My Three Stages of Happiness

My three stages of happiness

I have had the wonderful experience of living in one of the most romantic places in the world: Oxford. Arguably one of the most valued historical cities, inspiring thousands to change the world through their newly discovered ideas. Some of the most famous that I recognized being John Locke, John Wesley, Oscar Wilde, TS Eliot, Aldous Huxley, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, including more recent public figures like Richard Dawkins, John C. Lennox, and Bill Clinton.

It was not once that I walked by the Radcliffe Square to City Church, or to the other side of Oxford, passing Magdalen College and the famous Magdalen bridge. Going for an early morning tea to fabulous cafe’s in the centre of the city. I would enjoy my sprints at Park Meadow or my bike rides alongside the Thames River, watching the sunset sing in red colors, enjoying a book on the benches of these famous parks. I sat untouched by the world’s troubles sitting in St. Mary's church just past the City Centre. There was joy as I was discovering new places in Oxford I had not visited before. We would sit in the oldest libraries, listen to choirs sing in extravagant churches, echoing the sound of completeness (or absoluteness). I thought these experiences and memories to be something vast I could not contain in myself. I would sit there listening to something that I would not be able to describe. I was a mere child experiencing light for the first time; being reborn into a world of dark hostility. My fingers would point at objects and I cried as I could not communicate my true desires, what I craved, not for the sake of pleasure. I would desire these things just as an infant would desire food, for survival.

I read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I considered myself being that young man, struggling with my faith, my sexuality, my upbringing and the lies: the darkness that was disguised in the beauty of the richness of the stars.

The owner of those stars, my friend, God abandoned me. I felt him leave me as I was in my room - alone. I never felt that alone. He must of left me. What I once found to be my only source of intellectual rest and emotional peace was gone. And I quickly became bitter against him. I hated God. It was not a ridiculous hatred, my thoughts burned against him. I wanted to devote my life in disproving his affection for me.

I would pray and there would be no answer. My happiness had to be found elsewhere, apart from him. I could not find it so much in my being. I would focus on outside of my being, pointing to something else that I had not yet the opportunity to find. I did not want people to look at me, but to look beyond me to something greater. I wanted to be a creator of something that is greater than myself. Something that I found in living and admiring the wonderful city of Oxford. This would be my happiness. I realized that it wouldn’t be this simple. My time in this romantic and scenic city would well describe what I was looking for and why I couldn’t find it.

As I first arrived in Oxford, I would not consider it a long visit. I stayed for much longer than I expected. It led to a shaking of character, an emotional earthquake that left me isolated, thinking there was no one who cared about my well-being. Not even the closest of mentors.

I was naked. I could not hide behind my walls any longer. I had to face myself in a new fashion, one that I had not considered before. I had to face my doubts in front of everyone, alone. My land destroyed by the intellectual and emotional haunting of questions that remained. Somewhere deep I thought I did have an answer, later I would appreciate that it was more of a decision not to believe; to hate.

This was my quest for a full on pursuit of having “fun”. Which I have never encountered before in my life. At least not in such intensity. I loved my new way. I desensitized myself to guilt. I lived life as somewhat of a hedonist, finding me running hopelessly with no vision of a finish line, attempting to grab the air with no avail. I know it seems counter-descriptive calling yourself “somewhat of a hedonist”. I use the word somewhat because I was a hedonist in my own capability of achieving these desires. I could not attain something I did not have. So within the realm of my capabilities I achieved pleasure.

Happiness is not meant to last. This is something that temporary 21st century humans of the westernized culture can not cope with. They not only do not understand it but they fail to teach us how to deal with it individually. We think that our way is the correct way. We always believe that our opinions must be the right ones. I thought to myself, what if this would not be the case?
I recently read an essay of CS Lewis in God in the Dock, in it Lewis tackles my problem with happiness: “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.” (p. 52)

I want happiness to stay. And so I went through three stages of my young being, which I will call “badness”, “goodness” and “the in between”. But what needs to be remembered is that my desire for happiness to stay, would not leave throughout these stages.

Badness
I was drunk, I would think of myself as popular. I was nice and quiet, which people liked. I loved the taste of Guinness. I loved playing pool, driving in the car past the green farms in Wolvercote, reminding me of the fantastical accounts from the Lord of the Rings of The Shire.

