God and Stephen Hawking Quotes

“There is a real conflict, but it is not science versus religion. It is theism versus atheism, and there are scientists on both sides.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“The issue between the atheist and the believer is not whether it makes sense to question ultimate fact, it is rather the question: what fact is ultimate? The atheist’s ultimate fact is the universe; the theist’s ultimate fact is God.”68”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“What this all goes to show is that nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists. What serves to obscure the illogicality of such statements is the fact that they are made by scientists; and the general public, not surprisingly, assumes that they are statements of science and takes them on authority. That is why it is important to point out that they are not statements of science, and any statement, whether made by a scientist or not, should be open to logical analysis. Immense prestige and authority does not compensate for faulty logic.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“In this very brief history of modern cosmological physics, the laws of quantum and relativistic physics represent things to be wondered at but widely accepted: just like biblical miracles. M-theory invokes something different: a prime mover, a begetter, a creative force that is everywhere and nowhere. This force cannot be identified by instruments or examined by comprehensible mathematical prediction, and yet it contains all possibilities. It incorporates omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, and it’s a big mystery. Remind you of Anybody?49”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“We are a product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“The example of the jet engine can help us to clear up another confusion. Science, according to many scientists, concentrates essentially on material causation. It asks the “how” questions: how does the jet engine work? It also asks the “why” question regarding function: why is this pipe here? But it does not ask the “why” question of purpose: why was the jet engine built? What is important here is that Sir Frank Whittle does not appear in the scientific account. To quote Laplace, the scientific account has “no need of that hypothesis”.29 Clearly, however, it would be ridiculous to deduce from this that Whittle did not exist. He is the answer to the question: why does the jet engine exist in the first place?”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“now reach a crucial error that seems to have escaped Hawking’s attention. It is to imagine that getting rid of gods either necessitates, or is the same as, getting rid of the God of creation as presented in the Bible. Far from it. For Moses and the Hebrew prophets it was absurd to deify various bits of the universe, like the sun, moon, and stars, and bow down to them as gods – and they said so. But they regarded it equally as absurd not to believe in, and bow down to, the Creator God who had made both the universe and them.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it Anyway?

“In fact, Hawking has not only not got rid of God, he has not even got rid of the God of the Gaps in which no sensible person believes.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?

“Diejenigen, die Wahrheit, Wahrnehmung usw. für relativ erklären, tun dies häufig mit Ausnahme derjenigen Wahrheit, die uns wahrnehmen zu lassen sie so eifrig bemüht sind.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?

“Die Welt des strikten Naturalismus, in der clevere mathematische Gesetze ganz von sich aus das Universum und das Leben ins Dasein rufen, ist reine Science-Fiction. Theorien und Gesetze rufen keine Materie/Energie ins Dasein.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?

“Wenn Stephen Hawking einen Zusammenstoß mit Gott vermeiden möchte, ist vielleicht das Multiversum am Ende doch nicht das geeignetste Versteck.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?

“Daran wird deutlich, dass Unsinn immer Unsinn bleibt, auch wenn weltberühmte Naturwissenschaftler ihn von sich geben. Verschleiert wird die Unlogik solcher Aussagen nur dadurch, dass sie von weltberühmten Wissenschaftlern getroffen werden und das Publikum sie daher für wissenschaftliche Aussagen hält und ihrer Autorität vertraut. Es handelt sich hierbei aber keineswegs um Aussagen der Wissenschaft.”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?

“naïve”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking

“Furthermore, there are weighty voices within science that are not as enthusiastic about the multiverse. Prominent among them is that of Sir Roger Penrose, Hawking’s former collaborator, who shared with him the prestigious Wolf Prize. Of Hawking’s use of the multiverse in The Grand Design Penrose said: “It’s overused, and this is a place where it is overused. It’s an excuse for not having a good theory.”44 Penrose does not, in fact, like the term “multiverse”, because he thinks it is inaccurate: “For although this viewpoint is currently expressed as a belief in the parallel co-existence of different alternative worlds, this is misleading. The alternative worlds do not really ‘exist’ separately, in this view; only the vast particular superposition…is taken as real.”45”
― John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking