Albert Mohler: What Breathes Fire into the Equations? Professor Stephen Hawking at 70

Monday, January 9, 2012

Excerpt:
In her new biography of Hawking, Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind, Kitty Ferguson traces Hawking’s intellectual directions, while making clear that Hawking clearly denies the reality of a personal God. Unlike Richard Dawkins, another famous scientist, Hawking does not prefer to refer to himself as an atheist, preferring to refer to God as “the embodiment of the laws of physics.”

In his words: “We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average star on the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. So it is difficult to believe in a God that would care about us or even notice our existence.”

That makes perfect sense, if one operates intellectually within the closed box of nature. Given the expanse of the cosmos, it would certainly seem that we are, indeed, radically insignificant. Indeed, Hawking’s point underlines the sheer audacity of the Christian truth claim — the claim that the entire cosmos was created as the theater of God’s glory for the purpose of displaying his glory through the redemption of sinful human beings through the atonement accomplished by his Son.

As a matter of fact, Hawking’s argument makes one truth very clear. This cosmos is either entirely purposeful, as is held by Christians, or it is entirely purposeless. There is no viable option of some limited purpose. Quite clearly, it is all or nothing. the rest image