Physics, Earth & Space Icon Physics, Earth & Space

Did Physics Kill God?

CSC research director Jay Richards takes aim at the latest pronouncement from Stephen Hawking today at The American:

Stephen Hawking declared that our understanding of physics proves God did not create the universe. Is he right?
Stephen Hawking holds the chair of mathematics at Cambridge University once held by Sir Isaac Newton. So when he declared that our understanding of physics shows that God did not create the universe, it was bound to get attention. Summarizing the thesis of his new book, The Grand Design (co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow), Hawking announced: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”
Reports of Hawking’s claims soon spread around the world. It was warmly received by leading atheists such as Richard Dawkins: “Darwin kicked [God] out of biology,” said Dawkins, “but physics remained more uncertain. Hawking is now administering the coup de grace.”
Atheist cosmologist Lawrence Krauss offered corroborating testimony in the Wall Street Journal, saying that if the “positive” and “negative” energy are equivalent in our universe, then our world could have emerged from nothing.
Though Hawking’s announcement is being widely treated as a scientific discovery, his arguments are neither new nor compelling.

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