It was the club, the beer, the coming home, the travelling, the coffee in the midweek and the time to myself of isolation that I came to love. I worked hard and learnt to enjoy it’s fruit in new ways. We went out for dinner, we celebrated ourselves, our accomplishments - or things that seemed like accomplishments. The people I lived with became not only my friends, but family.

I remember thinking, what if this disappears? Which it most likely would. Shortly, my closest of friends left Oxford to their own homes, some travelling to different continents.

If my happiness would disappear I’d see that there may not be a finish line to my run. I slowly recollected from myself that I was trying to grab on to air. I lived in the moment as never before. Nothing was holding me down, I had dropped out of my University studies in Portsmouth and moved to the ultimate bachelor life in Oxford. Undoubtedly so, we lived messy and lazy lives.

If there was an opportunity to get something I would get it, no matter the object. And yet I would always be reminded of my youthfulness. My incapability to express myself.

I describe this as badness because I would try to use all the knowledge of what was considered as “bad” when I was younger and do it. But still, I was nice. I would remain unselfish which is what made others like me in a unique way. I wasn’t the main character in a story. I would be the funny guy who would pop in in the middle of the film and do something foolish and leave before the ending.

Being high was a time with friends making fun of the day or enjoying isolation with my guitar. Being drunk was an opportunity to enjoy music in a new way. An unembarrassed way. Although, there was an imbalance. I had to learn how to enjoy things in the middle of my circumstances not outside of them, as I have been taught in Christianity.

I was buying any piece of literature I could on how to create happiness. How do I construct it for myself? I was stricken with shame along the way as I engaged myself physically with a friend and later on overheard her being embarrassed and dismissing it.

No one would talk to me about my emotions. There is nothing lonelier than a man who thinks about his thoughts in the midst of an especially unreflective community of twenty-somethings.

My quest for all that is bad was deconstructed by it’s own pursuit. I chased money. I had all that I needed: good food, good clothes, good drinks, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, living in one of the most peaceful locations in Oxford.

Among others, even the famous Walter Hooper was envious of my living spaces at the Trout. “What a romantic place to live at?” he said enthusiastically, as I had the wonderful experience of talking with him briefly at the Socrates in the City event in Oxford, October 2015.

I chased women and could not have what I desired and once I gained what I desired I found it too hot to hold onto any longer. What began as friendship led to my craving of something more. This more was the connection I was looking for. I wanted something lasting but I picked fruit from the tree of instant gratification that I planted in my garden. I was not planning for the future, and when the famine hit my garden, I quickly starved, returning home to get rest and food.

This acquaintance of mine was someone I talked to about our pasts, and insecurities. I was holding to her desperately. I needed this emotional connection, that for a long time I craved. But her disinterest left me burning my hands. Sleep would turn into a painful event. Days-off would be a reminder of my dead-end chase for happiness.  

There is no way to overstate the feelings that I had in my heart. Suffering was what made me leave the God I once loved. I threw him off his throne. I overruled the Kingdom he created. And I put other things on the graceful seat of his rule. And now suffering became the thing that wanted me to come back to the God I knew. I wanted to awaken that faith. And as I talked to the statue of Aslan that mildly cold night on Christmas Day, I was reminded of God’s absence in my life.

God was meant to be controlled. “You haven’t thought about this as much as I have, Christian.” I would think to myself. “I was there on the frontline, while you were comfortable in your walls and in your small communities. You go on these trips and think that you have found it? What about these people, my family? They also feel like they have found it. What if you are wrong?”

I dared to stand up to the tyranny of Jesus Christ and put him in the place where he began. In the humble barn in Nazareth. That’s who he was. A cult that was raised behind him was not his intention, but the ambitious intention of the ones who followed him. And I know your immediate response to that.
 “But who would give up his life for a lie?”
 Many have, and many will.

This is not meant to be a defence of a position, but of a perspective. God’s not dead. I put him in a prison. He is very much alive, I thought. I was just in charge of him.

Let me put the people I want to on my throne. Badness, please rule me. I want you. Why do you leave me alone? I left Oxford hurting. Badness had felt good, but just as eating candies if you do not care for your teeth you will get the toothaches, the cavities. I left myself untamed and badness came back to sting.

Goodness

Maybe my inner discussions were wrong. I think that my viewing of happiness was from outside my bubble of belief, in the past. Which happened to be the Christian view. I believed that God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him. I believed in something that was termed “Christian Hedonism”.

