Hawking is eager to say that the universe could have started by chance. The fact that it “started” at all is a big concession from materialistic scientists. It leads to the questions “What was before?” and “How did it start?” (Even if not on purpose, i.e. the dreaded word “design”).

In doing this, Hawking misrepresents the creation story in the Bible. To be precise, he doesn’t mention it at all in this book. Instead, he describes the creation story of the Boshongo people of central Africa, which he describes thus: “[I]n the beginning, there was only darkness, water and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba in pain from a stomach ache, vomited up the sun. The sun dried up some of the water, leaving land. Still in pain, Bumba vomited up the Moon, the stars and then some animals – the leopard, the crocodile, the turtle and, finally, man.” (42)

He brings it in the context of the discussion about whether or not the universe had a beginning. I’ll return to that shortly. First, however, I want to highlight something else. And that is the question of purpose or design. A point Hawking studiously avoids. I have a hunch he may have chosen the above story because of its similarity to the biblical creation story. Maybe the unspoken subtext is: The biblical story of Genesis is nothing special, here’s another example where a god is hanging around with water and darkness and then creates a few things, in a certain order, ending with humans. Assuming this is what Hawking had in mind, there needs to be a Christian answer.

Determinism is a hugely important aspect of modern science. We call the laws of science “laws” because we assume they do not change. Therefore, once we know the circumstances of a situation with sufficient detail, we can, with the help of these laws, determine what is going to happen next.  For example, if we know the law of gravity, and the mass of two objects, we know exactly how they will move in relation to each other – whether one will fall on the other, or they will orbit each other, or just swing by each other once.

With that in mind, French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827) postulated that, at least theoretically, everything could be pre-determined. Here is how Stephen Hawking, in his book “Brief Answers to Big Questions” paraphrased what Laplace said in this regard: “[I]f at one time we knew the positions and speeds of all the particles in the universe, then we would be able to calculate their behaviour at any other time in the past or future.” (90)

Then, Hawking comments: “I don’t think that Laplace was claiming that God didn’t exist. It is just that God doesn’t intervene to break the laws of science. That must be the position of every scientist.” (90, my emphasis) However, nowhere in the book does Hawking come up with a reason why this “must” be the position of “every” scientist.

Shortly before he died in 2018, esteemed scientist Stephen Hawking had finished writing a book, which was published just after his death. Its title: “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”. It is basically an attempt by an atheistic, materialistic scientist to make sense of a world (as he sees it) without God. Having read the book, I concluded that there are some large holes in his reasoning and so I resolved to write a review. It turned out to be fairly long, so I have divided it into six parts: 

1. What happened to scientific determinism?
2. In the beginning, Chance – or God?
3. Human beings are parasites – or the image of God?
4. Despite all that, let’s save the world – ok, but why?
5. Let’s colonise space – for what reason?
6. Prevent AI from outsmarting us – but will it?

I wrote about each of these parts in separate entries. The page numbers mentioned are from the John Murray paperback edition from 2020. As far as I know, the text on each page is identical to that in the original hardback edition of 2018.