asymptotes

In a previous blog post, I have posed the question " Has Stephen Hawking Killed God? "  and have answered it with an emphatic  “ No! ”.  In this follow up post, I discuss the appropriateness of Hawking’s choice of title and subtitle for his book. I would like to suggest to Hawking that he change the title of his book “T he Grand Design ”  because it betrays the book’s grand claim- the irrelevance of God in creation.  If he really wanted to take God out of the creation picture, he should not have associated the word “design” with his book, because this word implies “purpose” and “intelligence”.  And an idea as big and complex as creation would call for a Great Purpose and a Great Intelligence, thus reminding many of a Great Being.  He should have, instead, called his book “ The Grand Chance ” or “ The Grand Coincidenc e” because he suggests that human life is a product of mere chance. I also suggest that he change the subtitle of his b...

Stephen Hawking argues that God is not needed for creation in his new book, “ The Grand Design ” (co-authored with Lleonard Mlodinow). He writes, “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. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” Has Hawking killed God? No, I certainly do not think so. Hawking explains that “because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” but he does not explain why there is gravity in the first place. He argues that “spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing” but he does not give a reason why spontaneous creation should necessarily happen. His axiomatic acceptance of the law of gravity and spontaneous creation seems to me as dogmatic as a theist’s acceptance of the...