Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Grand Design


 


 

I haven't read his latest book yet, The Grand Design, but the media keeps telling me Stephen Hawking writes we don't need God, that God wasn't needed to create the universe. Mr. Hawking is an extremely intelligent man. I've read an earlier popular book of his, A Brief History of Time. Though it was supposedly written at the layman level, I have to admit I sometimes got lost in his explanations.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that he's come to the conclusion that there is no need for God, other physicists have, at least in theory. (Hawking refers to it as the M-theory.) What does surprise me is his statement that something can come from nothing. I thought that was against some law of physics. According to what I've read, he gives the law of gravity a lot of credit for the spontaneous appearance of something out of nothing.

Whatever his reasoning, I need more than his word for that. Quantum physics or not, it seems to me quite a stretch to say something can spontaneously come out of nothing. I would have to have a lot more faith in Hawking and his pronouncements to wrap my mind around that conclusion, gravity or not.

Of course, God claims he made something out of nothing as well. It's a conundrum. Do I have faith in what Hawking says or in what God says? I think you know the answer.

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