A couple of weeks back I posted a weblog about creation that engendered some debate. One of the comments from a reader was about Hawking’s view of the creator. Stephen Hawking holds Newton’s chair as professor of mathematics at Cambridge, and his twenty year old A Brief History of Time is still one of the most readable books on an admittedly difficult subject: the beginning of our universe. I must thank my brother Wyn, who gave me this book on my fortieth birthday, for a gift that continues all these years later to confirm my faith in an omnipotent God.
My reader questioned my assertion that even Hawking, as brilliant as he might be, can not find a logical explanation for the creation of the universe that does not encounter God at some point, although he and others have been attempting to do so for centuries. I hated to bury the writings of such a genius in a response comment, so here are Hawking’s own words; he writes “Why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion that separates models that recollapse (hence, no creation) from those that go on expanding forever (hence, so widely dispersed that particles can’t coalesce to form matter), so that even now, ten thousand million years later, it is still expanding at nearly the critical rate? If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hudred thousand million million (100,000,000,000,000,000), the universe would have recollapsed.” (p.122)
Hawking continues “The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but they reflect a certain underlying order. The laws of science contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electron charge and the ratio of mass between the proton and the electron. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life. For example, if the electron charge of the electron had only been slightly different, stars would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would have exploded. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as an act of a God who intended to create beings like us.” (p.127)
Lesser minds than Hawking’s dismiss God as if by not thinking about creation they can avoid the thought that there is a Creator. Hawking admits that he is uncomfortable with the concept of a loving creator. If I had half as brilliant a mind and I was trapped in his body, I would have doubts myself; that is only natural. But to dismiss the overwhelming scientific evidence for a Creator is neither natural nor smart. If you are reading this and you do not believe that God created the universe, and all life within it, then what do you do with the fact that the brightest mind on earth cannot avoid that conclusion?
Home Thoughts From Abroad 
December 15, 2008 at 6:31 pm
I think hardcore atheists are rare. Few people dismiss the possibility of a higher-being with absolute conviction and certainty. The question is where do we go from there? Ok, there is a God. Then what? What’s next? It’s not a question that all of us necessarily ask ourselves. Sometimes it seems easier perhaps to avoid asking that singular most important question, for the very reason that it is the singular most important question. With acknowledgment comes responsibility and sacrifice, and even if we don’t undertake those responsibilities and make those sacrifices, we are still burdened with guilt, fear and discomfort. Yes, our world has many distractions and the 21st century consumer culture, that promotes a lifestyle that revolves around — makes the main purpose in life, to existence — entertainment, provides the perfect refuge from that question. Yet, when the sun has gone to hell, and the moon is riding high, deep into the darkness of night, when all the sources of entertainment has been exhausted, when we lie all alone with that gnawing feeling of emptiness, with the sound of silence being interrupted by nothing but the shallow noise of our breath, the steady thump of our heartbeat, our poof of that certain inevitability, the knowledge that this is momentary, that life is only as long as it is, and there is something else that awaits us at the bend, that question comes back to haunt us. But, in the nature of things, night passes, and the sun rises again, and we get caught up in our day to day lives, lost in a world that sometimes seems to have been designed to make us forget.
And all that is just a part of the story. Faith by itself poses a certain danger; a danger that we will be so engulfed in the self-serving assuredness that promises us salvation and give us meaning and purpose, we will relinquish that very thing that improves us as human beings; the ability to question our logic, our rationale, our beliefs and convictions; introspection.
Myself, the grandson of two devout Christian missionaries, son of a converted Muslim mother, raised by two, not perfect, but devoutly Muslim parents, growing up with a certainty in my belief that was too often contradicting with my own life, am now, at this point in life, finding myself at a crossroad.
A relationship with God –spirituality — or whatever name we may choose to call it, is a tricky business. First of all it is not the easiest thing to achieve in the world and even harder to sustain and once lost the validity of such experiences becomes uncertain. Our faulty memories recollects, at best, a blurry distorted picture that is all too willing to portray our inner most thoughts, bending to the will of our sub-conscious mind, in a manner that, even with deep introspection, remains a matter of doubt and confusion. Either way, one feels guilty of being self-indulgent.
I do not claim to know the truth with absolute certainty, nor am I willing to disbelief with absolute certainty, to let go of that little gleam of hope,of light, that preserves my sanity. I guess, I have a journey ahead of me. I ask where do we, I, go from here? The very root, I guess, is the best place to start. Yet, I find myself doubting whether one can truly do that so late in life; whether it is possible to reconstruct our paradigm and get rid of all the filters that processes our senses, making us biased and prejudiced. At the same time I look around, trying to find simpler answers; answers that can be learned without that backbreaking, soul toiling intellectual journey. I find myself afraid whether I am capable of making such a journey. After all my own story serves to remind me all too well how vulnerable and weak I am. Most of all, I think whether in the end our stories are worth anything. Will the sins of my fathers forever taint me? Will the journey of my mother ultimately mean something to those who mean and matter the most to her? Some call this a crisis of faith. I think that is an inaccurate label for something so deeply personal and cosmicly complex. I call it the search for clarity. One’s attempt to understand one’s own self. Know thyself. How can one hope to know God if one does not know one’s self? It’s not a crisis of faith, at least not in terms of faith in God, but more accurately, faith in ourselves.
