Stephen Hawking vs C.S. Lewis

The amazing physicist Stephen Hawking seemed to ride the fence for a while on the topic of God. At times he seemed to almost concede that a universe that had a beginning, as Big Bang cosmology suggests, almost requires a God in order to set the whole thing in motion. The laws of physics were not adequate to start the ball rolling.

Lately, however, he is coming across as a staunch atheist, demanding that the universe created itself: “Because there is a law like 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. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

One would think that a man as seemingly brilliant as Hawking would realize that a law like gravity cannot create anything. A natural law is a statement about the way things are. A law cannot create.

Enter C.S. Lewis. Long before we had the knowledge of the cosmos that we have today, Lewis said this:

“The laws of physics, I understand, decree that when one billiards ball (A) sets another billiards ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A exactly equals the momentum gained by B. This is a Law. That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiards balls must conform. Provided, of course that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that. But a man with a cue would send us back to free-will, so let us assume that it was lying on a table in a liner and that what set it in motion was a lurch of the ship. In that case it was not the law which produced the movement; it was a wave. And that wave, though it certainly moved according to the laws of physics, was not moved by them. It was shoved by other waves, and by winds, and so forth. And however far you traced the story back you would never find the laws of Nature causing anything.”

Laws cannot cause anything. Laws could not have possibly created the universe. The second law of thermodynamics forbids that reactions can create organization and life and exceedingly complex DNA, and in fact demands that such reactions must go from more to less orderly. Without an Outside Force acting on this closed system of ours that we call a universe, there could be no organization of life or elements or stars or anything, according to the very laws of science that Hawking supposedly uses in his everyday research.

“The fool says in his heart there is no God” (Psalm 14:1).