Grander Design

There was a time when mankind thought the universe consisted of those things he could see. To most, the world was flat, ending at their farthest imagination, defined by boundaries and edges. Over time and experience, those boundaries were extended beyond imagination.

The earth was no longer flat and ships sailed beyond the never seen edges. The sun no longer drove across the sky but the earthly globe turned on an axis around it. The universe expanded, and yet mankind defined it by those things he could see.

About fifty years ago I read that God was dead. The media posed the question several times. More as a question than a fact, proposing that there wasn’t a need for Him as the world was being explained and mankind would do better throwing off His rules. Mankind had progressed beyond the need to explain the unknown.

This past week the publicity for Stephen Hawking’s new book, “The Grand Design,” made another such statement. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Religious leaders in England, Hawking’s home country, read that to mean God had no role in creation and made a responding statement that "physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."

I agree with them. Whether others do or not may depend on whether their God is limited or omnipotent. Do any boundaries, even laws of physics, place limits on the power God has shown? Not mine.

The questions of how and why our universe exists, the speculation of the number of other worlds inhabited by sentient beings, do not limit the God I worship. We are where we are according to His grand design.

It is not mankind’s bragging that gave us:

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (Psalms 139:14 KJV)

Hawking may have some basis for his M-theory, for the string theory, though the key words are “theory.” Einstein had such theories and proved them through weapons powerful enough to destroy entire cities. The study of physics is not designed to look for God, but to explain such constants as gravity.

Even with this book and the dismissal of necessity, Hawking and his co-author have not discounted that first verse:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 KJV)

Instead, what I see in their proposal is the eternity described by God, Co-author Leonard Mlodinow stated in an interview: "So it's not a well-posed question to say, 'What happened at the beginning of time?- — because time doesn't go back to the beginning."

And, we have read of when time shall be no more:

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: (Revelation 10:5-6 KJV)

Hubble IUltra Deep Field photograph, NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith and the HUDF Team (2003/4) (Wiki Commons)