Design – yes; Designer – no: Prof Stephen Hawking takes a swipe at God in Creationism

Professor Stephen Hawking, the wheelchair-bound Cambridge theoretical physicist, placed himself at the centre of a spiritual storm on Thursday by ruling out the role played by God in the creation of universe.

“The Big Bang was the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the universe,” declared the learned professor and popular author through his voice synthesizer to appease a significant audience of physicists and laymen alike, most of them happened to be atheists who embraced the news with euphoric jubilation.

Much to the dismay of Prof Hawking’s fans, however, in a rare gesture of solidarity, the religious leaders representing Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam lost no time in collectively rebuking the professor for crossing the red line and going too far with the aid of his only functioning faculty in his battered physique – the intellect.

In actual fact, Professor Hawking hasn’t gone far enough – in reaching the periphery of the creation, which is the whole issue.

The news coincides with the publication of his new book, The Grand Design. It is reported that Professor Hawking had said in his book: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” If that was not mischievous enough along theological lines, he added this to make it crystal clear where he stood on the issue: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

A ‘Miniature Bang’ erupted throughout the world of scientific media as the controversial views trickled in, creating a mini parallel universe in its own right. And it is expanding too while emaulating its big brother, the existing one.

Prof Hawking may have a problem with accepting the God as its creator, but he can undoubtedly claim to be the ‘god’ of the secondary universe that he created on Thursday. It may not have generated much light, or shed any light on anything that we don’t know at present, but the ferocity of the debate – both for and against – has certainly made enough heat to sustain the whole exercise for a long time – perhaps, at least, until the professor writes another book on the subject.

Professor Hawking knows very well that there are billions of human beings – Christians, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus and Jews – who believe in God and Buddhists who have a problem with God – with the prefix ‘G’- but not with god – with the prefix ‘g’, judging by the existence of places of worship for them in every single Buddhist temple. So, Professor Hawking clearly underestimated the offence he committed worldwide by laying bare the stuff that was close to his chest.

Just to add another statistic to the existing mysteries that triggered off the debate in the first place, Professor Hawking apparently contradicted himself with the latest opinion; in his most famous publication, A Brief History of Time, this is what he said about God in 1988: “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.” In his new book, he even took a philosophical swipe at great Newton for his belief in Trinity.

Professor Hawking does not offer a new theory of his own by excluding the Almighty in the creation of universe. Nor does he encourage his followers to look back at the beginning from another perspective. All he does is cashing in on his near-cult-status in another universe – the universe of academia, not God - as a brilliant mind, in order to stir up a debate – just for the sake of it - while inviting both the wrath and cynisism of the religious establisments in equal measure, because all this came out on the brink of publishing a book.

Professor Hawking is far more luckier than his predecessors who got into trouble by touching on the subject, which up until recently, was taboo . The atmosphere in the western world is fast becoming more and more conducive for people who share the same wavelenght with Prof Hawking to air their views. Nowadays, most people, especially the Chirstians, are too embarassed to admit that they are religious let alone to be Christians, something that was not very fashionable a few decades ago.

In this context, Prof Hawking knows that he would neither be lynch mobbed by the Christians for his views nor be subjected to what Galileo went through after saying that the earth orbits the Sun. On the contrary, he is becoming more and more popular for kicking in a cornerstone of Christianity and firmly on course to the stardom through a passage of reason; some people in the western Europe – the indigenous folks - just can’t stand the church or what it stands for, even if they are branded as committed Pagans.

Stephen Hawking, the Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was holding the very post that Sir Issac Newton held, until his retirement last year. It appears that Prof Hawking agrees with Newton’s ideas – the law of gravity, laws of motion etc, except Newton’s association with God. That is why he almost said in his new book that the universe was created with the laws of gravity – which can be interpreted as the Laws of Newton!

