Stephen Hawking doesn't prove what he thinks he does

I just came across an article by Jay W. Richards, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. He is the author of Money, Greed and God as well as editor of the bookGod and Evolution. In his article "Did Physics Kill God?" Richards takes on Stephen Hawking.

Hawking, who holds the chair of mathematics at Cambridge University, announced in his new book The Grand Design that our understanding of physics shows that God did not create the universe. Hawking says because of gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Of course, leading atheists like Richard Dawkins were delighted: "Darwin kicked God out of biology, but physics remained more uncertain. Hawking is now administering the coup de grace."

But Richard says Hawking's arguments are neither new nor compelling. He notes that Hawking is confusing physical laws with causal agents. He has focused on a physical law rather than deal with agents who can use those physical laws to create something that wasn't there before. He believes this is much like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the origin of the jet engine. Of course, we understand the laws of physics are there, but a person was needed to use those laws in such a way to create the jet engine. Similarly, someone would have to use the law of gravity to produce the universe.

Richards then says Hawking has made a major mistake by claiming the universe created itself from nothing. Actually gravity is something, not nothing. Hawking has clearly not explained why there is something rather than nothing. He has only asserted that something comes from something. No big insight there.

Toward the end of the article, Richards explores how over the last 100 years physics has been making trouble for materialism. In the 19th century, most scientists believed the universe was eternal, so there was no need to worry about a cause or beginning for it. But we now know the universe had a beginning in the finite past, thanks to astronomy and physics. Many scientists hated this idea of a cosmic beginning because they knew that anything that begins to exist must have a separate cause for its existence.

Added to this is the evidence for fine tuning in the universe. We have discovered that the universe has basic laws, constants, and initial conditions which have been precisely calibrated for the existence of complex life. Even someone like Fred Hoyle, a committed atheist, admitted the universe looked like a place where some sort of super intellect had monkeyed with physics.

Richards ends his piece by admitting the issues involved are exquisitely complicated. He cheerfully recognizes that reasonable people can disagree about what these issues mean. But his point is that the case is far from settled. Stephen Hawking's release of his new book is a great time to remind ourselves of the value of critical thinking. Whenever we hear a challenge to our Christian beliefs by a noted scholar, we shouldn't be swayed by the person's credentials. We simply have to ask ourselves what is being said and what proof is offered. In Hawking' case, he has claimed something which he hasn't proved. As Greg Koukl says, smart people can make stupid comments, especially in areas like metaphysics and religion. We don't need to panic at wild claims. Sit back and ask questions to see where the truth really lies. It's back to the drawing board for evolutionists seeking to displace God from His creation.

A book you should know about--Part 1

I recently read a powerful book that argues for the existence of a creator based on the tiny world of the cell. Years ago, scientists thought of the cell as a primitive and simple thing--a glob of protoplasm. But discoveries have since changed this view. To help explain these amazing findings, Dr. Stephen Meyer, a former geophysicist and college professor who leads the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, wrote Signature in the Cell. The book looks intimidating since it has over 500 pages of information, but it is an important book that many should read. Meyer focuses on the importance of the discovery in 1953 of the information-bearing capacities of the DNA molecule, what he calls the "signature in the cell." For the next several blogs, I'd like to walk you through the book.

His opening chapters define the scientific and philosophical issues at stake in the DNA enigma. Darwin had argued that the striking appearance of design in living organisms could be explained by natural selection working on random variations. But, thanks to Watson and Crick, scientists discovered the structure of DNA. They found that DNA stores information using a four-character chemical alphabet. This information is used to build crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive. This chemical alphabet functions like letters and a written language or symbols and a computer code. In fact, Bill Gates said, "DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created." Of course, the key question is how the information in DNA arose. You have to have information before you can build the first living organism. In the mid-1980s a controversial book came out called The Mystery of Life’s Origin by Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen. These three scientists came to the conclusion that no theory had explained the origin of the first life. They suggested that the information in DNA might have originated from an intelligent source.

Next, Meyer describes the mystery surrounding DNA in more detail. He tells in depth the story of Watson and Crick as they set about to understand the structure of DNA. By the mid-1950s scientists soon realized that DNA could store an immense amount of information. Meyer ties this in with information about proteins -- they build cellular machines and structures, they carry and deliver cellular materials, they allow chemical reactions necessary for the cell’s survival. To do all this, a typical cell uses thousands of different kinds of proteins, and each one has a distinctive shape related to its function. These proteins are made of smaller molecules called amino acids. The structure of proteins depends upon the specific arrangement of its amino acids, but the question was what determined the arrangement of the amino acids. It was Francis Crick who suggested it was the precise arrangement of the four-character chemical alphabet found in DNA that determined the arrangement of amino acids. Scientists soon found there were mechanisms in the cell to transcribe, transport, and translate the information in DNA so that amino-acid chains could be constructed at certain sites. Like a production facility at Ford, the cell uses digitally encoded information to direct the manufacture of the parts of its machines. You can see animation of this process at signatureinthecell.com or in the DVD called Unlocking the Mystery of Life. Here's another mystery -- it takes DNA to make proteins, but it also requires proteins to make DNA; so how did the whole thing get started? Which came first, the chicken (nucleic acids) or the egg (proteins)? The author says scientists must now explain the origin of three key features of life -- DNA's capacity to store digitally encoded information, the complexity of the information in DNA, and the cell's ability to process the information.