What if my looking at Christianity and it’s guidance on happiness from outside the bubble was not the correct way. I had to look at it from the bubble, but not excluding my newly found “freedom” of badness. And so I tried to include goodness into my badness.

I created a path away from grasping all I could and living in a “higher state of being”. A peaceful state resembling the city I missed so much.

I know what it feels like to have it. I forgot what it feels like to forsake it; to forsake pleasure.

I do not like the one sided views of many pieces of literature nowadays.

You have books and quotes that are read as if they were true. I am not trying to say that this is the right way. I did not describe these three steps of happiness as “the three steps of happiness”, but as “my three stages of happiness”.

And also, please let me include that, this does not have to be correct. By no means do I want to create a discussion of whether or not I am living the right way now. I want to create a discussion on what is beautiful in my failures. I need to find something to appreciate in it. That’s the only way for me to be happy, to appreciate the path. We watch films because of the drama, the overcoming of an obstacle and the heroism despite hopelessness. That’s what we admire. So why should it be different in my life, in our lives?

Goodness came back at me. I looked like a child trying to be good and looking around, finding himself alone and betrayed. I was expecting some sort of praise, but I discovered that I could never be completely satisfied with myself. I will always struggle with laziness or a sense of inadequacy to the tasks that are ahead of me. The burdens of them will never leave me. And bad habits are difficult to break.

The in Between is something that I find myself in now. I love philosophy. I love being. But I don’t love these things in and of themselves. I hate boring books by intelligent over-thinkers. I hate realizing the fact that I am in existence. What I love about philosophy and being is that they point to something greater - a greater reward. They point to a finish line. And if there is a finish line there has to be a path. We don’t think about the finish line when we finish our race. What we do remember is the obstacles we overcame. We talk about that moment we wanted to give up when going for a sprint but overcoming and going further than we would have expected.

I do not know what the finish line is yet. That’s the in between that I want to be in at the moment.

I want to believe that happiness received from God is the finish line. But for some reason I can’t find myself to think that that is something that we need to chase. It seems like God is the one that gives it to us as he pleases and when he pleases.

The badness left me hurting with cavities and selfish empty relationships. My goodness left me feeling inadequate. Whereas, this in between continually helps me to appreciate my failures. Now I can rest in my imperfection. And that is where I will like to stay until I reach either the peace of becoming a fundamentalist or the courage of becoming something in the middle: a man who has set standards but isn’t scared of looking at those standards from outside of his bubble and enjoying his falls on the way.

And that is what I am aiming for: happiness that is designed by realities that are intrinsic in myself. I appreciate who I am and the path I am on. These things are incomparable and achievable by me and myself alone. Why? Because they are in me; they are my own thoughts.

Therefore these are “my three stages of happiness”.

My Problem With Bertrand Russell and Faith-Based Religion

I am writing this because I believe that Bertrand Russell misunderstood many of the central dogmas of the Christian faith. I understand that Bertrand Russell is much more intelligent than I am and/or ever will be. And I will not attempt to argue otherwise. It seems ever so childish of me to go on this purge of his wonderful collection of essays, Why I am Not a Christian. Might I add, not even collected by him. I have most likely not even comprehended some of his claims. Despite this, I think it is helpful to practice our commitment to free speech even if it is guided by selfish motives or a sense of arrogance that I can disagree with such a renowned philosopher. But I can.


Background 
I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason for the vast anti-theistic writings in the world today is because people haven't completely understood the nature of Christianity. I was someone you could call a fundamentalist reformed evangelical up until a little over two years ago. And I think myself grounded in my atheistic beliefs, or even agnostic beliefs. I don’t believe these two to be very different from each other. And because of this I think that I have somewhat understood the teaching of the Bible.


I was Christian most of my life, fully convinced of it’s truthfulness. I identified with more Reformed teachings of the Bible, which meant that I was leaning Calvinist. And as a Calvinist I believed in the five points of the TULIP, one of them being Unconditional Love, the doctrine that the sheep of Christ may never fall away because of the fierceness of God's love for them. Despite this I did "fall away" from "God's love" and whole-heartedly disagree with many central dogmas of the Bible. This is one of the reasons why I picked up this book. I remember Sam Harris saying that it was very helpful for him. Which in retrospect I can't believe he actually said. How can this book be helpful against the debate against religion? I am still trying to figure out how atheists expect me to believe that.

