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There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe, the physicist and mathematician Professor Stephen Hawking has said: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

One suspects that with a new book to push, being controversial is a way of attracting attention so: “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.” All quite amusing and regardless of which side of the “God Debate” you are on.

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Although I approach these things from the perspective of being a Christian, I long ago gave up on debating with Atheists whether or not there was a God and indeed, grew to have more respect for Agnostics whose stance in purely human terms is far more logical than that of Atheists. I have often mused upon what a “Militant Agnostic” might be like compared to the all too familiar “Militant Atheists” who truly are equivalent to the most ardent Jesuits and equally intolerant to boot.

We Part Company

The universe as we currently understand it is immense and way beyond our comprehension in the same way that £ Billion or Trillion is in monetary terms. Hawking albeit from a different perspective to me, gave in a TV interview earlier this year the following answer to a question :

“The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions.”

It is natural for Theists to seize upon: “God made us in his likeness” and therefore portray God in purely human terms and interpret the resulting imagery against their current social background as in: White, Male, Flowing grey beard etc. When I was a child, pictures were used to portray religious concepts in ‘understandable terms’ but the reality of God is truly unimaginable as is the scope of the universe itself.

Hawking renaming science as ‘God’ is patronizing and in reality, he is fooling himself because allowing ones self to become fixated on any one concept, leaves you blinded to other possibilities and potentials. I do not ‘attack’ Hawking for not believing in God, that is his personal choice but I do because as with many, he just doesn’t seem to understand the question and therefore any answer he offers is wrong by definition. It is a bit like asking someone the time of day and them replying: “Number 49 bus.”

The World is…

If I were not a Christian, I would be an agnostic, I would never be an atheist for the simple reason that they are totally bonkers.

What is the point of protesting about God if for you, God doesn’t exist ? If he doesn’t exist then surely there is nothing to protest about and if you believe in personal freedom of expression and association, then however deluded in you opinion ‘believers’ are, surely it must be their choice ? It often strikes me that the desire of some militant atheists is in fact to set up their own religious sect and show the the Spanish Inquisition a thing or two in converting people to the “true belief” !

I once had a very uptight female atheist dismiss my Christianity as “Believing in your invisible friends” by which she might have been referring to a large white Rabbit called Harvey. I confess that I felt sorry for her, not because she didn’t believe in God but simply because she was rather too obviously sad and lonely.

But the real problem with atheists and Hawking and Dawkins are prime examples, is that their basic position is untenable in that they attempt to prove their case by reason alone and that will never work. Even in Ancient Greece “…speak not of reason but of interest…” which whilst a ‘political’ insight also illustrates the complexity of human society.

Reason is binary by nature, if you prefer, “digital”, a thing ‘IS’ or ‘IS NOT’, on or off, positive or negative which is fine except that the World in analogue by nature, it is ‘MORE LIKE and LESS LIKE’ and consequently provides few black and white solutions. The world is not fixed, it is in flux and constantly changing so what may be true today, may no longer be tomorrow.

Faith

The real debate concerning whether there is or is not a God cannot be settled by absolute physical proof because any answer must encompass both the word and concept of “Faith” which can be described as believing in something that cannot be seen or even proven to exist in the physical world.

Does that make religious belief totally untenable ? The answer is no because even taking religion to one side, the whole world runs on faith and all our most crucial transactions are based upon it. The classic must be human love – Have you ever been in love ? If so, what are you believing in because it is not tangible either, how do you know that you are loved in return ? You cannot ‘see’ love, yes you can touch, feel, make love to another person but can you see love and prove that it exists because it is abstract.

Conclusion

There is not and until ‘Judgement Day’, there never will be an absolute way of determining in physical terms whether God exists or not and all assertions either way are just a matter of personal opinion. You may as I do, believe in God and could say that in my life, there have been occasions where I ‘felt His presence’. To believe in God is fine, to say you just don’t know is fine, to say that you are an atheist is merely to be deluded and to desire “God Like” qualities in your own life where you and your assumed intellect shine brightly for all to see, it is just personal vanity.