Or: Why I should first read Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design
Guest blog by Vatican astronomer Father Christopher Corbally, S.J.
The
media has been highlighting some pretty provocative quotes from Stephen
Hawking's new book. One such runs: “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.”
I'm a Catholic
so I might react to this by thinking, "Who does Hawking think he is,
God?" But I'm also a Jesuit astronomer with a deep respect for Hawking's
cosmology. If Hawking is talking from the "mechanical metaphor",
interpreting reality solely from physics and mathematics, then quantum
gravity can give rise to spontaneous creation and be the physical reason
there is something rather than nothing.
Notice the word
"solely". It leaves out the "metaphor" of philosophy, one that would
speak of quantum gravity itself being contingent, since this law could
"not be" at all. Quantum gravity does not have in itself the reason for
its existence.
Philosophy can't completely answer whether that
reason is needed or the law of gravity "just happens." But theology does
answer this, an answer that invokes a Creator who creates out of
infinite love and on whom the existence of all depends continually. That
answer resonates with those who have the experience of that Creator,
their God, in faith.
So, I need to read Hawking's book to see
whether he is mixing his metaphors or whether he essentially, if
provocatively, is sticking to the physics in which lies his extreme
competence. Meanwhile the media will rage that Hawking says that God did
not create the Universe. To which might come the response: "Hawking did
not create the Universe," says God!
Guest blogger Father
Christopher Corbally, S.J. is the vice director of the Vatican
Observatory Research Group at the Mount Graham International Observatory
in Arizona.
Guest blog posts express the views of the author. They do not necessarily
reflect the views of U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the
Claretians.
