According to Genesis, which is His revealed word, God created heaven and earth. For people of faith, that is all we need to know. But, for others, they would like to know more about it, and so, they will take seriously and ponder long and hard over the writings of people like Stephen Hawkings.
Stephen Hawkings is a renowned physicist, who explains in his book how the cosmos came about. He doesn’t speak for himself alone but for the whole fraternity of scientists, who agree with his assumptions, theses and conclusions. What he says cannot be refuted by persons who have not his high credibility in the world of science.
I read the “Brief History of Time” three times, to make sure that I had a good understanding of the substance of it and, to see whether there was anything in it that conflicts with the revealed word. I found that it did not and, I found that Mr. Hawkings, to his credit, was able to make scientific concepts comprehensible to an outsider.
What Mr. Hawkings said is that the cosmos began with a particle of matter, infinitely small and infinitely dense, which grew, expanded and finally exploded, scattering the material of the cosmos in space, to form galaxies and solar systems, including our own solar system, of which earth is a planet, billions of years ago. Mr. Hawkings says nothing about the heavens but, this is understandable because, it is clear that his interest is only in material things.
I think that when Hawkings wrote the “Brief History of Time, many years ago, he was not sure whether or not there was a Supreme Being. He must have been pondering deeply the question: where did that wonderful particle come from? And then, he could not find the answer.
Now, he has, according to an article in the Sunday, September 5th issue of Amandala. He states it as a fact that the particle just came into existence, which is in keeping with the discoveries of a branch of science called quantum physics. Mr. Hawkings is a scientist, so you can understand why he would have absolute faith in science. People of faith don’t. I don’t, not only because I am a person of faith but, because I am a believer in logic and reason. Logic and reason tell me that it is not possible for something to come out of nothing, without an intervention.
Mr. Hawkings has written another book explaining how that “miraculous” particle came into being, in the ordinary course of things. He says that the particle is material and, material things will come into being, without any intervention, over the passage of time. He came to this conclusion based on the findings of a branch of science called quantum physics. Their proponents postulate that if it were possible to extract everything out of a bottle and it was sealed, put in a vault and left there for ten billion years, or so, it is highly probable that on opening the bottle, it would be found to contain something which was not there before. His belief that there is no need for a God to create that wondrous particle is further strengthened by the fact that it was recently discovered that a star was orbiting another star, which is a very strange phenomenon indeed. I don’t see how that strengthens his conviction. I believe there are stranger things yet to be discovered in the universe, which will have no effect on the beliefs of people of faith.
Let me conclude by saying that the sciences deal with material things, which we can perceive with the senses. We live in a material world and, we have to be thankful to the scientific community for their contribution to the discovery, invention and production of a host of commodities and devices which improve our condition of life. There is another science which deals with the things of the spirit. It is called metaphysics and, it might very well be that the science of material things and the science which deals with the spirit are like “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.”
One final word. I think that people who try to use science to venture into the sphere of the metaphysical will end up like the Biblical adventurers who tried to build a tower up to heaven. As I recall, they ended up losing the power to communicate.