What they’re saying about Hawking, God and creation
Debate is raging over Stephen Hawking’s claim that the creation of the Universe did not need God
THE ONLY thing more inevitable than an eminent physicist telling us that God didn’t necessarily create the Universe was that the name of the man who said it would be top of Google Trends by the end of the day.
Stephen Hawking has caused a religious uproar of the kind that can only normally be provoked by outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins by telling the Times that "it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going".
Hawking gave the interview to promote his new book, The Grand Design, which sets out to show that the birth of the Universe was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics and did not need a creator to act as midwife.
Hawking doesn't actually say that God doesn't exist – a question he is wise enough never to have tackled directly – but his views on 'creation' have inevitably been championed by atheists and attacked by the faithful over the past 24 hours. Here are a selection of their comments.
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING:John Lennox, professor of maths, Oxford University: "The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up. The jet could not have been created without the laws of physics on their own - but the task of development and creation needed the genius of [Sir Frank] Whittle as its agent. Similarly, the laws of physics could never have actually built the universe. Some agency must have been involved."
Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury: "Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence. Physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."
Roger Highfield, the New Scientist: "Media furore over Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design, has made it the biggest science news story of the day. But it's not like Hawking has suddenly given up a religious belief – let alone proved that God doesn't exist."
Graham Farmello, Daily Telegraph: "The science-religion relationship, in so far as there is one, continues to be a crowd-pleaser. It seems to be a fundamental law of PR that the God-science debate is a sure-fire source of publicity. Always welcome when one has a book to sell."
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being."
Professor Paul Davies, cosmologist, University of Arizona: "The idea that before the Big Bang there was some big supernatural beast ready to light the touch paper? Nobody believed that anyway."
Ibrahim Mogra, committee chairman at the Muslim Council of Britain: "If we look at the Universe and all that has been created, it indicates that somebody has been here to bring it into existence. That somebody is the almighty conqueror."
Richard Dawkins, writer of the God Delusion: "Darwinism kicked God out of biology but physics remained more uncertain. Hawking is now administering the coup de grace."
Stephen Hawking, in 2001: "If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed. If you like, you can say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence." ·
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Perhaps I should have worded my comment differently for Mr McCurdy et al. The religious embrace scientific discoveries the way they do their bible - applying the parts which are useful to them whilst ignoring the parts that aren't.
Ah, yes of course. The universe was kick started by the ineffable will of a giant gerbil and the reason we cannot comprehend it is that the mind of man can never know the mind of gerbil, after all, to do so would require that we have four legs, fur and a long and largely useless tail... oh, wait a minute... we do have the long and largely useless tale... silly of me. Sorry.
For the truth about God is known to them instinctivey God has put this knowledge in their hearts since earliest times men have seen the earth and sky and all God made and have known of His existence and great eternal power so they will have NO excuse when they stand before God at Judgement Day.
Yes they knew about Him alright but they wouldn't admit it or worship Him or even thank Him for all His daily care. And after a while they began to think up silly ideas of what God was like and what He wanted them to do. The result was that their foolish minds became dark and confused claiming themselvs to be wise without God hey became utter fools instead and then instead of worshpping the glorious ever living God, they took wood and stone and made idols for themselves carving them to look like mere birds, animals, snakes and puny men.
So God let them go ahead into every sort of .... and do whatever they wanted to - instead of believing what they knew as the truth about God they deliberately chose to believe lies so they prayed to the things God made but wouldnt obey the blessed God who made these things.
That is why God let go of them .....
Romans Chapter 1 - the Bible
"Stephen Hawking, in 2001: "If you believe in science, like I do"...excellent stuff, if badly phrased. But who does not believe in it? This is but a silly perpetuation of the Science v Christianity debate. Utterly wrong-headed, ignoring all the evidence. Augustinian Abbot Gregor Mendel (that's Catholic you know) - founder of the science of genetics, and today we have Francis S. Collins, hugely successful head of the US Human Genome mapping project, who hitting the age of 30, saw that his atheistic materialism was shallow and meaningless, read C. S. Lewis's book 'Mere Christianity' and became a church-going Christian (Protestant flavour). So much for the squawkins of Dawkins then. And as to squawking of Hawking...well Sir Isaac Newton, founder OF modern physics, well he wrote more bible studies and theology (Protestant flavour) than he did maths and physics. You can read it online if you know how to Google. And Sir Isaac said "If I have seen a long way, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants", and he meant Catholics like Galileo (yes, the persecuted one, who retired on a church pension age 70), and Copernicus, the canon of a Polish cathedral for his day job no less - so that would make him Catholic would it not...so the idea that there is a conflict between science and religion is almost laughable. In fact, I like to hiss off all the atheists by arguing it the other way - who was the first top-ranking scientist to be executed by the socialist atheist state in history? Try looking up the fate of Antoine Lavoisier, discoverer of oxygen, founder of the metric system, and one of the founders of the periodic table theory (not that we use those things much nowadays...oxygen, the periodic table, and metres and kilos...). And he was sent to the guillotine by the revolutionary judge for his Catholicism with the chilling dismissal "The republic has no need of chemists". And we thought the politicisation of science began with Climategate. Wake up people, ideology always trumps science - until it all gets to much and they get a reality check - like, say, Climategate emails revealing the extent of EU funding for global warming theorists in East Anglia...and why would they do that...to raise our carbon taxes and keep all the populace scared and in their tax-paying places, that's why. But anyway, farbeit for me to go on and on, just because I am so right.
Cue lots of evangelical theists and atheist blagging on about how they are right.
End of the day though you cannot deny, PRMcPhee, that men of reason and science can still be religious. They are not mutually exclusive and you make atheists look stupid.
Time to choose! If the faithful keep denying the revelations of science and the rational mind, then stop using the benefits. No more TV, phones, fridges or cars. Get yourself a goat and a wool shirt and live the Biblical way.
MAN MADE GOD AND GOD MADE MAN. PERIOD.