When Stephen Hawking, the most famous scientist living in the twenty-first century, published The Grand Design, he provoked a lively response in the media. Hawking wrote that the laws of physics make God unnecessary when explaining the origin of the universe and everything in it.
In Is God Unnecessary?, author Walter Alan Ray presents nine reasons why Hawking’s thesis is mistaken. Ray does not use philosophical or theological arguments, but presents the same laws of physics that Hawking says demonstrate his position. Ray examines:
Hawking’s Apparent Miracle;
Hawking’s assumption that Charles Darwin explained the origin of human life;
the question Can something come out of nothing?;
the cosmological constant in Einstein’s equations, the factor that Hawking considers the most impressive coincidence;
Hawking’s solution to the completely incomprehensible value of the cosmological constant; and
how physics and mathematics join in showing that in the current state of our knowledge, physics and mathematics do have something to say about the origin of the universe.
Ray determines that the laws of physics and mathematics show there are two possible answers to the question How did we come to live in a universe that is as astoundingly fine-tuned as ours?. The arguments presented by Ray in Is God Unnecessary? show neither of these two answers is the solution proposed by Hawking.