In Russell’s case I think that he has confused the perversion of the church with actual teachings of the Bible. One could argue that there is no such thing as "teachings of the Bible" but that all is made up by people. I would like to stress that you can not win an argument against a position without first considering it's truthfulness. And so I consider the fact that the Bible makes truth-claims that are intrinsically distinct from people and are God-given. This helps because it starts a conversation from mutual grounds with the classic conservative evangelical/roman-catholic. It could also, however, be pointed out that not all Christians agree with this basic claim that Christianity is solely a construct of God, but that people were also authors and that God used them for this purpose. That is not the position I will be arguing from or for/against in this blog. I will go through some of the statements that Russell makes in this blog and try to address them and my issue or agreement with them in this short blog. This short blog will be dealing with one specific area, mainly three claims that are related to faith.

“It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.” (p.47)

I wanted to begin with this one. It is very ironic and sad that Bertrand Russell would write this. We should ask the question in response: What golden age are you talking about? This statement was written in 1930 and the 2nd World War started in 1939. Nonetheless, I agree that the World Wars were not the result of Secularism. I do not want to propose this. I would like to suggest a different "golden age". Russell did not stress that there was a philosophy of living, mainly The American Dream, that we needed to dismiss before we get to that "threshold of a golden age". We need to come to our evolutionary roots where small communities: family and friends are of the most essence to personal well-being.

So first we need to define what the "threshold of a golden age" is. Secondly we need to discuss whether a Christian faith is harmful. Which in some mainstream Atheist circles is not believed. In comparison with Islam, Sam Harris continuously points out the obvious, that Christianity is less damaging to society, since most of it's claims are propagating the Golden Rule. Whereas Islam propagates fear. Earlier on in the book, Russell makes the claim that Christianity also proliferates fear, “Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear" (22). He does not clarify whether this is specific to Christianity or whether there are tiny distinctions between religions, one think is certain: there is a place where "the wicked" are thrown into a "blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 13:50); where the "fire never goes out" (Mark 9:43). Before we argue otherwise, Christianity in particular, has these vivid examples of Hell where I am going. It is deeply unsettling, because this was the prime motivator for hundreds of years for people to go to Heaven. No doubt it is a motivator today.
It must be pointed out that the Golden Rule is misdirected in practice. In theory it could nonetheless work. I agree with Russell that many of the core and seemingly essential values of the Christian faith such as love, purity, peace, gratefulness, etc. are unfortunately misdirected. They are misdirected because they are grounded in a selfishness. How often do we see Christians who hide behind this masquerade of the "fruits of the Spirit" only to be secretly either proud or sexually active or struggling with insecurity. Or bragging about their unique spiritual gifts, when in fact they just parade their pride. Christians are not content people. They can not be. Christians that are content people find contentment in "worldly things". Understand that if you were indeed living as Jesus wanted you to, to "cut off your hand" and "gauge out your eye" when your sexual biological impulses are "tempting" you, you would be living in excruciating mental pain. And that is why Martin Luther went insane. If you take this teaching to it's fullest realization, you will come out a completely mentally unstable person. You can not argue with this. Not in today's world. But if you only half-heartedly believe this, you come to be happy - because you are actually secular: "[B]ecause you are luke-warm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth" (Revelations 3:16).

“God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian faith, find no support in science.” (p.50)

Christianity is not observable and so it is hard to question it. If something is hard to question it must mean that we must accept it by faith. I begin with what I agree with in this statement (the quotation). Faith-based religion has to be wrong. There is no possible way that God does not desire the rationale yet desires the heart only. Was it not Jesus himself who said that we should love God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37)? Was it not Solomon that devoted thousands of proverbs to wisdom, and he was supposedly the most intelligent, or "wise", man that ever lived up until Jesus came. What an overstatement. Just this one claim proves how out-dated the Bible must be. How naive would we have to believe that a man living before they discovered basic mathematic principles (such as the Pythagoreans), or basic laws of logic and politics (such as Aristotle and Plato), or basic concepts of well-being (such as the Stoics and Confucius), or an understanding of the physics of the world (Newton), or a grasp of expository preaching (such as Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, or Luther) - that this man would be more intelligent than these men alone? What would we have to say about the current workers on Artificial Intelligence at Google or Facebook? Are they less intelligent than Solomon? And what is there to prove his intelligence? Little to no historical background.

