Hawking’s creation theory stirs up fresh debate

by Pat Ashworth and Ed Thornton
Church Times
posted Sept. 9, 2010

BELIEF in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the uni­verse, the Archbishop of Canterbury said last week. He was responding to Professor Stephen Hawking’s assertion, in his new book, that there is no place for God in theories of the creation of the universe.

The Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, Professor Hawking argues in The Grand Design, co-written with the American physicist Leonard Mlodinow. The book suggests that M-theory, a type of string theory, could be the “holy grail” that would explain everything in the universe.

Professor Hawking contends: “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 touchpaper and set the universe going.”

Dr Williams told The Times that belief in God: “is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity every­thing depends for its existence. Physics on its own will not settle the question why there is something rather than nothing.” the rest