bendy-buses 3 and atheist summer camps for children; not forgetting, of course, large lapel badges marked with a red “A” for “atheist”, and any number of intelligently designed T-shirts.
Whether this campaign had anything to do with it or not I don’t know, but one very powerful scientific voice has been added to the atheist choir – that of physicist Stephen Hawking. Around the world the headlines were full of it: “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 referring to the publication of a new book by Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design . It raced immediately to the top of the best-seller charts. The public confession of atheism by a man of such high intellectual profile as Hawking has had the instant effect of ratcheting up the debate by several notches. It has also sold a lot of books.
What are we to think? Is that it, then? Is there nothing more to discuss? Should all theologians resign their chairs forthwith? Should all church workers hang up their hats and go home? Has the Grand Master of Physics checkmated the Grand Designer of the Universe?
It certainly is a grandiose claim to have banished God. After all, the majority of great scientists in the past have 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 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.
But we shall never know unless we look and see.
So, let us do just that…
1 The big questions
Stephen Hawking is, without doubt, the world’s most famous living scientist. He has recently retired from the Lucasian Professorship in Cambridge, a chair once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking has occupied this position with great distinction. He has been made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen, and his academic career has been marked by an accolade of honorary degrees from all over the world.
He has also been an outstanding symbol of fortitude, having suffered the ravages of motor neurone disease for over forty years. During many of these he has been confined to a wheelchair, with his only means of verbal communication being a specially designed electronic voice synthesizer. Its instantly recognizable “voice” is known all over the world.
With many distinguished colleagues and students, Hawking has explored the frontiers of mathematical physics – most famously, perhaps, the counter-intuitive mysteries of black holes. His work has led to the prediction of “Hawking Radiation”, which, if verified experimentally, would surely qualify him for a Nobel Prize.
In his runaway best-seller, A Brief History of Time 4 , Hawking brought the recondite world of fundamental physics to the coffee table (although many people have confessed to finding the contents rather beyond them). This book was followed by several others in the same vein, which attempted quite successfully to excite a wider readership with the buzz of great science.
Since his books deal with the origin of the universe, it was inevitable that he should consider the matter of the existence of a Divine Creator. However, A Brief History of Time left this matter tantalizingly open, by ending with the much-quoted statement that if physicists were to find a “Theory of Everything” (that is, a theory that unified the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity), we would “know the Mind of God”.
In his latest book, The Grand Design 5 , co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow 6 , Hawking’s reticence has disappeared, and he challenges belief in the divine creation of the universe. According to him it is the laws of physics, not the will of God, that provide the real
Whether this campaign had anything to do with it or not I don’t know, but one very powerful scientific voice has been added to the atheist choir – that of physicist Stephen Hawking. Around the world the headlines were full of it: “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 referring to the publication of a new book by Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design . It raced immediately to the top of the best-seller charts. The public confession of atheism by a man of such high intellectual profile as Hawking has had the instant effect of ratcheting up the debate by several notches. It has also sold a lot of books.
What are we to think? Is that it, then? Is there nothing more to discuss? Should all theologians resign their chairs forthwith? Should all church workers hang up their hats and go home? Has the Grand Master of Physics checkmated the Grand Designer of the Universe?
It certainly is a grandiose claim to have banished God. After all, the majority of great scientists in the past have 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 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.
But we shall never know unless we look and see.
So, let us do just that…
1 The big questions
Stephen Hawking is, without doubt, the world’s most famous living scientist. He has recently retired from the Lucasian Professorship in Cambridge, a chair once held by Sir Isaac Newton. Hawking has occupied this position with great distinction. He has been made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen, and his academic career has been marked by an accolade of honorary degrees from all over the world.
He has also been an outstanding symbol of fortitude, having suffered the ravages of motor neurone disease for over forty years. During many of these he has been confined to a wheelchair, with his only means of verbal communication being a specially designed electronic voice synthesizer. Its instantly recognizable “voice” is known all over the world.
With many distinguished colleagues and students, Hawking has explored the frontiers of mathematical physics – most famously, perhaps, the counter-intuitive mysteries of black holes. His work has led to the prediction of “Hawking Radiation”, which, if verified experimentally, would surely qualify him for a Nobel Prize.
In his runaway best-seller, A Brief History of Time 4 , Hawking brought the recondite world of fundamental physics to the coffee table (although many people have confessed to finding the contents rather beyond them). This book was followed by several others in the same vein, which attempted quite successfully to excite a wider readership with the buzz of great science.
Since his books deal with the origin of the universe, it was inevitable that he should consider the matter of the existence of a Divine Creator. However, A Brief History of Time left this matter tantalizingly open, by ending with the much-quoted statement that if physicists were to find a “Theory of Everything” (that is, a theory that unified the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity), we would “know the Mind of God”.
In his latest book, The Grand Design 5 , co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow 6 , Hawking’s reticence has disappeared, and he challenges belief in the divine creation of the universe. According to him it is the laws of physics, not the will of God, that provide the real
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