God, Dawking, and all that is!!

I've recently been involved in some discussion threads in the online editions of a couple ofthe 'quality' newspapers.  A lot of the discussion has come about from the alleged statement, by Prof Stephen Hawking, to the effect that God is no longer necessary!!

Obviously, the materialistic humanists are rubbing their hands with glee.  An eminenet astrophysicist has spoken - it must be so!!  Many of them won't even be aware that Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher and author, made the claim a long time ago!  They certainly won't know that he was merely claiming that human beings are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognise it!  They probably wouldn't want to know that, in the relevant book, Nietzsche has the words "God is dead" uttered by a madman!!!

Personally, I perceive a simple logic. The Creator, by definition, must be 'uncreated'. I used to inform pupils who asked me the question: "If God created everything, who/what created God?", that it was a giant cricket-bat. That led to the obvious question as to who/what created the giant cricket-bat. After a couple more, equally silly, suggestions, I came back to "God" - it's something of a circular argument!

The bottom line, surely, is that even as eminent an academic as Prof Hawking needs to accept that we have a simple choice - either an uncreated 'piece of matter/gravitational force/laws of physics/whatever' or an uncreated, intelligent, personal Being to Whom, in the English language, we normally apply the nomenclature "God". I make my choice; Prof Hawking makes his choice; and everyone else does the same.
I would have thought that it is really quite elementary!

One reader was kind enough to say that, when I wrote in the above terms, I had provided a good post!  However, (s)he did object to my statement that " The Creator, by definition, must be 'uncreated'."  Yet surely that which is 'created' is 'created' by a 'creator' - and this is true of any of the material objects with which we are familiar. It's not an original thought, but I can't imagine anyone thinking that even something as common (and relatively lacking in complexity) as the internal combustion engine having come together 'by chance'. It was 'created' by someone. We don't even fully understand the concept of time, let alone the greater concept of infinity/eternity. This, I would suggest, is because we are incapable of understanding anything that is not fully material. Yet even Prof Hawking postulates a ten-dimensional universe. What do we even begin to understand about those other dimensions?

When I look at the known (a very important adjective, in this case!) universe, with all of its, so-far, discovered laws, I am over-awed by its complexity, order, and predictability. For me, it is much more difficult, and would take a much greater 'leap of faith' to accept that it is merely the result of random coincidences (I know that I am being simplistc, but I am merely trying to make a point!).

The difficulty with the concept of a Creator God, it seems to me, is that of authority! So many want to follow Frank Sinatra and say "I did it my way". They refuse to be subject to a higher power. So, the easiest thing to do is to deny the existence of that power!

I would suggest that one of Prof Hawking's additional dimensions is the spiritual dimension. It's a wee bit more difficult to grasp than the time-space continuum with which all of us are familiar. But that is not sufficient cause to deny its existence!

Shakespeare may have been much closer to the 'truth' when he had his character Hamlet state that "There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are thought of in your philosophies"! And, as mentioned in my last post, Einstein said “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”?