Hawking v God: Join the discussion

You may have seen Stephen Hawking’s comments earlier this week that he believes that there was no need for God to have played any part in the creation of the universe. According to him, the laws of physics were enough. (Which begs the question, where did those laws come from?) So maybe he isn’t the smartest person on earth after all. For it says in Psalm 14:1 that “only fools say in their hearts “There is no God””. And now renowned  Christian scientist and author Professor John Lennox has written back in defence of God’s role in creation, saying:

Contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.
What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.
That is a confusion of category. The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up. The jet could not have been created without the laws of physics on their own  –  but the task of development and creation needed the genius of Whittle as its agent.
Similarly, the laws of physics could never have actually built the universe. Some agency must have been involved.
To use a simple analogy, Isaac Newton’s laws of motion in themselves never sent a snooker ball racing across the green baize. That can only be done by people using a snooker cue and the actions of their own arms.
Hawking’s argument appears to me even more illogical when he says the existence of gravity means the creation of the universe was inevitable. But how did gravity exist in the first place? Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth?

So let’s do something we haven’t done for  a while here. Let’s open things up for discussion. Leave a comment with your thoughts on creation, Stephen Hawking, John Lennox and God