Book Review of God and Stephen Hawking by John Lennox

GOD AND STEPHEN HAWKING
By John C. Lennox
ISBN 978-0-7459-5549-0
Published by Lion Hudson
Reviewed by Clint Walker

Much has been made in recent years about the “new atheism”. I have yet to figure out what the phenomenon is all about. Thankfully there are people like John Lennox, who is a mathematician, a scholar, and skilled debater, and a leader in both explaining the theories of the new atheists, and refuting them.

John Lennox is about to release God and Stephen Hawking in the United States. It is a small book. Not even a hundred pages. It is not meant to be an exhaustive text on the intellectual coherence of God’s existence. Instead, God and Stephen Hawking is a book that is focused on answering the objections to faith posited by Stephen Hawking in his book The Grand Design. Step-by-step, Lennox engages many of Hawking’s arguments, and shows the flaws with each of them. He takes on Hawking’s description of “the laws of nature”, the multiverse, and his dismissal of philosophy as unnecessary in the light of scientific discovery.

As I read it, Hawking argues for a position that science is not only able to describe natural processes, but metaphysical realities as well. And by doing so, Hawking describes a universe that is self-creating and self-perpetuating without a creator. Thus, because he can describe a coherent theory of the physical world without God, he believes he has proven to his readers that God does not exist.

God and Stephen Hawking is brief, but that does not mean that it is easy to understand. The author in very thorough in describing the arguments of Stephen Hawking, and then sharing why he believes his perspective is superior to Hawking’s ideas. In the process, he cites ancient philosophers, Einstein, and many others. This is a very good book, but it is clearly written for a very specific audience. For the average reader, God and Stephen Hawking will require a slow and careful reading. However, the knowledge gained from reading this brilliant defense of the existence of God will be worth the effort.