Hawking: Ignoring God is Senseless

Steven Hawking, the eminent physicist, has a new book coming out tomorrow which purports to say that God was not necessary for the creation of the universe. Indeed, that many other universes may exist. But does all of this, if true, actually do away with the role God would play in creation?

Hawking and his fellow author Leonard Mlodinow appear to be saying that science alone can explain creation. Yet the scientific view they are trying to espouse is very new, conflicting, already finding ridicule in some scientific quarters. Craig Callender, a philosopher of physics at the University of California, San Diego, says that what the authors are doing is ultimately merely imaginative. It cannot in truth be proven, Dr. Callender says. This from a fellow scientist, it should be noted.

The string theories upon which Hawking and Mlodinow's assertions are based are far from conclusive, according to many in the world of science. Callender himself calls it the 'wild speculation' needed to attract the media. Still, the book apparently does not actually address why God is not needed. Hawking says that our universe began with 'spontaneous creation'. In short, it just happened. That is little different from the big bang theory. What is so grandiosely insightful about it?

Hawking argues that the discovery of many other planets in the galaxy makes it less impressive that one should have sentient life. "If there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it's less remarkable that there's one with conditions for human life," he asserts. Why? It brings to mind the infinite monkeys theory, where we should expect that with an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters one would eventually pound out Shakespeare.

We wouldn't be awed that a theoretically random ape actually did it? Really, now. Likewise, even if there were only one planet with conscious life among hundreds of planets and universes, why shouldn't we be impressed by that? It should not beshocking that when no other life existed, it existed here?

To be fair, Mlodinow does say that they are not arguing that there is no God, but only that one isn't necessary to explain the creation of our own or the potentially other universes they say might be out there somewhere. Still, what they say does indeed reek of philosophy rather than science. We stand by what we have said so many times before: science only explains science, they how things work question. It cannot address the why questions of how it may all have come to be.

What Hawking and Mlodinow have produced is not science then but philosophy. Their work is subject to logic, not empiricism. Perhaps they are right in their scientific theories. But as to their philosophy, it is really just the same old same old from the pop science crowd.