Eighth article in the series “With Good Reason”
By Keith Bassham
Just this week, I read an article by the British theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking about the fine-tuned universe (see my article “The Existence of God” Part 2 in the March 2010 Tribune). You will remember from that earlier article the concept of the fine-tuned universe is that it appears the world was designed to produce and to sustain humanity — gravity, heat, light, all the elements of nature, you name it — and this demonstrates design and implies intelligent design.
This latest article by Hawking (“Why God Did Not Create the Universe,” Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2010) seems to confirm all I wrote before, and in fact, I was prepared to read a conclusion somewhat similar to his statement in A Brief History of Time: “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe would have begun in just this way except as the act of God who intended to create beings like us.” In sentence after sentence, the brilliant scientist gave a brilliant defense of intelligent design, even referring to fine-tuning. And then, despite all the evidence he adduced, near the end he writes, “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….”
So again we are left with this — bring all the evidence for God you want to the table. Make it as overwhelming as you like. There is still no God. Hawking is particularly stubborn in this, having given such a defense of design, and then making the statement that it at best leaves the question of God’s existence open. But as he grows older, this very bright and interesting man seems to close the door on God more and more. And it appears this is the destination. Of the so-called war between religion and science, Hawking says, “Science will win because it works.”
I’ve read Hawking for years, having had an interest in physical science in my school years. His story is interesting, and perhaps the most intriguing aspect of his agnosticism (I don’t think he is a pure atheist) is the reason Hawking does NOT give for his unbelief.
Stephen Hawking learned he had a motor neuron disease at the age of 21, just as he was moving from Oxford to Cambridge to study cosmology. The diagnosis was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, known colloquially as Lou Gehrig’s disease). He had two or three years at best they thought. Survival beyond 10 years is uncommon. Today, more than 40 years later, Hawking is still both alive and working, and he has the most protracted case of ALS documented. He is able to communicate only through a voice synthesizer activated by his cheek — virtually all other parts of his body are paralyzed.
I can see how contracting a crippling disease early in life and then struggling with it through four decades could embitter an individual. If at some point Hawking had lashed out, “Look at me, and then tell me there is a God,” I would understand that thought process. As a pastor I have encountered it many times. Remarkably, however, Hawking’s veer away from God took place early on long before ALS. His mother was a member of the Communist Party, and by age 13 his hero was noted atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, and seems not to be affected by his illness at all.
Chemist Henry “Fritz” Schaefer has often given lectures on Hawking and his views on the origin of the universe. He maintains that Hawking is perhaps an agnostic, but not an atheist, believing for himself that Hawking’s problem is a too small god rather than no God at all. But Schaefer is as impressed as the rest of us that the physicist has overcome so much. How many others, stricken in such a way, have shaken an angry fist at God, declaring Him a fraud, or worse yet, a malfeasant. Yet Mr. Hawking seems not to have that attitude at all.
Schaefer says, “The irony of the story is that Hawking’s professional life currently is devoted to telling a story about the cosmos in which all the elements which make his own life so fascinating — love, faith, courage and even creative imagination — disappear from view.” He laments, “Aspiring to know the mind of God, he can imagine nothing more interesting than a set of equations governing the motion of particles. I love these equations too, but they are not the be-all and end-all of life!”
(“Stephen Hawking, the Big Bang, and God,” Henry F. Schaefer III, at http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9501/bigbang2.html) If Schaefer is right, and if to some extent Hawking is looking for God, it makes both his story and his skepticism something of a marvel.
Compare this experience with that of a former believer now turned skeptic, Bart Ehrman. Here is a bit of his story:
For most of my life I was a devout Christian, believing in God, trusting in Christ for salvation, knowing that God was actively involved in this world. During my young adulthood, I was an evangelical, with a firm belief in the Bible as the inspired and inerrant word of God. During those years I had fairly simple but commonly held views about how there can be so much pain and misery in the world. God had given us free will (we weren’t programmed like robots), but since we were free to do good we were also free to do evil — hence the Holocaust, the genocide in Cambodia, and so on.
At some point, though, this question of evil and suffering in the world brought Ehrman to a position of unbelief. He relates that first he left evangelicalism and developed what he terms a more sophisticated theology, and eventually the problem of suffering “…increasingly became a problem for me and my faith. How can one explain all the pain and misery in the world if God — the creator and redeemer of all — is sovereign over it, exercising his will both on the grand scheme and in the daily workings of our lives?”
He read and thought and studied, and at first reconciled himself somewhat by thinking of God suffering alongside us, but that thinking too gave way, so that he rejected the entire Christian message completely. Today, the former Moody Bible Institute student writes New York Times best-seller books questioning and contradicting the basic Christian tenets he had embraced so heartily in his youth and early adulthood.
One man, in the midst of suffering, appears to be looking for God, and another having knowledge of God rejects that knowledge because of suffering. I have brought these two men, Hawking and Ehrman, to the table, not so much to show how you and I can out-argue them. The truth is, few of us will ever have the opportunity to interact with them and people like them, and to be honest, I am certain I could not hold my own in a debate with either. I will leave that to others (and others have successfully held their own with them by the way). No, I have brought them to show you the forms unbelief can take, and why it is important that we take the time to learn the stories of the people we give witness to.
Hope, a word overused these days as it is, is still a good Bible word, and the word Peter uses when he tells us to be ready with an answer for those who ask about our own hope. Did Peter, and for that matter, did Jesus know about earthquakes and tsunamis and starvation and disease? Of course they did, and in certain individual cases, they gave relief to the suffering. But they knew, as other Christians knew, and as we know, God is acting in the world, perhaps not acting as we would like, but acting nevertheless to make things right, with a view toward a day in the new creation when suffering and evil will be completely eradicated. In the meantime, our job is to allow God to use us both to offer relief and hope as we are able, with good reason.
Next month, a biblical response to questions about suffering and evil.