributions to the science religion debate. They claimed it was the laws of physics themselves which brought the universe into being, rather than any God. In this forthright response, John Lennox, Oxford University mathematician and internationally-known apologist, takes a closer look at Hawking’s logic and questions his conclusions.

In lively, layman’s terms, Lennox guides us through the key points in Hawking’s arguments – with clear explanations of the latest scientific and philosophical methods and theories – and demonstrates that far from disproving a Creator God, they make his existence seem all the more probable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Books
• Release date: Jul 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780745980997

John C Lennox

John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College. He lectures on Faith and Science for the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He has lectured in many universities around the world, including Austria and the former Soviet Union. He is particularly interested in the interface of Science, Philosophy and Theology. Lennox has been part of numerous public debates defending the Christian faith. He debated Richard Dawkins on "The God Delusion" in the University of Alabama (2007) and on "Has Science buried God?" in the Oxford Museum of Natural History (2008). He has also debated Christopher Hitchens on the New Atheism (Edinburgh Festival, 2008) and the question of "Is God Great?" (Samford University, 2010), as well as Peter Singer on the topic of "Is there a God?" (Melbourne, 2011). John is the author of a number of books on the relations of science, religion and ethics. He and his wife Sally live near Oxford.

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Preface to the First Edition

I have written this short book in the hope that it will assist my readers to understand some of the most important issues that lie at the heart of the contemporary debate about God and science. For that reason, I have tried to avoid technicality where possible, and concentrate on the logic of the argument. I believe that those of us who have been educated in mathematics and the natural sciences have a responsibility for the public understanding of science. In particular, we have a duty to point out that not all statements by scientists are statements of science, and so they do not carry the authority of authentic science even though such authority is often erroneously ascribed to them.

Of course that applies to me, as much as to anyone else, so I would ask the reader to scrutinize the arguments I have used very carefully. I am a mathematician and this book is not about mathematics, so the correctness of any of the mathematical results I may have proved elsewhere is no guarantee of the correctness of what I have said here. I do, however, have confidence in my readers’ ability to follow an argument to its conclusion. I therefore submit what I have written to their judgment.

Preface to the Second Edition

Stephen Hawking died in 2019, and this seemed to be a good time to bring my book up to date by reflecting on his life’s work. I have taken the opportunity to amplify some of the original sections, particularly those dealing with the multiverse and ideas around generating the universe from nothing.

I am writing this in 2020 in self-isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic. As an indicator of the level of continued public interest in these questions let me say that, just before the introduction of stringent measures in Europe to reduce social distance, I was involved in a public moderated discussion at the University of Vienna with well-known agnostic mathematics professor, politician, author, and broadcaster, Dr Rudolf Taschner. It was a capacity audience of around 1,000 (unprecedented for Vienna, I am told), with every seat filled and many standing. The topic: Is it Rational to Believe in God? This event shows that the interest is still there, although public expression of it was almost immediately shifted to the internet, where my impression is that it increased, as lockdown has resulted in many people re-evaluating their lives and thinking even more about the big questions.

Introduction

God has been very much on the agenda in recent years and there is very little sign that public interest has been diminished. Some books stand out as continuing to capture that interest – titles like Francis Collins’ The Language of God, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, The Grand Design, co-authored by the late Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, as well as Hawking’s posthumously published Brief Answers to the Big Questions.

These books have been runaway best-sellers, indicating that many people want to know what scientists have to say about our fundamental questions. That is not surprising, for science has immense cultural and intellectual authority in our sophisticated modern world. This is, in part, because of its phenomenal success in generating technologies from which all of us benefit, and in part because of its capacity to inspire, by giving us increased insight into the wonders of the universe as communicated by beautifully made television documentaries.

For that reason many people, increasingly aware that material goods do not satisfy the deepest needs of their humanity, and in light of their experience of the devastating coronavirus pandemic, are turning to the scientists to see if they have anything to say about the deeper questions of existence: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Where are we going? Is this universe all that exists, or is there more?

All but the first of the best-sellers just mentioned were written by atheists; however, there are many other books about science and God written by theists. It would, therefore, be very premature to write off the debate as an inevitable clash between science and religion. In fact, though not often realized, the so-called conflict view of the matter has long since been discredited – see, for example, Peter Harrison’s important work The Territories of Science and Religion. Take, for example, the first author mentioned, Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institute of Health in the USA, winner of the 2020 Templeton Prize, and former Head of the Human Genome Project. His predecessor as head of that project was James Watson, winner (with Francis Crick) of the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Collins is a Christian, Watson an atheist. They are both top-level scientists, which shows us that what divides them is not their science but their worldview. There is a real conflict out there, but it is not science versus religion. It is theism versus atheism, and there are scientists on both sides.

