God or Gravity: The Self-Contradicting Grand Design of

Stephen Hawking
Sometime in 2010, the world's famous physicist Stephen Hawking, in his book “The Grand
Design”, declared that "God does not exist," putting himself in the line of Douglas Adams,
James Watson, George Eliot, Richard Dawkins, Nadine Gordimer, Simone de Beauvoir,
Victor Stenger, Karl Marx, and many more. According to him, God is a delusion and a "by
product of a mind of superstitious and scientifically uneducated people". In his column in
Yahoo News (http://ph.news.yahoo.com/commentary-rational-believe-god-
054003949.html), Giovanni Serritella argues that the logic of Hawking has loopholes and that
the hypothesis that the universe was created by a supernatural deity remains to be the more
‘likely’ explanation of the universe's creation than the conclusion made by Hawking.
 
Bang and Expand: All Hail to Gravity?
 
Hawking's "Grand Design" is just one of the works related with Cosmology that came after
the Big Bang Theory, a scientific theory that was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre, which
states that the universe before was in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded
rapidly (Wollack, 2009). Both are concerned with the universe, but the former is more
focused on the role of gravity in the universe's formation and current expansion.
 
In Hawking's theory, the universe was formed because of the existence of gravity. "Because
there is law like gravity," says Hawking, "the universe can and will create itself from
nothing". Serritella correctly understood what Hawking is saying: gravity preexisted before
the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago (Komatsu, 2009) and caused the existence of
our ever-expanding universe.
 
However, this could not be possible. According to Serritella, Einstein's Theory of Relativity
may be used to debunk Hawking's contention, at least with his gravity thing since the latter
is illogical under the former. Quoting Serritella:
 
"Einstein's theory of relativity says that time is not the same for everyone but
is "relative" to how fast one is moving. At variable speeds or in the presence of
weak and strong gravity time behaves elastically, it can stretch and shrink and
even stop.”
 
The Commentary went on further: "[u]nder extreme gravity like at the moment of the birth of the
universe (the big bang), gravity was so intense that time was 'compressed' to a zero point. Not only
space but time itself was born at that moment. There was no
'before'" (Serritella, http://ph.news.yahoo.com).
 
Therefore, the notion that gravity existed even before time is quite unlikely. And come to
think of it, assuming for the sake of argument that indeed it was gravity, then where did
gravity come from? Serritella even went on by saying a creator (in Hawking's contention,
gravity) is quite unlikely to create something (in this case the universe) without being put in
existence first. Where did it (gravity) come from and how did it come into existence?
 
Brilliant and Celebrated Physicist can have Loopholes, too
 
It is Hawking's contention that the "universe creates itself from nothing." However, as
correctly pointed by Serritella, that "nothing" is actually something: gravity. Hawking is then
contradicting himself, exposing his "Grand Design" to the possibility of being scientifically
rejected. How could a “nothing” create something when that something was created by
another something? Which is which?

Hawking sustains that the creation of the universe is something that is not out of the plan of
God, but because of the law of science. But then, any law of science does not create a
phenomenon, but merely explains. As argued by Serritella, laws of physics in particular
"cannot create anything or cause anything to happen. Rather than ultimate creators of the
universe, they are just descriptions on how things behave." And the law on gravity cannot
just magically create the cosmos even before the existence of the thing it governs.
 
Hawking is still a piece of genius
 
Undeniably, Hawking deserves in the hall of famous physicists for his contributions in the
academe and the sciences. He is the genius that he is. However, it is my humble submission
that his Grand Design is quite off. His self-contradictions and loop-holed conclusions are not
plausible enough to be believed and followed. This goes to show that Hawking, brilliant as
he is, and other brilliant people like him, are also susceptible to illogical inferences and self-
contradictions.

References:
 
Komatsu, E. et al. 2009. "Five-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations:
Cosmological Interpretation" in Astrophysical journal supplement. University of Chicago Press.
Chicago.
 
Serritella, G. 22 December 2011. "Commentary: Is It Rational to Believe in God" in Jakarta
Post/Asia News Network (through Yahoo News: http://ph.news.yahoo.com/commentary-
rational-believe-god-054003949.html). Retrieved 24 December 2011.
 
Wollack, E. 10 December 2010. "Cosmology: The Study of the Universe" in Universe
101.NASA: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/.