Stephen Hawking Says...

Reuters - September 3, 2010
In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

Stephen Hawking is a famous theoretical physicist and atheist - though saying so is redundant since his theories have always been in pursuit of explaining away the Designer while examining the intricacies of a universe so obviously designed.  Is it interesting to you that his new book is entitled, "The Grand Design?"

But the quote above shows one of the major flaws of Hawking's reasoning.  "Because there is a law such as gravity..." ignores the question of where that law of gravity originated.  Gravity has no reality apart from a physical universe.  If there was a law of gravity - but no physical universe to be affected by gravity - there would be nothing for gravity to act upon.  Not even Stephen Hawking can make that scenario go bang.  So the question, Dr. Hawking, is not just how did things come to be organized as they are organized, but where did all this stuff come from to start?

God doesn't claim to have made the things that we find in the universe out of things that already existed.  God claims to have made EVERYTHING that exists - and the laws that govern those things.

Stephen Hawking can say anything he wants to say.  He can say there is no "need" for God.  He can say matter organizes itself into complex systems.  (Though how he explains away the second law of thermodynamics is a mystery.)  He can say that life simply springs into existence from non-life.  (Though this has never been observed and, in fact, nobody has ever been able to create life out of non-living things even on purpose.)  He can say whatever he wants - and people who don't want to reckon with God can take comfort in his pronouncements.

But God says,

(Genesis 1:1)  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

And...

(2 Peter 3:3–7) knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts,
4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”
5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water,
6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.
7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.