That is what makes the debate all the more interesting, because it means that we can focus on the real question at stake: Does science point towards God, away from God, or is it neutral on the issue?

One thing is clear straightaway. This remarkable surge of interest in God defies the so-called secularization hypothesis, which rashly assumed, in the wake of the Enlightenment and the wave of atheism that has all but engulfed the Western Academy, that religion would eventually decline and die out – in Europe at least. Indeed, it could well be that it is precisely the perceived failure of secularization that is driving the God question ever higher on the agenda.

In 2009 distinguished journalists John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge of The Economist wrote: God is Back¹ – and not only for the uneducated. In much of the world it is exactly the sort of upwardly-mobile, educated middle classes that Marx and Weber presumed would shed such superstitions who are driving the explosion of faith.² This particular development has understandably proved infuriating for those with a secular agenda.

The atheist scientist choir has lost one of its most powerful voices, that of the physicist Stephen Hawking, whose death in 2018 has deprived the world of one of its most famous and iconic scientists. His announcements made headlines around the world: Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God, Stephen Hawking says physics leaves no room for God, and so on, with many variations. The headlines were journalistic references to the publication in 2010, by Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow, of the book The Grand Design, rather than statements by Hawking. The book went immediately to the top of the best-seller charts. The public profession of atheism by a man of such high intellectual profile as Hawking had the instant effect of ratcheting up the debate by several notches. It has also sold a lot of books. A further book was published posthumously, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, in which Hawking said that in his view, the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No-one created the universe and no one directs our fate.³

What were we to think? Was that it, then? Was there nothing more to discuss? Should all theologians have resigned their chairs forthwith? Should all church workers have hung up their hats and gone home? Had the Grand Master of Physics checkmated the Grand Designer of the Universe?

It certainly was a grandiose claim to have banished God. After all, the majority of great scientists in the past believed in him. Many still do. Were Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Maxwell, to name a few, really all wrong on the God question?

With such a lot at stake we surely need to ask for the evidence on which Hawking based his atheism. Do his arguments stand up to close scrutiny? I think we have a right to know.

But we shall never know unless we look and see.

So, let us do just that…

1John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge, God is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith is Changing the World (London, Allen Lane, 2009).

2Micklethwaite and Wooldridge, God is Back, p. 18.

3Stephen

Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions (New York, Random House, 2018), p. 38.

1 The big questions

Stephen Hawking and I arrived in Cambridge at the same time in October 1962. I had come to start my undergraduate career in mathematics, and he, having just graduated from Oxford, was starting his research for a PhD. But at this point the resemblance between us ends. For, without doubt, he became the world’s most famous scientist in recent years.

He held the Lucasian Professorship in Cambridge, a chair once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking filled this position with great distinction. His academic career was marked by an accolade of honorary degrees from all over the world, and he was made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

He was also an outstanding symbol of fortitude, having suffered the ravages of motor neurone (Lou Gehrig) disease for around sixty years. During much of this time he was confined to a wheelchair, his only means of verbal communication being a specially designed electronic voice synthesizer. Its instantly recognizable voice was known all over the world.

With many distinguished colleagues and students, Hawking explored the frontiers of mathematical physics, most famously, perhaps, the counter-intuitive mysteries of black holes. His work led to the prediction of Hawking Radiation, which, if it

Reviews for God and Stephen Hawking 2ND EDITION

[Aleksandar Gutesa · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book has left me in an awe... I didn't expect anything else than inexplainable, confusing train of thoughts, circular rhetorical escapades of a gent that I basically find a super fine.
But to say that HISTORY and SCIENCE were what made him a devoited Christian because there...were..."witnesses"... who witnessed.... Christ... coming from death 2000y. ago...

Well, maybe a multiverse theory is a wild thing, but things that I read here ate as phantasmagorical as any universe far, far away...

[eclecticdodo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting response to Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design. Lennox begins by pointing out the obvious contradiction of Hawking's statement "philosophy is dead" immediately followed by a book that goes beyond the realms of physics and into metaphysics, a.k.a. philosophy. Hawking argues that "natures laws" are inviolable and account for the creation of all things. Lennox challenges this on various grounds, finally concluding that the theory of the multiverse, far from disproving God, leads logically to His existence. This is a short and easily understood book, nevertheless it succeeds in picking significant holes in Hawking's work.