According to news reports, noted physicist Stephen Hawking has publicly declared that God did not create the world. Should this shake up people?
Interestingly, just before reading the article about Hawking on line I was reviewing some excerpts from Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript. The Danish philosopher denies that Christian belief in God should depend on objective evidences such as cosmological arguments. In fact, he argues, making faith in God depend on objective evidences and arguments undermines faith.
Personally, I don’t think Hawking or anyone can prove that God is not the creator of the universe. If Hawking is right (according to at least some news reports) the existence of the universe is the ultimate free lunch. It came from nothing without a divine creator or intelligent designer. Although I am no physicist, that seems counter-intuitive to me.
On the other hand, we ought to avoid the old God-of-the-gaps approach to belief in God. Surely authentic faith in God is something more than belief in an objective Supreme Being who is necessary to explain physical reality.
I don’t advocate extreme fideism, but neither do I think Christians should panic everytime a scientist or historian or other scholar “declares” something. I think in this case Hawking, like so many before him (e.g., Carl Sagan) is over stepping his boundaries as a scientist and speaking as a philosopher. I seriously doubt the non-existence of God can be proven (or the non-dependence of the universe on some supreme power greater than it).
In the meantime, as the scientists and philosophers debate the existence of a Supreme Being, I have the feeling they are not talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If some Christian (or non-Christian, for that matter) scientist or philosopher could refute Hawking, would I be happy? Yes, but not because Christian faith in God depends on that. The only reason I would be happy about it is that it might help remove a false obstacle to faith put in the way of some seeker after God.
But that seeker won’t find the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob at the end of a scientific or philosophical argument.
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