Today's news from both the US and UK contains an article quoting Stephen Hawking as saying that there is no need for a god to have made the universe because the laws of physics, specifically gravity, would create the big bang anyway. What I don't understand is where the laws of physics and gravity came from. My reading of people like Dr. John Polkinghorne is that it is the laws themselves, and particularly gravity, which shows the necessity of an intelligent designer for the universe, as there is no need to any of the various laws to be what they are. It seems to me that science is great at telling us what happened after the start, but not what caused the start itself. I realize that some say that positing a God just pushes the question of why there is anything rather than nothing to the question of why there is a God rather than why there is a universe, but the difference is that the universe is obviously a contingent existence, which does demand the "how" and "why" question, while God need not necessarily be contingent. So I guess I don't understand Hawking's point. Put most crudely, "where did gravity come from? And since gravity is the attractive force between masses, where did the masses that gravity acted upon come from? What am I missing here?"
Pastor Ken
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2 comments:
I just read Hawking's comments I your response was exactly mine. Progression and propulsion in the expanse doesn't answer the core question of what or who the catalyst was/is.
Could not agree more. Noted that the heads of the Anglican Communion, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of England. the Chief Rabbi and the Head Inman of the UK all said the same thing. Obviously we're in good company...
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