God and Stephen Hawking 2ND EDITION

C Lennox John

Description

“It is a grandiose claim to have banished God. With such a lot at stake we surely need to ask Hawking to produce evidence to establish his claim. Do his arguments really stand up to close scrutiny? I think we have a right to know.”

The Grand Design and Brief Answers to Big Questions by eminent scientist the late Stephen Hawking were blockbusting contributions to the science religion debate. They claimed it was the laws of physics themselves which brought the universe into being, rather than any God. In this forthright response, John Lennox, Oxford University mathematician and internationally-known apologist, takes a closer look at Hawking’s logic and questions his conclusions.

In lively, layman’s terms, Lennox guides us through the key points in Hawking’s arguments – with clear explanations of the latest scientific and philosophical methods and theories – and demonstrates that far from disproving a Creator God, they make his existence seem all the more probable.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: SPCK Publishing
• Date de parution: 23 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745980997
• Langue: English

Extrait

GOD AND STEPHEN HAWKING
WHOSE DESIGN IS IT ANYWAY?
Text copyright 2011, 2021 John Lennox
This edition copyright 2021 Lion Hudson IP Limited
The right of John Lennox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by
Lion Hudson Limited
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Business Park
Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com
ISBN 978 0 7459 8098 0
eISBN 978 0 7459 8099 7
First edition 2011
Cover credit: Mr Twister and metamorworks
Acknowledgments
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised. Copyright 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder Stoughton Ltd, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. NIV is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV ) copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Extracts pp. 46-47, 86, 90, 92, 97 taken from MIRACLES by C.S. Lewis copyright C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1947. Extracts reprinted by permission.

For Rachel, Jonathan, and Benjamin, gifts of the Creator, who have made of me a father.
Acknowledgments
My thanks are due to Professors Nigel Cutland and Alister McGrath for constructive advice. I am also grateful to my research assistant Dr Simon Wenham for his help with the manuscript and its revisions.
Contents
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Chapter 1 The big questions
Chapter 2 God or the laws of nature?
Chapter 3 God or the multiverse?
Chapter 4 Whose design is it anyway?
Chapter 5 Science and rationality
Conclusion
Preface to the First Edition
I have written this short book in the hope that it will assist my readers to understand some of the most important issues that lie at the heart of the contemporary debate about God and science. For that reason, I have tried to avoid technicality where possible, and concentrate on the logic of the argument. I believe that those of us who have been educated in mathematics and the natural sciences have a responsibility for the public understanding of science. In particular, we have a duty to point out that not all statements by scientists are statements of science, and so they do not carry the authority of authentic science even though such authority is often erroneously ascribed to them.
Of course that applies to me, as much as to anyone else, so I would ask the reader to scrutinize the arguments I have used very carefully. I am a mathematician and this book is not about mathematics, so the correctness of any of the mathematical results I may have proved elsewhere is no guarantee of the correctness of what I have said here. I do, however, have confidence in my readers ability to follow an argument to its conclusion. I therefore submit what I have written to their judgment.
Preface to the Second Edition
Stephen Hawking died in 2019, and this seemed to be a good time to bring my book up to date by reflecting on his life s work. I have taken the opportunity to amplify some of the original sections, particularly those dealing with the multiverse and ideas around generating the universe from nothing .
I am writing this in 2020 in self-isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic. As an indicator of the level of continued public interest in these questions let me say that, just before the introduction of stringent measures in Europe to reduce social distance, I was involved in a public moderated discussion at the University of Vienna with well-known agnostic mathematics professor, politician, author, and broadcaster, Dr Rudolf Taschner. It was a capacity audience of around 1,000 (unprecedented for Vienna, I am told), with every seat filled and many standing. The topic: Is it Rational to Believe in God? This event shows that the interest is still there, although public expression of it was almost immediately shifted to the internet, where my impression is that it increased, as lockdown has resulted in many people re-evaluating their lives and thinking even more about the big questions.
Introduction
God has been very much on the agenda in recent years and there is very little sign that public interest has been diminished. Some books stand out as continuing to capture that interest - titles like Francis Collins The Language of God , Richard Dawkins The God Delusion , The Grand Design , co-authored by the late Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, as well as Hawking s posthumously published Brief Answers to the Big Questions .
These books have been runaway best-sellers, indicating that many people want to know what scientists have to say about our fundamental questions. That is not surprising, for science has immense cultural and intellectual authority in our sophisticated modern world. This is, in part, because of its phenomenal success in generating technologies from which all of us benefit, and in part because of its capacity to inspire, by giving us increased insight into the wonders of the universe as communicated by beautifully made television documentaries.
For that reason many people, increasingly aware that material goods do not satisfy the deepest needs of their humanity, and in light of their experience of the devastating coronavirus pandemic, are turning to the scientists to see if they have anything to say about the deeper questions of existence: Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Where are we going? Is this universe all that exists, or is there more?
All but the first of the best-sellers just mentioned were written by atheists; however, there are many other books about science and God written by theists. It would, therefore, be very premature to write off the debate as an inevitable clash between science and religion. In fact, though not often realized, the so-called conflict view of the matter has long since been discredited - see, for example, Peter Harrison s important work The Territories of Science and Religion . Take, for example, the first author mentioned, Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institute of Health in the USA, winner of the 2020 Templeton Prize, and former Head of the Human Genome Project. His predecessor as head of that project was James Watson, winner (with Francis Crick) of the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Collins is a Christian, Watson an atheist. They are both top-level scientists, which shows us that what divides them is not their science but their worldview. There is a real conflict out there, but it is not science versus religion. It is theism versus atheism, and there are scientists on both sides.
That is what makes the debate all the more interesting, because it means that we can focus on the real question at stake: Does science point towards God, away from God, or is it neutral on the issue?
One thing is clear straightaway. This remarkable surge of interest in God defies the so-called secularization hypothesis, which rashly assumed, in the wake of the Enlightenment and the wave of atheism that has all but engulfed the Western Academy, that religion would eventually decline and die out - in Europe at least. Indeed, it could well be that it is precisely the perceived failure of secularization that is driving the God question ever higher on the agenda.
In 2009 distinguished journalists John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge of The Economist wrote: God is Back 1 - and not only for the uneducated. In much of the world it is exactly the sort of upwardly-mobile, educated middle classes that Marx and Weber presumed would shed such superstitions who are driving the explosion of faith. 2 This particular development has understandably proved infuriating for those with a secular agenda.
The atheist scientist choir has lost one of its most powerful voices, that of the physicist Stephen Hawking, whose death in 2018 has deprived the world of one of its most famous and iconic scientists. His announcements made headlines around the world: Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God , Stephen Hawking says physics leaves no room for God , and so on, with many variations. The headlines were journalistic references to the publication in 2010, by Hawking and his co-author Leonard Mlodinow, of the book The Grand Design , rather than statements by Hawking. The book went immediately to the top of the best-seller charts. The public profession of atheism by a man of such high intellectual profile as Hawking had the instant effect of ratcheting up the debate by several notches. It has also sold a lot of books. A further book was published posthumously, Brief Answers to the Big Questions , in which Hawking said that in his view, the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No-one created the universe and no one directs our fate. 3
What were we to think? Was that it, then? Was there nothing more to discuss? Should all theologians have resigned their chairs forthwith? Should all church workers have hung up their hats and gone home? Had the Grand Master of Physics checkmated the Grand Designer of the Universe?
It certainly was a grandiose claim to have banished God. After all, the majority of great scientists in the past believed in him. Many still do. W