God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?

'The Grand Design', by eminent scientist Stephen Hawking, is the latest blockbusting contribution to the so-called New Atheist debate, and claims that the laws of physics themselves brought the Universe into being, rather than God. In this swift and forthright reply, John Lennox, Oxford mathematician and author of 'God's Undertaker', exposes the flaws in Hawking's logic. In lively, layman's terms, Lennox guides us through the key points in Hawking's arguments - with clear explanations of the latest scientific and philosophical methods and theories - and demonstrates that far from disproving a Creator God, they make his existence seem all the more probable.

Evolution, Creation and Intelligent Design

In The Origin of Species, Darwin advanced a scientific explanation of the design of organisms. The adaptations of organisms are outcomes not of chance, but of a process that, over time, causes the gradual accumulation of features beneficial to organisms, whenever these features increase the organisms’ chances of surviving and reproducing. There is “design” in the living world: eyes are designed for seeing, wings for flying, and kidneys for regulating the composition of the blood. The design of organisms comes about not by intelligent design, but by a natural process, which is creative through the interaction of chance and necessity.

Organisms are pervaded by imperfections, dysfunctions, cruelties, and even sadism. The theory of evolution accounts for these mishaps by natural selection, as the outcomes of natural processes, so that they need not be attributed to God’s explicit design.

Francisco Ayala