Prof. John Lennox: Natural Laws or Mathematical Equations Have No Creative Power

Epigraph:

بَدِيعُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ ۖ وَإِذَا قَضَىٰ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ

He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth, and when He decrees something, He says only, ‘Be,’ and it is. (Al Quran 2:117)

Presented by Zia H Shah MD

There is a quote from Stephen Hawking, from his book: A Brief History of Time, as he describes the futility of the idea that mathematical laws alone can create a universe:

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Hawking question is formulated as, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” There is no what that can be the answer to that question, only a Who — the God who created the cosmos and gives it its meaning, who created Stephen Hawking and put within him such a hunger for knowledge. The God, we might say, who breathed fire into the equations.

I applaud Prof. John Lennox for a beautiful presentation against atheism in the above video. What he did not mention in this video was that Isaac Newton did not believe in a Triune God and was a Unitarian Christian. Lennox rightly calls out Stephen Hawking, Peter Atkins and Lawrence Krauss for faulty reasoning but same can be applied to Prof. Lennox when he comes to defense of Trinity and vicarious atonement in Christianity. With this simple thought I can use all the good life time work of the esteemed scholar for the service of the Quran and Islam.

And why do I need him to do the talking rather than myself? The esteemed professor explained that also in the short span of 5 minutes in the above video. Most of us have a strong vulnerability of looking at the CV of the person talking rather than the reasons of the argument. Lennox cites this to explain the influence of Stephen Hawking and I can do the same to explain Lennox edge over me for he has a shining CV:

John Carson Lennox (born 7 November 1943) is a mathematician, bioethicist, and Christian apologist originally from Northern Ireland. He has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and God (like his books, Has Science Buried God and Can Science Explain Everything), and has had public debates with atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

He retired from professorship where he specialised in group theory. He is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics^[2] at the University of Oxford, an Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford University, and has worked as adjunct lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University and at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School and a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum.

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