Haggling with Hawking

This Tuesday, Stephen Hawking’s new book The Grand Design was released and has made some waves on blogs and various news sources. It appears that Hawking makes a claim in his new book that there is no need for God since we can explain the origins of the universe through natural laws. James Anderson, an assistant professor at Reformed Theological Seminary at Charlotte, has written a compelling and thoughtful response to Hawking’s argument on his blog:

If Hawking thinks there is some law or principle that explains the very existence of the universe, he must have in mind a metaphysical law rather than a physicallaw. Unless I’m much mistaken, the law of gravity is a physical law. It appears that Hawking intends to leave behind physics (a subject on which he is eminently qualified to speak) and enter the realm of metaphysics (a subject on which he has no particular expertise, so far as I know).