I recently finished Stephen Hawking’s book, The Grand Design. With one of the most intelligent scientific minds of our generation, Hawking has the ability to make modern physics almost reachable to those of us who find it interesting but well beyond our intellectual abilities. In his last popular book, A Brief History of Time, he discussed the role that God may or may not have had in the creation of the universe, but in The Grand Design he makes the more definitive statement, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.” In interviews about the subject, Hawking clarified his point, "One can't prove that God doesn't exist," he stated, "But science makes God unnecessary…The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a creator." I greatly respect Dr. Hawking and am grateful for the extraordinary work he has done, as well as the opportunity I’ve had to expand my mind reading his words. In addition, I appreciate that he speaks candidly about God and that he—like most great scientists—isn’t afraid to discuss the places where religion and science meet. However, I disagree with him in this matter. Like Hawking, I’m not going to try to prove or disprove the existence of God, but I’d like to try to demonstrate why He is necessary.
The ultimate object of science is basically to tell the future. We develop theories that can help us accurately predict future events. For example, thanks to Isaac Newton, we can be relatively confident about the future position of any object if we know the forces acting on it. Physics, as I see it and as I think Dr. Hawking is stating it, is basically an effort to predict the future behavior of objects under any condition. He discusses how classical physics (basically Newton’s three laws) helps us understand large objects, and how quantum mechanics has become the dominant theory to understand smaller particles. He goes on to discuss how different theories help us understand or predict events in different circumstances, and the ultimate goal of modern physics is to try to unify these theories so that we can understand and accurately predict events under any circumstances. He then discusses biology and proposes that even human choices and desires could possibly be accurately understood and predicted with a more precise understanding of science. I would add that social science is simply in the infancy of that process. We use tools like history, psychology, economics, and political science to try to understand and accurately predict future human decisions on a mass or individual level. Dr. Hawking, in the course of discussing the history of science, makes the point that when our limited scientific knowledge made it impossible to predict events, we resorted to invoking religion. When we didn’t understand why the sun rose each day or people went crazy, we assumed it was the work of gods. The way I read the book, I believe Dr. Hawking is saying that with a perfect understanding of science we will no longer have a need for God, since we will be able to explain all things. Hence, “science makes God unnecessary.” Before I say why I think he’s wrong, let me explain some of his arguments that I found interesting.
A scripture in the Book of Mormon that I’ve always found compelling states, “all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.” This basically sums up my feelings when looking at the complexity of life and our universe. When I see the delicate and intricate balances from the cosmos to our ecosystem to our own bodies that allow life to exist, I think, “How could this not be designed?” Dr. Hawking makes the point that a very simple set of physical laws can lead to extreme complexity, such as human life. He does so by discussing Conway’s Game of Life. This is basically a simple simulation with a large two dimensional grid where random boxes are selected as ‘alive.’ Other boxes then come to life or die based on simple rules about how many living ‘cells’ surround them. If you’re not familiar, this video is worth a thousand words. In the simulation, the simple set of laws with a random initial condition can lead to extreme complexities that can mimic actual life. Extremely large shapes develop with distinct characteristics that interact with each other, some of which can even ‘reproduce’ by creating an identical complex shape with several million cells. Hawking makes the point that if we ‘lived’ in that game, we might try to understand our world based on the interactions of many complex shapes living and dying around us. However, if we just understood the extremely simple rules that governed that entire ‘universe’ everything would be much clearer. As compelling as this is (and it really is fascinating – just Google Conway’s Game of Life and read some of the research and watch a few videos), it ignores the fact that the game still must be created and set in motion. I believe that science can and someday will help us understand many, many things that we now must rely on faith to understand – and I personally believe that God works miracles without violating the laws of nature that we are striving to learn – but that in no way undermines my awe that the complexity of our world, even governed by simple laws, interacts to give me the personal experience of my life.
Following up on the idea that even a universe perfectly and solely governed by simple laws must be set in motion by a creator, Dr. Hawking resorts to math and physics beyond the ability of most of us to understand. After some talk of gravity interacting with quantum theory, M-theory, and negative energy, he basically says that modern scientific theory states that something coming from nothing is not only possible, but inevitable – at least that’s what I got out of it. From this came his widely controversial comment, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.” I’m not going to argue with the math or physics here, I’m not even going to talk about how much we don’t know in this area and how much could be wrong. In fact, I think he may be right that the laws of our universe are such that something can come from nothing and it all could have originated from a Big Bang that was an inevitable byproduct of these laws. I am however, still going to argue with the conclusion that God is unnecessary.
I’m going to start with a claim I’ve often heard before and never liked: that we need God even if He doesn’t exist. Before I continue let me state that God does exist (please see my last post about the necessity of stating that clearly), but even if He didn’t, our search for Him would be far more important than the undertaking of science alone. This seems like the claim of an aimless philosopher unconcerned with truth and averse to true science, but let me try to explain otherwise. Even if science could one day give us all the answers, what are we to do until then? While we wait for the human mind to perfectly understand the natural laws that govern our world, we must humbly accept the extent of our current ignorance and choose how to act in that ignorance. Quantum theory, our most important modern tool for understanding the natural world, is based on the uncertainty principle which basically tells us that we can’t know everything about anything; a fascinating truth that I believe God has designed into our universe to help us understand the ultimate importance of humility. So while the limitations of science render us unable to know the future, we must act in faith without that knowledge. God is necessary because, though one day we might (but probably won’t) know all, today we don’t. We must act in faith, based on what we believe to be right since we don’t yet know all. So God is necessary because God is truth and the only source of it we currently have. We can’t trust fully in the capacity of our fallible rational minds and ignore the spiritual foundation within each of us that helps us to know right from wrong. We must seek for truth (which is God) that transcends human knowledge; otherwise our faith is only in our own ignorance. That search for truth has led me to the conclusion that God does exist. I have come to this knowledge independent of, but through a process as valid and important as scientific inquiry. The Book of Mormon simply and profoundly states that we can, “know the truth of all things” if we simply study, ponder, and ask in faith for that knowledge. I have done so and learned that God is not merely a nebulous truth, but is literally our Father and Creator.