To get back to my main point, I ask, if men such as Bertrand Russell can not observe the proof that religion, in this case Christianity, offers, then why should I agree with such an ideology. It is however possible that Russell has preconceived bias against Christianity. I personally do not believe that I possess such bias, but that also could be hidden bias. I must say that my bias is that I prefer to not be a Christian and I have many logical reasons why. However, many of my Christian friends and social circles are better people than my atheist ones. I do from time to time prefer to be with more sensitive people. Who knows if this correlation between faith and character is a coincidence. There has been research conducted on this and I could get into this in later blogs.

Now let me start with what I disagree with in this statement. I do not find it necessary for God to be proved by science. What science? In my limited understanding, and I am not a scientist, but if I were to ask a scientist what science is, they would no doubt answer that it is a system that observes physics, biology, chemistry. It is an observation of the physical - not the meta-physical. Now the problem is that both God and immortality are separate from time and space and hence it is arguable that he is unobservable. Which comes back to our initial dilemma: Is belief alone required for a saving, Christian faith? And if so, then what is the point of discussing any apologetics? If you can not persuade someone of religion, then why argue for it in the first place?

But in the end, the fact that science does not prove that God or immortality are real doesn’t very much negate the reality of the Christian faith. And it wouldn’t be a strong argument against a Christian to be honest. Science is the observation of the natural not the super natural. The bigger question is whether it is possible to persuade a soul of the existence of God. And the Bible presupposes that everyone has a belief in the unseen God pre-saving faith (Romans 3), which couldn't be further from the truth in today's world.

“And everybody who has ever to do with children knows that a suitable diet does more to make them virtuous than the most eloquent preaching in the world.” (p.40)

It's as if Russell believes in this classic misunderstanding that preaching makes someone virtuous. This is NOT the teaching of the New Testament and most certainly not the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 13:13). You wouldn't be able to argue this stand point from the Old Testament itself. Isaiah says: “You hear with your ears, but you don't really listen” (Isaiah 42:20).

In the classic understanding of scripture the human is the one that sows and God is the one that plants the seed. And we come to our main paradox: what is the point of preaching, then? That is the ultimate dilemma. And Paul wrestles with that quite a lot in Romans. Especially in Romans 9. It's an interesting read, yet also extremely perplexing. I want to write a blog on my issues with the Christian concept of Hell and I will want to get into Romans 9 in that. But for now let us summarize it briefly. Theologians from John MacArthur, John Piper, to Martin Luther and John Calvin have discussed this topic and no one can come up with an answer to whether God is unfair in his giving of saving faith. It is a mystery. I believe this to be unacceptable. There shouldn't be a mystery this large and central to the core teaching of an ideology: salvation is by faith through grace alone.

I will continue with some other claims in later responses. I mainly wanted to deal with these three claims because they are all interconnected, there were some more that were related to this. But I chose to keep this one short.

John C. Lennox, God and Stephen Hawking (Book Review)

MAIN THEMES:

• HAWKING AGAINST PHILOSOPHY
• HAWKING AND THE ARGUMENT FROM NOTHING
• GOD OR SCIENCE?
• THE MULTIVERSE
• QUOTES ON THE MULTIVERSE FROM OTHER SCIENTISTS

REVIEW:

I must begin with a clarification, John Lennox is one of my favorite authors. This even despite the fact that I consider myself an agnostic, leaning atheist. To be frank, there are no reasons not to like him. He is a well-read mathematician, has studied at numerous prestigious universities, and is now teaching Mathematics at the University of Oxford. As is expected, he is highly articulate and hence debated well-known atheist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, Peter Atkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Stinger, to name a few. I confess that he continues to persuade me towards religious belief, or at least towards a more agnostic position. Although I do not think he primarily writes for non-believing readers such as myself. My understanding would be that his books, especially this one, is for the average evangelical reader that is interested in apologetics. I believe that it was a crucial book for this time and for the evangelical world; it is important to defend your beliefs if a world-renown physicist, or anyone else for that matter, decides to disregard them. And that is what has happened with this book.

God and Stephen Hawking is a critique of Hawking’s most recent book, A Brief History of Time.  A Brief History of Time mainly focuses on physics and the potential origins of the universe and is not meant to be entirely focused on religion. So it’s hard to expect Hawking to be accurate on every point when speaking on religion. However it still comes across as if Hawking has not put any serious thought into religion, which proves to be unfortunate since he chooses to mock it. He makes startling claims such as that philosophy is dead to which Lennox responds, that Hawking’s statement that philosophy is dead is in itself a philosophical statement, and thus an oxymoron: “It would seem that some of [Hawking’s] arguments could have profited from a little more attention to the matter of clarity of definition and logical analysis” (29).