The strangest thing in the whole issue is the reluctance on the part of the intellectuals to take Prof Hawking on – at least in public; they include plenty of Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish physicists. That doesn’t mean every physicist agrees with Prof Hawking. There are even theologian particle physicists who pursue their careers while passionately nurturing their faith.

Some have understandable sympathy towards Prof Hawking due to his severe physical disability; those who don’t agree with them think the handicap provides him with an impervious shield to protect him from smears and counter arguments. Those who don’t agree with either camp, just take the view adopted by Buddhists – not to waste energy and time on a topic that human intellect will never ever fully comprehend, the real Beginning.

Prof Hawking who recently said that aliens exit and we should not come into contact with them, however, made a cardinal mistake in the belief that his opinion would stand the test of time, even if he dismissed those of the others that included the intellectual giants like Newton.

It is equally important to note that Prof Hawking may have stood on the shoulders of giants like Faraday, Newton and Einstein for peeping into the unknown before coming up with a series of hypotheses. The irony is the greatest of the great did not have a problem with their faith when they made wonderful discoveries in the realm of physics. Michael Faraday, the greatest experimental physicist ever, even belonged to a religious sect called the Sandemanians; his faith did not get in the way when he discovered electromagnetism - without any formal education whatsoever while hailing from a very humble background. On the contrary, the faith made him a noble human being who shunned both fame and fortune.

Theories in physics have been evolving exactly like those of the evolution. Newton’s Laws of motion, for instance, stood unchallenged for well over three centuries until Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity in 1905: Einstein said that mass of an object is not constant in contrast to what Newton believed; Einstein proved that it depends on the speed of the object in question at a given moment – and Newton’s theory partially collapsed overnight, as Einstein proved to be correct. Einstein made mistakes too with his ambition in pursuing a unified theory.

So, we can expect Prof Hawking making mistakes too by his selective acceptance of ‘fire’ without the ‘spark’ that caused it.

So, there are millions of folks who question the professor about his conveniently-chosen first point of creation – the Big Bang. They, quite justifiably, ask who created the space where the bang took place in the first place or who brought about the laws of gravity that the professor was referring to, in his new book. In short, they are not prepared to accept Prof Hawking’s point as the real Beginning. So, professor Hawking has to dig much deeper into the universe with his incisive mind and then find out when and where ‘something’ came from ‘nothing’, to satisfy this particular audience by offering them an insight into the real beginning.

Going by the book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, Christians believe that God created the universe. When both atheists and non-Christians throw the sensible question as to who created the God, they just take a leap of faith and accept that He is self-existent without a beginning or end. It may appeal to their hearts but not heads – and the debate comes to an abrupt end. So, the question lingers on to be answered by intellectuals.

If Professor Hawking really wants to solve the mystery, he can draw some inspiration from Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC^2, which says that the mass and energy are interchangeable: mass can be turned into energy - as in nuclear bomb - or vice versa, to grasp the mind-boggling question. Perhaps, our beloved Sathya Sai Baba of Puttapathi may provide him with some hints about turning energy into mass – by materializing some ash in his palm from nothing – when Prof Hawking looks at his computer, of course.

The religious texts, written by chosen scribes with the aid of an invisible presence, are not the stuff for logical analysis using finite human intellect. They were not produced the way Harry Potter was written by J K Rowling.

We all agree that physicists, both theoretical and experimental ones, made the life easier for us by their discoveries and inventions for which we are eternally grateful. However, by straying into the little-known spiritual realm for short incursions they do more harm than good to the field they say they are committed.

When I was writing this relatively long article, I couldn’t stop admiring my underpants for the comfort it provided me with, to keep me still for a few hours. It had a great design and I was instantly attracted to it at my favourite clothes store. It has a designer too – and it was great Calvin Klein.

I am fond of finding a design without a designer in my earthy life so that I can make a constructive contribution to the great debate of creation. Otherwise, I vent my frustration with a very big yawn before seeking solace in my Buddhist upbringing: just don’t waste your energy on something that you will never have a clue about.

- Asian Tribune -