Give Credit, Where Credit is Due

During one of my pondering on the origins of the universe sessions, I decided to do some Googling.  The first thing I looked up were some statements made by renowned scientists on the subject.  These uber-intellects were asked to expound on their personal opinion of creation and the participation of God, if any, in said process.  Here are a couple of them, look for the common thread.  “When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is PROBABLY no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.” Stephen Hawking. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)"Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time."

Hawking, in his “profound realization” says “there is PROBABLY no heaven or afterlife, and Asimov informs us that he doesn’t have the evidence to disprove God.  Even though these two men call themselves atheists, the door to belief is left open just a crack.  Why didn’t they just come out and say that the whole God/Intelligent designer notion was hogwash?  Because they can’t.  Hawking even uses the term “Grand Design” to describe the universe, when in the sentence before he said that no one had created it. Design, to me, implies a designer.

In contrast to these Nobel prize winners, my brain is miniscule, but how is it possible that they can, with a straight face, believe that there was never a blueprint for creation.  I think the problem lies in the fact that many learned individuals want everything to line up in concise, provable fashion. Creation is so far beyond human understanding that not even these geniuses can explain it fully.  It must be so frustrating to them not to be able to figure it out completely, and even more frustrating to allow for the theory of a supernatural, god-created universe.  It would be admitting defeat to say that someone or something could have been responsible.

 While there continues to be a rift between creationists and scientists, there are and have been those, who, without going so far as saying they believe in God, do give credit to an unseen force.  Sir Fred Hoyle, from whose writings the term Big Bang originated, wrote this; “Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate ... . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect ... higher intelligences ... even to the limit of God ... such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific.” This last one sums it up for me. American biochemist and science fiction writer Walter Kohn (1923-)"I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influenced in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence and great mystery.”

That sense of awe found in the magnificence and complexity of creation is undeniable, even to unbelievers. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:20.   King David, who might have been a Nobel Prize winner, said this: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Psalm 53:1.   Science and God need not be at war, but let’s give credit, where credit is due.

Garden of the "God(s)" in southern Illinois