Hawking also mistakenly points towards the multiverse as negating the existence of God and makes the worn out argument that God must have had a creator and hence could not have existed before time and the beginning of time since he must have been created. This has been argued by others before, such as by the well-known philosopher Bertrand Russell and already mentioned scientist Richard Dawkins. I could not stress this enough, this is my least favorite argument against Christianity. It is laughable in every regard. There is no space to deal with it here, that could possibly require a blog post of it’s own (I need to make note of that).

Don’t get me wrong, I do not agree with everything Lennox says in this book. The last chapter attempts to cover the resurrection and illustrate the gospel (“The Good News”), both of which I did not find very helpful. If anything they raised more questions than the multiverse concept. However one argument that came across to me as the strongest and most difficult to argue with was that laws do not create matter and hence laws needed to be constructed. It seems puzzling that laws needed to be created but then the question is how did they come about? Sometimes it is okay not to know. For centuries this view was acceptable as Karen Armstrong has pointed out in her book, A History of God. It is better to say that you don’t possess the answers to questions than to live within a religious or philosophical system and later have to deal with consistent lying and hypocrisy. As Aristotle stressed, and this is paraphrased, “The more you know, the more you know how little you know.”

I furthermore find some of his conclusions troubling. To clarify a very important point, with which, no doubt, Lennox agrees: it is not because of science that Lennox is a Christian. We know this because the Bible itself does not testify to such a basis of saving faith. It hence seems counter-productive to criticize a physicist on how science proves the glory of God (in this case the Judeo-Christian God) or even the existence of that God because it is purely the work of God that saves the person. Lennox goes so far as to suggest that nature points to the existence of God. If nature points to the existence of God, one must ask the question, why is it that so many scientists are not Christians?

And that is where I leave it. He answered questions I did not have and did it very helpfully. He also helped me to conclude why exactly I disagree with his concept of nature testifying to the glory of God, mainly because of its dismissal of the concept of God’s deterministic nature. I believe it to be obvious within the Bible and human biology that there is not much room for free will. I hope to cover this topic soon when I re-read and write a review on Sam Harris’ helpful book, Free Will. Until then I leave this question unanswered for myself.  

I hope this review was a good introduction to what you should expect if you decide to pick this up. Lennox argues extensively from the Bible and philosophy and references both philosophers that support his claims and ones that don’t. It is obvious that he has read all of the New Atheist’s claims. And this is an encouragement. It means that reason is not lost within Christian circles, despite what some would claim.

Just down below I include some of my favorite quotes from the book. These have been divided into categories that are indicated above the review. This is meant to be an indication of what you should expect in the book.

HAWKING AGAINST PHILOSOPHY

“One of the main tasks of philosophy is to train people in the art of definition, logical analysis, and argument. Is Hawking really telling us that this also is dead? Surely not. However, it would seem that some of his arguments could have profited from a little more attention to the matter of clarity of definition and logical analysis” (Lennox, 29).

HAWKING AND THE ARGUMENT FROM NOTHING

“The main issue for now, however, is that gravity or a law of gravity is not ‘nothing’, if he is using that word in its usual philosophically correct sense of ‘non-being’. If he is not, he should have told us. On the face of it, Hawking appears, therefore, to be simultaneously asserting that the universe is created from nothing and from something - not a very promising start. Indeed, one might add for good measure the fact that when physicists talk about ‘nothing’ they often appear to mean a quantum vacuum, which is manifestly not nothing. In fact, Hawking is surely alluding to this when he writes: ‘We are a product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe’ ” (30).

• My problem with this statement is that Lennox is defining “nothingness” in the sort of term that doesn’t apply to Hawking. How do I know if Hawking means nothingness by a world where there is no gravity? Maybe he doesn’t even believe in absolutely nothing, because there was always something.

“Here is Hawking’s definition of a law of nature: ‘Today most scientists would say that a law of nature is a rule that is based upon an observed regularity and provides predictions that go beyond the immediate situations upon which it is based’ ” (33).

GOD OR SCIENCE?

