Religious Leaders Slam Stephen Hawkings Statement “God Did Not Create The Universe”
Religious leaders in Britain on Friday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe.
In his new book “The Grand Design,” Britain’s most famous scientist says that given the existence of gravity, “the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” according to an excerpt published in The Times of London.
“Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” he wrote.
“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going.”
But the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, told the Times that “physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing.”
He added: “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.”
Williams’ comments were supported by leaders from across the religious spectrum in Britain. Writing in the Times, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation … The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the Universe came into being.”
The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, added: “I would totally endorse what the Chief Rabbi said so eloquently about the relationship between religion and science.”
Ibrahim Mogra, an imam and committee chairman at the Muslim Council of Britain, was also quoted by the Times as saying: “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.”
Hawking was also accused of “missing the point” by colleagues at the University of Cambridge in England.
“The ‘god’ that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing,” said Denis Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.
“Hawking’s god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge.
“Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative,” he added.
Fraser Watts, an Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science, said that it’s not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God.
“A creator God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe, and … it is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not. That view is not undermined by what Hawking has said.”
Hawking’s book — as the title suggests — is an attempt to answer “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” he wrote, quoting Douglas Adams’ cult science fiction romp, “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
His answer is “M-theory,” which, he says, posits 11 space-time dimensions, “vibrating strings, … point particles, two-dimensional membranes, three-dimensional blobs and other objects that are more difficult to picture and occupy even more dimensions of space.”
He doesn’t explain much of that in the excerpt, which is the introduction to the book.
But he says he understands the feeling of the great English scientist Isaac Newton that God did “create” and “conserve” order in the universe.
It was the discovery of other solar systems outside our own in 1992 that undercut a key idea of Newton’s — that our world was so uniquely designed to be comfortable for human life that some divine creator must have been responsible.
But, Hawking argues, if there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it’s less remarkable that there’s one with conditions for human life. And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it.
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Pingback by World of Islam » Blog Archive » Muslims, Christians join Iftar celebration — September 3, 2010 @ 8:59 pm
The biggest differance in Religion and science is that science either proves or disproves thr existance of life and the bibnle doesn’t because it is more geared to sprituality. If you took a microbe and found a suitable spot for it to aprocreate, was it done by the hands of god? or by the mind set of a scientist who had an idea to plant them there? Proof or disproof. I think that there had to be a spark that ignited the fuel to put things in motion. For instance its taking a toddler by the hand to teach them to walk, eventualy the will go in motion on there own. So we are left with the questestion, is there a greater being out there?
Comment by Dale Cooper — September 22, 2010 @ 2:33 pm
Each planet is unique in itself, the body mass its shape in which most are round and some that aren’t. Are they unique for that part of the universe? Yes because itys the birth place ni which it orbits. Can it sustane life? Well thats what scientists are trying to figure out. When a probe comes back some data it begins to unravel its secrets, for example Mars. Now we all know that amrs has frozen ice and there are marks on the panet which suggests there was water and anything that has weater must have at some point sustaned life. Its not a question of whtyher who had a hand in it. Its how it happened. Now we know that when the planet earth formed billions of years ago it started out as a lifeless planet, No bacteria no mircrobes. But somthinig did breath life on earth and it cam,e from some where. Do you recall in the Book of Geneises where it said that the planet was void of light? What happens and a Astriod hits the planet? You get a big ball of fire that encompasses the whole planet given its size and mass and there are key indicators that this did happen, not only here but moons and dorment planets that bare the scars. Why was this planet different than the others? Amnosphere, whidh held in the gasses, that formed into water molicules to bacteria and microbes and so on. Its and dome around the planety that keep things frm flying out into space once after the panet was hit. No most masses suchas asttriods that consist of iron farite and copper and other nminerals, this copmbination along with ice made it possible for earth to come alive teaming with what ever it wass on that atroid. Could ahve been your basi building blocks such as amino acids and protein that piggy backed on that astriod and the planet earth had the other key ingredients to mix the pot of soup to set thiinghs in motion. Was it the devine hand that mad this so? I doubt it. The morion was already in place, its like the astriod belt that was nothing but anshooting galalery because gravity may not have existed or wasn’t strong enough to keep a rougue from hitting earth. This what I beleive is why it isn’t as comon as it was 65 million years ago which may have caused the exstiction of the dinasaurs.
Comment by Dale Cooper — September 22, 2010 @ 2:48 pm