Aaah. I was itching to write these for a long while now. I have tried a few times to put my thoughts into words but failed miserably. My fingers frozen over the keyboard, I despaired at the very thought. When I started to comment on this blog, i really had nothing much to say, definitely no specific intention to write about what I did. However, once I started writing the words seemed to flow out of me effortlessly. Infact, they forced themselves out of me. However, crude and ill written this maybe, there are here, fragments of my raw thoughts. I am wondering who did I write this for? Initially, I was merely commenting on your blog, but as I write this, I realize, I have written this for myself. I am the intended audience of the author.
December 16, 2008 at 1:12 am
Ibraheem I welcome your thoughts on this issue. It has been a joy to have you as a student and I have appreciated your insight and your honesty on many issues. If I have learned anything about God it is that He looks with favour on those who honestly seek to know Him. For reasons that only He understands, He considers our character more important than anything we do, and our faith the most important part of our character. If that takes some time and a willingness to dig deeply into what we think about Him and ourselves, He is willing to wait.
December 28, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Certainty is out of fashion in the West, not least because too many people in the West are certain about too many things, when they are infact, blatantly wrong. This deep suspicion of certainty is especially true for all matters of religion. However, there is an unquestioing belief in modern science which is at it’s best ambiguos and at most times incomprehensble to the layman. This science iself is based on blind faith, firstly in the human senses to be able to comprehend objectively what is “out there” and secondly in the capability of our mental processes to interpret these. The capability of these two things is considered to be self-evident. Likewise, a believer can say with certainty that he is a believer because to him the truth is self-evident. To slightly paraphrase what one of the famous Christian mystics said: the truth is native to us.
June 16, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Ibraheem,
You may be surprised to receive such a belated response to your 2008 comment on Steve and Pam Wise’s blog (I ask them to please pass this on to you). But your search—for clarity, for self-knowledge, for God—rings so true to me that I wanted to write to you.
You speak of a journey, and yet you expect to begin at the end of it. You want to know the great truths about life and existence, but you want to know them from where you are now and with the certainty you experience in rational knowledge. You want to know God in the same way that you know that day follows night, or that water runs downhill. But this kind of knowledge is simply impossible at the beginning of the journey, because it requires a special kind and degree of experience that is only acquired through the journey.
And so you find yourself caught in a logical conundrum: in order to gain knowledge, you must set aside the only kind of knowledge you hold with confidence. You can’t trust any answers your reason gives you without experiencing what you are searching for; but you can’t have the experience without trusting in the process that brings you to it. That trust is usually called “faith.” Unfortunately, you can’t get anywhere without out. Fortunately, you don’t need much.
So, how do you acquire that small seed of faith, enough to break the vicious circle and start you on your journey? From what you write, I suspect you already possess it. It is obvious that you have the deep intuition that, finally and at the deepest level, everything makes sense. Without this intuition, why bother talking and writing about these topics at all? Your question is not whether the Absolute, God, the Divine, actually exists, but rather how one can ever know It personally and in the fullest and deepest sense.
We all know the stories from the deepest parts of our culture about those who have found the thing that you see only darkly and by intuition. These voices, some ancient and some not-so-ancient, are unanimous in proclaiming the existence of a “something” and that to know this something is to know the Uncreated and the Perfect. And finding this “something” is to find the greatest treasure in life because It is your true identity, your only true happiness, and a perfection so complete that, when compared to It, all the suffering of the ages is as nothing.
But, how do you get there from where you are now? How do you embark upon the search for this treasure you see oh so dimly?
It is said that there are many paths up the mountain. Perhaps you can find your own, as others have. But the danger in this approach is that it is possible to waste all the time left in your life without finding such a path. I suggest, rather, that your odds are better if you attach yourself to one of the world’s great religions, and find within it the mystical process that allows you to make the journey you intend. In this way you will have access to a doctrine and a method which have been refined and perfected over many generations, and which provide specific and practical help for your journey.
This is not the sort of journey that offers any guarantees of success. But you can be certain that simply continuing to ask the questions will get you nowhere; and you will find that “I don’t know” is an answer that becomes increasingly unsatisfying as you grow older. Action is required. It’s all up to you.
I’ll say a prayer for your success.
June 17, 2011 at 4:31 am
Thurbolt: A sublte and wise answer that redirects the searcher back on their own resources. Well said. I have long believed that ‘all truth leads to God,’ so all that is necessary is to continue to search for the truth. Pontius Pilate’s mistake was not is asking “What is truth,” but in not sticking around to hear the answer.