Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book, The Grand Design, maintain that God is not required for the existence of the universe. Instead the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.

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. (Wall Street Journal, September 4-5, 2010)

Professor John Lennox of Oxford University writes,

Hawking’s argument appears to me illogical when he says that the existence of gravity means the creation of the universe was inevitable. But how did gravity exist in the first place? Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth? Similarly, when Hawking argues, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, that it was only necessary for ‘the blue touch paper’ to be lit to ‘set the universe going’, the question must be: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not God? Hawking, like so many other critics of religion, wants us to believe we are nothing but a random collection of molecules, the end product of a mindless process.  (Daily Mail, September 11, 2010)

Do you consider yourself “a random collection of molecules…the end process of a mindless process”? If so, nothing that you do really matters. No wonder morality and civility is under attack in our culture. This kind of teaching is ultimately destructive of personal relationships, marriage, family and civil society. It is nothing new. Those who think that recent scientific discoveries have created a new intellectual environment are ignorant of history. Genesis addresses the question of the creation of the universe because there were numerous explanations competing in the marketplace of ideas in the ancient world. Modern scientific cosmological theories are merely the latest ideas to be put forward. The earliest Christian understanding of Genesis is found in the writings of the second century bishop of Antioch, Theophilus. He was countering such ideas that

the universe’s existence is simply a matter of chance and that human beings can therefore find no meaning in this life. Or – the apparent opposite – that what happens in the world is not at all a matter of chance but is ruled by an iron necessity, fate, which some Christians liked to think derived from the word for a chain, suggesting that humans were inexorably bound to their fate. The second century, too, was the period of Gnosticism, with its ideas that the universe was the product of a god either incompetent or malevolent, and thus flawed or actually evil, with salvation being seen as escape from the evil meshes of the world and the clutches of an ill-disposed god.” (Andrew Louth, in David Wilkinson, ed., Reading Genesis After Darwin, p.41)

These ideas are still very much alive in the 21st century. Many people live every day in the belief that there is no purpose in life, no meaning in the cosmos, and that they are here just by chance, by accident. Many teachers of evolution go beyond the bounds of science and draw the conclusion that life is full of happenstance and randomness. They proclaim a philosophy that the cosmos is unfathomable, essentially pointless, impersonal, and senseless. The modern intellectual establishment is dominated by the belief that the universe is governed by impersonal physical laws. It breeds cosmic pessimists who claim that the universe is fundamentally indifferent to human life. This leads to a fatalism that can result either in despair and depression, or a hedonistic attitude that we must take what pleasure we can, for life is short. Because there is no belief in the personal Creator, who has a purpose and plan for their lives, modern secular men and women make gods of success, and personal fulfillment in order to create their sense of self-importance. Without a belief in God the Creator we have to manufacture a belief in ourselves as our own creator. This is a burden too great for the human psyche. To be god one must be perfect, and yet we are fallible, sinful human beings in need of love and forgiveness.  We expect too much of ourselves and others.

Gore Vidal, author, playwright, politician and commentator whose vast range of published works and public remarks were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, died on Tuesday, July 31, 2012. Age and illness did not bring him closer to God. He looked to no existence beyond this one.

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each one of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy’s edge,” he once wrote, “all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all (Hillel Italie, AP, Florida Times-Union, August 2, 2012)

Is it? How does he know? What if he is wrong? What if he was created for a purpose and must give account of himself to his Creator? What if there is more to life than he realized? Christians believe that we cannot create ourselves. We are not self-invented. We do not exist for ourselves but for the One who created us. The sooner we learn this the sooner we can find our fulfillment. The sooner we discover who is the true God and Creator, the sooner we learn to distinguish between the gods who masquerade as our saviors.

We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven and on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. But not everyone knows this (1 Cor 8:4-6).

We need to bear witness to this in our culture. We need to recover this understanding of creation and salvation. We are brought into this amazing universe by a loving God who is our purpose for living (‘for whom we live’). We are here to grow in the love of God. We came into being through the agency of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we find life in all its fullness by living through him. What a different picture this is of life, of the universe, from the secular philosophers! Your life is not a matter of chance – it was planned! You are not here by accident but by design.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be  (Ps 139:13-16).

Your life is not ruled by fate to which you are bound. Life is neither inexorably determined nor random. God is not indifferent to you. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) If the cosmos is unfathomable and essentially pointless, why bother to study and explore it? God has given it to us to enjoy and to discover. Life is a great adventure, not a senseless exercise.

John Piper recalled eleven resolutions Clyde Kilby, professor at Wheaton College and C.S. Lewis scholar, made for staying alive to God’s glory in creation.

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russellbefore his death, when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence but, just as likely, ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are, but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewiscalls their “divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic” existence.

7. I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably as Lewissuggests, an old book and timeless music.

8. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, “fulfill the moment as the moment.” I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

9. If for nothing more than the sake of a change of view, I shall assume my ancestry to be from the heavens rather than from the caves.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

11. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of LewisCarroll, the “child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.”  (John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p.79)

Our existence, and the existence of the universe, is a gift to be gratefully received, to be opened up and used. There should be a sense of thanksgiving about life. We give thanks for gravity, and the processes of nature. We give thanks for freedom to choose, and deliverance from a fatalistic view of life. Those who do not know their Creator and Savior cannot enjoy their blessings in the same way. To dismiss God as unnecessary to life is to diminish your life. It is dangerous, arrogant, and senseless. Instead of thinking that God is not required I would say that God is essential for our existence and wellbeing. There is no substitute. You cannot reduce life to a random collection of molecules. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life in all its fullness.” (John 10:10)

I can recall attending the funeral of a respected and successful surgeon, the father of one of our daughter’s classmates. He was a charming gentleman but had no faith in God. The service was devoid of hope. It consisted of nostalgic reminiscences with no sense of a future or eternal life. It was very sad and depressing. Unbelief is a dead end.

How necessary is God to you? The more necessary God is to you, the more real he becomes. Six hundred years before Christ, the Greek poet Epimenides wrote, “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)  God is absolutely necessary to us because “he himself gives all men life, and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:25)

As you breathe every breath, breathe in the Spirit of God. As you look at the world around you and above you, ask for the Light of the World to illumine your sight. As you touch, taste and hear, be touched by the healing hand of Christ, taste of his goodness, and hear his voice speaking to you. Do you find it hard to believe? Then pray:

Open my eyes,  that I may see

Glimpses of truth you have for me.

Place in my hands the wonderful key,

That shall unclasp and set me free.

 

Open my ears,  that I may hear

Voices of truth you send me clear;

And while the wave-notes fall on my ear,

Everything false will disappear.

 

Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine.

(Clara H. Scott)