Regarding this perspective in the article "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean." It is not that neat, tidy, and easily delineated. Just for example, while there is an important distinction between explanation and meaning (although description and meaning would be the better way to express this insight), ultimately the two are related. For example, there is a difference between what it means to live in a universe where God either does not exist or is not needed on the one hand, and living in a universe in which one believes that the question of human origins and destiny destiny must be answered with reference to Divine purpose. There are practical implications as well. There is a difference in meaning between understanding the origins of one's illness as a spontaneous mutation visited upon one in an empty universe on the one hand or as a punishment visited upon one for sin by some divine vengeful potentate on the other.

I don't have much of an understanding of theology so I won't comment on that.

But Rabbi Sacks is wrong in his claim about a hemispheric divide in the brain between science/ explanation and religion/ interpretation.

That little chestnut from pop-psychology is the most over blown & (honestly) wrong claim that everyone thinks that we know about the brain. While there are some areas of task specialization in the brain, the vast majority of claims (perhaps 99%?) in the popular press about right brain and left brain differentiation are bunk.

Unfortunately, the rabbi's claims about the division of the brain fall into that category. I suspect that a good argument could be made that, because of the vast area of shared neural architecture and the role of the emotional regions in the limbic system, the cognitive skills of interpretation and explanation are very closely related tasks.

Dennis Roberts
(doctoral candidate in clinical psychology)

I would agree with Dennis on this, but I would also like to point out that Hawking's faith in spontaneity gives an impression of confidence in cosmology which is unfounded. When one reads among the various popular scientific journals, it should become apparent that the field may well have entered one of those impasses out of which great shifts in scientific paradigm are born. One could well consider dark matter and dark energy rationalizations to avoid having to deal with the possibility that our current gravitational theories do not work on galactic scales; other than the postulation of the mass needed to produce observed motion and distortion, they have no other known nature. Meanwhile there are growing complaints that string theory and its numeric relations are predictionless mathematical rationalizations that can be adjusted to fit anything. From my not-unread but also not-a-physicist viewpoint, the question of origins has become wildly speculative without benefit of evidence. In one respect the real motivation behind Hawking's statement is not his rejection of God as an origin, but his rejection of other universes as an origin. Personally I am quite willing to be remain a scientific agnostic and dismiss all such speculation as, well, speculation.

But speaking as a Christian, this all seems so very irrelevant. Our faith is founded in Christ, not in cosmology, and if one believes that Jesus, who died and rose again, is the Christ and the Son of God, then all this speculation becomes rather irrelevant. Surely it is impossible to demonstrate that the universe came into being causelessly, and given what we know there's nothing refuting a divine creation.

"given the existence of gravity, 'the universe can and will create itself from nothing'"

Ummmmm... Really? Is that seriously what Hawking is saying? Does gravity not count as something? Maybe by "creat[ing] itself" he means "order itself such that things coalesce and eventually produce new things." Surely he can't be talking about creation ex nihilo. I tend to side with the Hawking-types on this, but the statement above is quite strange indeed.

-Grant Charles Chaput

On several occasions I have almost produced teashirts saying:

"You can be a Quantum Accident if you want,
but a loving God made me."

What more is there to say?

"universe can and will create itself from nothing," so there is no need for God

Isn't this just semantics? Isn't Hawking just using the word "universe", where believers would use the word "God"?

JC Fisher

The problem with Hawking is that he is conceiving God in the traditional (reflecting part of the tradition, though not the most theologically deep part) as Top Down, when in fact God is the ultimate Bottom Up. He should read more Polkinghorne and Peacocke.

...that should be "Hawking's view"...

I see God as the underlying interplay of potential and realization that gives rise to all actuality. This God is not the explanation just for what we don't know [yet] but for what we do know. This is the God who lies behind Hawking's description of a self-generating universe, as the ultimate principle of self-generation itself.

Isn't Hawking just using the word "universe", where believers would use the word "God"?

I see God as the underlying interplay of potential and realization that gives rise to all actuality.

All we know for sure is that we exist, and our senses report the existence of the universe. All the rest is what we say about it -- that is, story. Yes, the story is old and complex, but it gets a lot of demonstrable physical facts wrong. I feel awed and grateful for the gift of existence, but the package seems to have come anonymously.

Murdoch Matthew,
husband of the undersigned