Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, makes the claim that we don’t need God to create the universe. Hawking writes, “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.”
This is a great example of where Muslims and Christians come together in agreement. The universe has a Creator.
Usama Hasan has a Muslim response to Hawking. Here is a notable quote and his conclusion.
Hawking’s “spontaneous creation” is God-by-another-name: our atheist friends, like theists, have many names for God!
In conclusion, it should be remembered that Hawking is a brilliant scientist. Science does an excellent job of describing Nature, or as a theist would say, how God creates. But science can say nothing essential about why we are here and how we should live our lives: only true and balanced faith and religion can answer those questions, with Messengers of God to show us the Way.
James Anderson has a Christian response. Here area a couple notable quotes:
If Hawking thinks there is some law or principle that explains the very existence of the universe, he must have in mind a metaphysical law rather than a physical law. Unless I’m much mistaken, the law of gravity is a physical law. It appears that Hawking intends to leave behind physics (a subject on which he is eminently qualified to speak) and enter the realm of metaphysics (a subject on which he has no particular expertise, so far as I know).
In any case, it’s unclear how a multiverse explanation could provide a satisfying answer to the question at hand, namely, why our universe exists at all. If the existence of our universe is explained by the existence of the multiverse, the problem (once again) is only put back a step. Why then does the multiverse exist at all?
In “The Grand Design” Stephen Hawking postulates that the M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics…the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate and later abandoned. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theories.
In my e-book on comparative mysticism is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”
E=mc², Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.