In their 2010 book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow set out to answer a big question: “Is the apparent ‘grand design’ of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion — or does science offer another explanation?” While questions about the origin of the universe were once, as they put it, “the province of philosophy,” they flatly assert on the opening page that “philosophy is dead. It has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.”
“A Law Like Gravity”
The question concerns the fine-tuning of the universe. Briefly stated, the term “fine-tuned universe” refers to the fact that the universe appears to have been set up “just so.” Its properties, including the initial conditions and laws of chemistry and physics, along with many otherwise inexplicable constants embedded therein, are all set within extremely precise tolerances which must be “just so” for life to exist. To all appearances, it manifests a “grand design” from which intelligent design theory infers the prior existence of a designing mind.
The thesis of The Grand Design, as stated in the closing chapter, is, “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” i.e., no designer required. Interestingly, the plot of the pop 2014 movie God’s Not Dead hinged on John Lennox’s philosophical dismantling of this exact claim. Lennox never appeared in the movie, but his rather simple refutation did lead to two subsequent documentaries after lead actor Kevin Sorbo became intrigued with his work. How is it, Sorbo wanted to know, that the Oxford mathematician possesses the intellectual fortitude to go toe to toe, philosophically, with the world’s most famous atheists?1
Hawking’s Tiny Loophole
In some ways, the forthcoming film The Story of Everything, out on April 30, offers an answer to that question, though not at all an explicit response to it. While Lennox does appear in the film and comments on The Grand Design, The Story of Everything takes up Hawking’s and Mlodinow’s thesis on their own turf, so to speak. From the perspective of physics, does their “another explanation” add up to a viable case for the universe creating itself out of nothing?
The short answer, according to philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, is, no.
Hawking proves the singularity,2 doesn’t much like its implications, because it seems to point to a kind of creation event, so he spent much of the rest of his career attempting to circumvent the conclusion of his own proof. And in the process, he developed these quantum cosmological ideas through a tiny loophole.
Ironically, though, as Meyer and others go on to explain, even the quantum cosmological model has “theistic implications.” Moreover, it still implies the prior existence of a mind behind the universe.
The Return of Philosophy
While it’s certainly true that physics and philosophy occupy different realms, philosophy is quite well suited to keeping up with creative developments in materialistic reasoning — even when it comes to physics. To be sure, scientists like Hawking and Mlodinow may offer another explanation. But for the scientific case of why their latest one doesn’t work, check out The Story of Everything, and then draw your own conclusion. Click here for theaters and showtimes.
Notes
- Against the Tide (2020) and Standing Against the World (2025).
- See The Story of Everything for an explanation of how Hawking’s singularity theorem contributed to the development of the Big Bang model of cosmology.