Calling divorced from the Caller … again.

The reporting on the Hawking story today is interesting because if you look at the fine print,  the media is trying to inflame the faith/science controversey once again, to divorce faith and render it obscure and the stuff or private morality.

CNN themselves states in the opening statement

“God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.”

Hmmm …. sounds like the notion that has been often kicked around by scientists and rationalist ever since the ‘enlightenment.’   Sure enough if you read on the argument is familiar, but told with greater precision and elegance by the world class physicist, with similar caveats.

Read the fine print that follows in the story. Hawking does not necessarily claim the fact or thesis stated above (much like the scopes monkey trial long ago.)   He says instead that the “natural laws” present in the universe were enough to allow the universe to be created on its own.   What is interesting in Hawkings own statement and book title is that he uses the term “design.”  It is an interesting term because design always implies a designer, just as creation implies a creator, story an author, etc.  CNN says …

“Hawking says in his book “The Grand Design” that, given the existence of gravity, “the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.

“Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” he writes in the excerpt.
“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going,” he writes. His book — as the title suggests — is an attempt to answer “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”

Well in the fine print you’ll note that Hawking doesn’t actually say God doesn’t exist or prove that God doesn’t exist.   What he implies (at least in the sound bite) is that it once again the reality is that God’s presence and existence comes down to faith and revelation … it cannot be proven rationally.  Science will always tell us how, never Who or Why.  It just can’t.

For more of the history of culture stripping and divorcing faith and meaning from work and fields of vocation (like the sciences) take a peek at Professionals: Men and Women Partnering with the Trinity in Everyday Life.