This tiny book is written by none other than John C. Lennox, the author of God's Undertaker (which should be read by anyone interested in apologetics!). Even though this is a short book, it packs a lot of punch.
The contents are as follows:
Ch. 1: The big question Ch. 2: God or the law of nature?
Ch. 3: God or the mulitverse?
Ch. 4: Whose design is it anyway?
Ch. 5: Science and rationality
These chapters are sandwiched by the Introduction and Conclusion.
In the preface, Dr. Lennox says that, "...we have a duty to point out that not all statements by scientists are statements of science, and so do not carry the authority of authentic science even though such authority is often erroneously ascribed to them." In other words, don't take Hawking's words as definitive and factual statements regarding the origin of the universe.
Again, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book, but I'll summarize the main points here to pique your interest:
1. A Brief History of Time, arguably one of the most brilliant books on the topic by Hawking, left the door wide open on the question of a Divine Creator.
2. Hence, his subsequent and final book The Grand Design was expected to articulate an argument about the "mind of God" based on "the Theory of Everything." However, Hawking reversed the course and concluded that "because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing." Put it another way, there is no grand designer.
3. Hawking states that "philosophy is dead," and that "scientists have become the bearer of the torch of discovery." That's an audacious statement with a philosophical underlining, according to Lennox. So much for the death of philosophy....
4. The fact is, science has limits as well as moral foundations, according to humble yet illustrious scientists such as Sir Peter Medawar, Albert Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
5. Hawking says the universe "comes from a nothing that turns out to be something" (confused yet?). So, it's not "nothing," but "something," and that something is the laws of physics. And, laws such as gravity allows the universe to create itself. This is an old argument which an Oxford scholar Keith Ward coined as "the cosmic bootstrap."
6. Lennox rebuts, "The law of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but not how it came to exist in the first place." He adds, "The law is descriptive and predictive, but it is not creative."
7. Here is another powerful and often referenced quote: "I find it quite impossible that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence--why there is something rather than nothing." (Allan Sandage, widely regarded as the father of modern astronomy, discoverer of quasars, and winner of the Crafoord Prize, astronomy's equivalent of the Nobel Prize)
8. Sir Roger Penrose, Hawking's former collaborator, said the following concerning the multiverse theory: "It's an excuse for not having a good theory."
9. Now the M-theory, a.k.a., the multiverse theory... Hawking says that "The laws of M-theory allow for different universes with different apparent laws," but that is debunked and questioned by the following individuals and their statements:
"M-theory invokes something different: a prime mover, a begetter, a creative force that is everywhere and nowhere. This force cannot be identified by instruments or examined by comprehensible mathematical prediction, and yet it contains all possibilities. It incorporates omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence, and it's a big mystery. Remind you of Anybody?" (Tim Radford, journalist)
"M-theory is not even a proper scientific theory if it is untestable experimentally" (theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili)
"The general multiverse explanation is simply naive deism dressed up in scientific language. Both appear to be an infinite unknown, invisible and unknowable system. Both require an infinite amount of information to be discarded just to explain the (finite) universe we observe." (Paul Davis, physicist at ASU)
Lennox doesn't hold back as he continues to marshal his criticism against Hawking's M-theory. Funny, my many viewings of Lennox's debates made me think of him as rather circumlocutious, but he's nothing like that in this pocket-sized book.
What I appreciate about this book is Lennox's precision and candor in debunking Hawking's M-theory. Lennox is absolutely correct to remind all of us to think for ourselves, not just to buy into an intellectual giant's proposals rooted in his own worldview.
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