Hawking's 'Grand Denial' a failure
Stephen Hawking, world renowned astrophysicist and author, asks in his new book, "The Grand Design," this fundamental question: "Why do we exist?" His answer is less than disappointing, but comes as little surprise, given his history.
Astronomers first entered the arena of fundamental religious belief when Copernicus determined centuries ago that, contrary to prevailing dogma, the Earth revolved around the sun rather than vice versa. This discovery seemingly displaced mankind from the center of the universe, and is often cited as the first great "triumph" of science over religion.But then in the 1920s, astronomy came to the aid of the Old Testament when Edwin Hubble proposed the Big Bang theory. Big Bang comports well with Genesis, prompting many astrophysicists to oppose Hubble's theory purely on anti-religious grounds. But honest scientists prevailed over the protestations of the scientific atheists, and Big Bang has since prevailed as established scientific belief.
Stephen Hawking began his own study of Big Bang 40 years ago, and published research indicating that before Big Bang, there was nothingness. However, when he later realized that "nothingness," followed by the appearance of the universe, was de facto proof of the existence of God, he reversed his own position. That's a curious thing for a scientist to do, if his only interest is elucidation of material facts regardless of the religious implications. But now, the atheist astrophysicists like Hawking are faced with an even more daunting task in their ongoing denial of the existence of God. Persuasive scientific proof of the existence of God is now to be found in the discovery of the cosmological constants. These "constants" are the numerical results of rigorous scientific experiments, which demonstrate that the forces of nature are fine-tuned to an unimaginable degree of precision. Life as we know it would not be possible if one or more of these constants were "off" by a billionth of a billionth of a billionth.
Such a rigid constraint on the behavior of the natural world virtually requires one to conclude that the shape and quality of the universe is governed by a designing intellect, i.e. God. And in fact, Hawking himself concedes that this straightforward logical conclusion is seemingly unavoidable.Confronted with this dilemma however, Hawking refuses to capitulate. Instead he describes in some detail a most preposterous "solution," which is the substance of his new book. What could possibly be the answer which this scientific luminary has come up with to rescue modern science from subordination to ancient faith?Given that the odds against the exquisite fine-tuning of the universe being due simply to chance alone, are quite literally "astronomical," Hawking proposes that there must be a near infinite number of "alternative" universes. We just happen to be lucky enough to find ourselves in the one universe out of a google that supports life.
The problem is, there is not a shred of physical evidence for his proposal. Far worse even is the indisputable fact that there never can be any evidence, because "alternative" universes are nothing more than a mathematical construct. They are not real. Sadly, the great scientist reveals himself to be nothing but a charlatan, a professor of misinformation: embarrassing himself purely for the sake of his misguided and demonstrably false atheism. For all scientists agree that proposing an untestable hypothesis to solve a scientific question is not science at all, and there can be nothing more untestable than a nonmeasureable "other" universe. Mr. Hawking unabashedly fails in his new book, and demonstrates for all to see that the efforts of scientific atheism are nowhere near a grand design. They are in fact a grand denial.
Stephen J. Iacoboni, MD, former medical director of Kootenai Cancer Center, is now co-director of Kennewick General Hospital's Hermatology-Oncology program. He's the author of The Undying Soul, which can be ordered at www.theundyingsoul.com.