“It is clearly nonsensical to ask people to choose between Frank Whittle and science as an explanation for the jet engine. For it is not a question of either/or. It is self-evident that we need both levels of explanation in order to give a complete description. It is also obvious that the scientific explanation: they complement one another. It is the same with explanations of the universe: God does not conflict or compete with the laws of physics as an explanation. God is actually the ground of all explanation, in the sense that he is the cause in the first place of there being a world for the laws of physics to describe. Offering people the choice between God and science is therefore illogical. In addition, it is very unwise, because some people might just choose God and then Hawking could be accused of putting people off science!” (37).

“Science does not answer the question as to why something exists rather than nothing, for the simple reason that their science cannot answer that question. They also fail to see that by assumption it is their atheist world-view, not science as such, that excludes God” (39).

“C. S. Lewis grasped this issue, with characteristic clarity. Of the laws of nature he writes: . . .

Laws give us only a universe of ‘Ifs and Ands‘: not this universe which actually exists. What we know through laws and general principles is a series of connections. But, in order for there to be a real universe, the connections must be given something to connect; a torrent of opaque actualities must be fed into the pattern. If God created the world then He is precisely the source of this torrent, and it alone gives our truest principles anything to be true about. But if God is the ultimate source of all concrete, individual things and events, then God Himself must be concrete, and individual in the highest degree. Unless the origin of all other things were itself concrete and individual, nothing else could be so; for there is no conceivable means whereby what is abstract or general could itself produce concrete reality. Book-keeping, continued to all eternity, could never produce one farthing.

The world of strict naturalism, in which clever mathematical laws all by themselves bring the universe and life into existence, is pure (science) fiction. Theories and laws do not bring matter/energy into existence” (42-3).

MULTIVERSE

“As Hawking points out, the first actual scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning did not appear until the early 1900s. The Bible, however, has been quietly asserting that fact for millennia. It would be good if credit were given where it is due” (46).

“Hawking has once again fallen into the trap of offering false alternatives This time it is: God or the multiverse. From a theoretical point of view, as philosophers have pointed out, God could create as many universes as he pleases. The multiverse concept of itself does not and cannot rule God out. . . . What of the multiverse itself? Is it fine-tuned? If it is, then Hawking is back where he started. Where is Hawking’s argument to prove that it is not?” (49)

QUOTES ON THE MULTIVERSE FROM OTHER SCIENTISTS

“John Polkinghorne, another eminent theoretical physicist, rejects the multiverse concept:

Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but in the strictest sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes. By construction these other worlds are unknowable by us. A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability - and to my mind greater economy and elegance - would be that this one world is the way it is, because it is the creation of the will of a Creator who purposes that is should be so” (50).

“Don Page, a theoretical physicist from the University of Alberta, who is a former student of Hawking and has co-authored eight papers with him, says: ‘I certainly would agree that even if M-theory were a fully formulated theory (which it isn’t yet) and were correct (which of course we don’t know), that would not imply that God did not create the universe’ ” (51).

“Paul Davies says of M-theory: ‘It is not testable, not even in any foreseeable future.’ . . . Oxford physicist Frank Close goes further: ‘M-theory is not even defined … ‘No one seems to know what the M stands for.’ Perhaps it is ‘myth’.’ Close concludes: ‘I don’t see that M-theory adds one iota to the God debate, either pro or con.’ Jon Butterworth, who works at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, states: ‘M-theory is highly speculative and certainly not in the zone of science that we have got any evidence for.’ ” (53-4)

“There is a subjective element in science. The idea of a completely independent observer, free of all preconceived theories, doing investigations and coming to unbiased conclusions that constitute absolute truth, is simply a myth. . . . Scientists have preconceived ideas, indeed world-views, that they bring to bear on every situation. Furthermore, they are well aware that it is almost impossible for them to make any kind of observation without resting on some prior theory; for example, they cannot even take a temperature without having an underlying theory of heat” (65).

“The more I understand science the more I believe in God, because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication, and integrity of his creation” (73).

“Crick writes: ‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’ ” (73).

“Physicist John Polkinghorne describes its programme as:

Ultimately suicidal. If Crick’s thesis is true we could never know it. For, not only does it relegate our experiences of beauty, moral obligation, and religious encounter to the epiphenomenal scrapheap, it also destroys rationality. Thought is replaced by electro-chemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong. They simply happen… The very assertions of the reductionist himself are nothing”

*taken from God and Stephen Hawking by John C. Lennox.