By Thomas Lee
Professor Stephen William Hawking, the author of the 1988 runaway world best seller A Brief History of Time, has declared the dreadful finality that there is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe.
Britain’s most famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist had asserted previously that a belief in a creator was not inapposite with science, but in his latest book The Grand Design, he deduces that the so-called Big Bang was an ineluctable consequence of the laws of physics.
According to wire news reports this week, Hawking says in his new book, being serialized in The Times of London, that there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going.
“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something,” Hawking said in the book co-written by US physicist Leonard Mlodinow, challenging Sir Isaac Newton’s conviction that the Universe must have a designer or creator as it could not simply have emerged out of nothing and chaos.
Hawking, who calls himself as an agnostic, has often used the word “God” in metaphorical meanings to illustrate points made in his books and public speeches. In A Brief History of Time, he had appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the Universe, saying “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”
Hawking’s latest theory on the origin of the Universe, if true or unilaterally accepted as truth, will have prevalent and regnant implication, impact and influence in the ultimate value and morality of human beings as it renders the whole Universe and everything in it to merely a materialistic impersonal phantasm, resulting in non-authentic veritable moral chaos.
Hawking’s theory means that there is no morality as life is a merely meaningless materialistic mass – a body of matter with no definite distinctive significance and no perspicuous precious value. So, why have ethics and laws? Everyone should just go for the pursuit of pleasure, sensual self-indulgence, and do whatever he likes, including killing each other, since human life is merely a mass of matter that comes together by chance.
Obviously, Hawking’s theory is logically flawed as it does not answer the two fundamental supreme questions of the origin of the very well-designed Universe, and of the intrinsic inborn moral conscience of the human person.
Scientific theories, such as that of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution which derives from natural observations of the universe and life, have never proven the non-existence of God. In fact, the very fact that there is a very well-designed and orderly Universe shows that there is a Designer with great wisdom and intelligence behind it. Screw and nuts and anything else just don’t come together by chance and become a computer. An intelligent designer and creator has to plan, design and make it.
There is this true story of a hardcore evolutionist called Dr Paul Gentuso who discovered the reality and relevance of God while attending a class on anatomy at medical school.
According to Gentuso, he dissected a human hand during one class session, first by removing the skin, then isolated the individual tendons and muscles, and work his way to the bones.
“The tendons of the hand are aligned in tendon sheaths, like self-lubricating pulleys, allowing the hand to move in a tireless, noiseless, almost effortless fashion. It was perfectly designed to carry out all the works it was called to do, everything from lifting a small object to lugging a tree truck,” Gentuso said.
The experience led Gentuso, who had serious doubts about the existence of God, to take an honest look at himself and at the marvelous and magnificent design of the human body with its stupendous functions.
“In seeing how each tendon was perfectly aligned along the axis of each finger and how each figure moved in a coordinated fashion when tugged by individual tendons, it became obvious to me that there was a Creator who had intelligently designed and created the human hand. This was the first time in my adult life that I could say with assurance that a creator existed. It was really a spiritual experience for me. I went from doubt to certainty based on seeing God’s creation,” Gentuso said.
In this age of incertitude and skepticism, the scientific community and the so-called intellectuals have attempted to dismiss and deny the reality and existence of God, but the more we explore the mysteries and marvels of our Universe and experience the astonishing and miraculous birth, growth and development of the human being, we cannot escape the wonderment of the evidence of the truth that God is.
If the human being is merely the result of a Big Bang lumping matter together by chance, as Stephen Hawkings postulated in his new book The Grand Design, then we are simply clods, with no meaning, no intrinsic essential value, no moral, and no purpose.
If the Universe was originated by chance, then the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was correct in declaring that God is dead, and was justified to launch his “Campaign against Morality”. Nietzsche, who called himself an “immoralist”, had harshly criticizes the prominent moral values of Christianity, and called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a “calamitous error”.
If that is what we human beings and our Universe are all about, then nothing matters anymore. Let’s eat, drink and be merry, for life has no essential meaning and value.
Otherwise, we should pause, and reflect on the reality and truth of Who created us and what he wants us to be and to do.