"God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs..."
Dr. Ellie Sattler:
"Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth..."
"Jurassic Park" 1993
Has Stephen Hawking destroyed God?
In his opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, which is based on the book "The Grand Design" by Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow of CalTech, Hawking argues that according to the latest theories of quantum physics and gravity a universe can spring from nothing. In fact, existence is really a multiverse, many universes that each have their own laws of nature.
If I understood this correctly, he is saying that there are other universes in which the laws of physics work differently. Gravitational constants, the mass of a proton, the strong nuclear force, the electric force, all could be different in these other universes. Change any of these factors by just a small percentage and life could never exist.
We just happen to live in a universe where the laws of physics allow for the creation of heavy elements and planets that exist in the proper distance from stars to support life. We also just happen to live on a planet that is just perfect for the evolution and continued existence of used car salesmen, college professors, baseball players, flight attendants, massage therapists, lion tamers and Stephen Hawking. (Unless we destroy ourselves.)
Newton argued that because of the order of the universe that favors the creation of our world and human life that it demonstrated that the universe was created by God. This point of view was still reinforced after the development of the Big Bang theory.
When I was in Catholic school in the fifth grade, I remember my class talked about the Big Bang Theory. I believe we were told that at one point all that is now in the universe had once been contained within a space no bigger than a thimble. It exploded out and created existence.
But where did that thimble of very dense matter come from?
God was our answer.
I remember reading Hawking's earlier book, "A Brief History of Time." He talked about discussing the Big Bang with the Pope. The Pope told him science could explore any question up to the Big Bang, but not to go inside the Big Bang itself for that was the realm of God.
Hawking didn't tell the Pope that he was already theoretically probing the inner workings of the Big Bang.
Now, physicists have gone far beyond the Big Bang.
I remember the other side of the Big Bang theory was that eventually the universe might collapse into a Big Crunch, then maybe spark another Big Bang. But that doesn't seem to be the conclusion now.
Instead, the universe is projected to just keep expanding into a Big Rip. After several generations, stars will die out and new stars will no longer be born. The universe will get very cold in the distant future and matter will tear apart into atoms and then subatomic particles, all scattering further and further out. (The Buddhists have it right. Nobody gets to keep their toys.)
But even at this stage, there could be a rebirth.
I watched a documentary on this new theory of the fate of the universe. It explained that in quantum physics -- the physics of the very small -- the possibilities at the subatomic level can be endless. One of those possibilities could be the creation of a new universe.
A universe can be created from nothing.
Fine.
No God needed?
Well, humans may have a psychological need for God, but the existence of God does not rely on a human need for God. God exists or does not exist independent of our need for him.
Does the universe need God?
Well, the laws of physics have no psychological need for a higher being. But again, God can exist or not exist whether or not there is a need for God in the universe.
Just because it is possible the Big Bang happened without God does not mean he does not exist.
So, let's back it up even further and consider Hawking's and other physicists' concept of the multiverse.
How does the multiverse prove there is no God? Perhaps God's plan goes back farther than we ever imagined. We used to imagine that the world was created 6,000 years ago in a matter of six days.
We now realize that story was a fable. (Sorry creationists, but you're way behind the times.)
Then through science, we discovered how old our Earth is, how old our sun is, and how old our universe is, which is something like 14 billion years old. Science showed us this existence that we know came from a Big Bang.
So, those people of faith who saw the value of science concluded God must have created the Big Bang.
Now science has drawn back another curtain and said there's now a multiverse. God didn't cause the Big Bang. (We win, God loses.)
But to go back to that discussion in fifth grade, about where the thimble came from, what we were really talking about was the point where science ends and faith begins.
The whole problem with the debate between science and faith is that there is no common ground. There is no point where science and faith touch. No matter how much science discovers or understands, no matter how many curtains are drawn back on the origin and nature of existence, faith is never revealed to be a fraud.
Faith is not a matter of science, just as science is not a matter of faith.
A year ago, someone sent me a video about a scientific proof of God. The theory was rather twisted, but it turned on the so-called existence of polonium halos found in rock. Polonium is a very unstable matter, it exists very briefly as uranium decays into lead. The claim was that they had found evidence of polonium that had remained stable long enough to leave a halo in the rock. Such a transitory material could never survive long enough to leave a halo in rock, therefore God must have intervened and held the polonium in that state and created the halo. Therefore, God exists.
Nonsense.
I wrote back this guy and said "I do not need science to prove God exists."
I think it is as foolhardy to try to prove God exists through science as it is to try to prove that he does not exist. If you build your faith on God based on a scientific proof, then if that proof collapses or if science pulls back another curtain, then your faith is destroyed. Your faith is revealed to be false.
Hawking has not proven that God doesn't exist. He has simply given us a deeper understanding of our existence.
I also don't buy the idea that just because we live on a planet that is perfectly suited to human life that means that the universe was created only to suit humans.
When you consider the vastness of the universe, the possibilities of other life, and now the possibilities of other universes and the prospect of life there (in those universes where the laws of physics allows it), I am struck by the potential for how big God's plan may be.
Perhaps humanity does expand out into the universe and survives for billions of years. Perhaps we will discover that not only are not alone, but that we are just one of millions of species. That we are not the most important species, but that we have a role to play in the universe, a role to play in God's plan.
We shall see.
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