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In the Beginning...
- science and how
... Stephen Hawking has written a book called A Brief History of Time1
in which he sets out the latest understanding
of the way the universe has developed and works.
He traces the history of the universe
back to the beginning of time2
In Chapter 8, he speculates about a universe with
no beginning or end and says "What place, then, for a creator?".
But confusingly, Stephen Hawking finishes his book with his famous statement
"If we find the answer to that...
[why it is that we and the universe exist] ...
then we would know the mind of God"3.
These various statements have been taken to imply either that Stephen Hawking thinks
that there is no God, or alternatively that we can find God through science.
Both are misleading interpretations.
Stephen Hawking usually avoids being labelled as atheist, agnostic or deist.
But in his scientific writings, he usually seems to use the term "God" as
a metaphor for the set of rules which governs how the universe works.
Only in the last quotation above (see full text3) does he venture into the "question of why".
And there he suggests that is a discussion to pursue after we have the "Complete Theory of Everything".
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In the Beginning...
- faith and why
On the other hand, we could turn to the Book of Genesis in the Bible
(which literally means the origin of things)
and there read an account of the creation of the world4.
In this passage, the Bible gives us a sequence of events,
but only as a background to its teaching about the why of creation
- the relationship which God desires with his creation and above all with man.
Those down the ages who have tried to treat
the Bible as a scientific text-book have been mistaken.
The Bible is truer to science than some sceptics care to believe.
But attempts to calculate the true value of Pi from broad descriptions
of the design and dimensions of the temple vessels are totally pointless.
More seriously, Giodarno Bruno and Galileo were condemned as
heliocentric "heretics" by people who were mis-using the Bible
to defend their own power rather than to defend true faith.
Those who have fallen into that trap
have done more damage to the cause of religious faith than
to the science which they have sought to attack.
It has been their attitude to science, not science itself,
which has sadly misled the ordinary person into thinking
that science and faith are contradictory.
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