Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have just published a book, The Grand Design, which they summarize here, and in which they argue against the existence of God:
The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned. What can we make of these coincidences? Luck in the precise form and nature of fundamental physical law is a different kind of luck from the luck we find in environmental factors. It raises the natural question of why it is that way.
Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God. The idea that the universe was designed to accommodate mankind appears in theologies and mythologies dating from thousands of years ago. In Western culture the Old Testament contains the idea of providential design, but the traditional Christian viewpoint was also greatly influenced by Aristotle, who believed “in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design.”
That is not the answer of modern science. As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing. 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 touch paper and set the universe going.
There’s much that could be said about this argument. I’ll confine myself to a few quick observations.
First, Hawking and Mlodinow reason,
The laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.
[Therefore?] Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
That plainly does not follow. The laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes in which I win the lottery. It doesn’t follow that I won or will win the lottery. More precisely, there are models of the laws of gravitational and quantum theory in which a universe appears spontaneously. But that is just to say that, according to current theories, it is physically possible for a universe to appear spontaneously. It doesn’t mean that a universe, or particularly this universe, has actually done so. The fallacy here is essentially the move from possibly to actually.
Second, Hawking and Mlodinow reason,
It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.
[Therefore (?), God did not create the universe.]
This commits the same fallacy. It’s physically possible that God did not create the universe; therefore God did not create the universe. That doesn’t follow at all.
Hawking and Mlodinow evidently think of religious faith as resting on the strong anthropic argument, which in turn is an updating of the cosmological argument, arguing to God as prime mover (Aristotle), first cause (Aquinas), necessary cause (Avicenna), or ultimate explanation (Leibniz) of the universe. They think that if they’ve defeated the cosmological argument, they’ve shown God’s nonexistence. But knocking down one argument for a conclusion doesn’t knock down that conclusion. And Protestants have all along tended to think that there are not arguments that force the conclusion that God exists. Yes, it’s possible that there is no God, most Protestants have said, but we affirm faith that God is real. Nothing Hawking and Mlodinow say challenge that.
Someone might object that, on traditional views, God’s existence is necessary if God exists at all. So, showing that it is possible that God doesn’t exist would amount to showing that God’s existence isn’t necessary, which would then imply that God doesn’t exist. But the necessity of God’s existence, on that view, is metaphysical; it doesn’t come from physical law. That God’s existence isn’t physically necessary proves nothing.
Leibniz’s version of the cosmological argument, incidentally, seems to survive Hawking and Mlodinow’s assault. Leibniz argues on the basis of the principle of sufficient reason that every fact has an explanation; there is always a reason why things are so and not otherwise. We can ask, about the entire chain of events we call the universe or the multiverse, why it exists in the way that it does. Perhaps we find it explicable in terms of natural law or M-theory, as Hawking and Mlodinow say. But then we can ask why the physical laws or the laws of M-theory are what they are. There are models of those laws in which the universe generates spontaneously. Fine. What explains the laws themselves? What explains M-theory? Ultimately, Leibniz maintains, we are driven to postulate an ultimate explanation, something for which there is no other explanation, but also something that, unlike physical law, explains itself. Only one thing is self-sufficient in that sense: God. Leibniz would not be phased at all by Hawking and Mlodinow’s discovery.
UPDATE: Other reactions:
Stephen Hawking still can’t explain how something came from nothing
Science, philosophy and humility – Hawking rejects all three
Chief rabbi challenges Stephen Hawking in row over origins of universe
Hawking’s “Grand Design:” Designer not required
Review of Hawking and Mlodinow
