I watched the 2014 movie, The Theory of Everything, last
night. The movie is about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and his
relationship with his wife (later ex-wife, but still friend), Jane. It
starts from the time when he was a college student and met Jane at a
party.
A subject that recurs in the film is religion. Stephen Hawking was
an atheist, whereas Jane was a believer in God who attended the Church
of England. The film goes into the intersections between Hawking’s
theories (if I am using that term correctly, for I am not a scientist)
and the question of whether God exists.
According to the movie, Hawking was seeking an equation that would
explain everything, thereby supplanting the role that God fills in many
people’s minds. At first, Hawking proposed that the universe had a
beginning and came out of a black hole. Some believed that this was
consistent with theism (a belief in God), for many theists posit that
the universe had a beginning and thus needed a creator. Later, Hawking
would shift to saying that the universe had no boundaries and no
beginning. In an interesting scene, Hawking and Jane are explaining
Hawking’s work to their theistic friend Jonathan (whom Jane would later
marry). Jane is using a vegetable analogy and is saying that, if
everything is carrots, then one can logically conclude that the universe
had a beginning, but, when you incorporate peas into the equation, that
bet is off! Hawking says that God throws dice and does not let us know
where the dice are! Later in the movie, Hawking writes about knowing
the mind of God, and Jane then has some hope that Hawking has become
open to theism.
At the end of the movie, Hawking is asked before an auditorium if
there is a philosophy of life that helps him, considering that he is an
atheist. Hawking replies that, whatever our limitations, we can still
find something to succeed at, and that, when there is life, there is
hope.
I suppose that, as a theist (albeit not the most philosophically
sophisticated theist), I could say that I believe in God, regardless of
what Stephen Hawking has said. After all, there are plenty of
intelligent scientists and philosophers who believe in God, plus
Hawking’s own scenarios have changed over time, it appears to me. The
Hawking character in the movie last night was saying that the universe
had a beginning, but remember that quote of Hawking in the God’s Not Dead
movie in which Hawking said that the universe created itself? I could
ask why anything Hawking says should challenge my faith, when he appears
to change his mind. I could ask that, and yet I should do so with
humility. Hawking is talking about concepts that are way over my head,
and that I only can understand on an elementary level, if even that!
Plus, even when Hawking was wrong, he still had justifications for his
positions. In the movie, Hawking tells Jonathan that physics is not
about “belief.” That does not imply infallibility, but it does imply
having justifications for his position. Even if Hawking was wrong, he
was a lot better in his wrong stance than many of us are when we
are right.
I was thinking of the question of why I am a theist. I thought of a
passage that was in Ahiqar, which may date to the seventh-sixth
centuries B.C.E. Ahiqar 160/69 states (in J.M. Lindenberger’s
translation): “[If] a man is [not] under the care of the gods, then how
can he guard himself against his inner wickedness?”
Personally-speaking, I depend on God to keep my inner wickedness in
check. Now, being a theist does not mean that one will be perfect. In
the movie, Jane was a theist, yet she was attracted to Jonathan, while
she was married to Stephen; that is understandable and human. And,
conversely, a person can be moral without believing in God. For me,
though, I like the idea of having a God to turn to for love and support
when I am struggling against my own wickedness, and I find that placing
myself within a cosmic context of God’s love for me and God’s plan to
redeem me and the world can give me the strength to have appropriate or
healthy attitudes. Having some philosophy to help one through life can
be helpful: even Hawking in the movie had one.
While I was watching the movie, I was reading Joel Kraemer’s
biography of the twelfth century Jewish thinker, Moses Maimonides.
Maimonides was asking how we can arrive at the point where we love God.
Different people would give different answers to this: an evangelical
Christian, for example, might say that we love God when we realize that
God loved us, enough to send his Son to die for us. Maimonides,
however, said that we come to love God as we contemplate creation, and
see God’s wisdom therein.
I am not a science person. I remember an atheist-turned-Christian
who was criticizing an atheist article that I posted, an article that
said that string theory shows that we do not need God to explain how the
universe came to be. This commenter was questioning that idea, based
on what we know and do not know about string theory, but he also said
that he wishes that atheists and Christians would step back and
appreciate the universe, rather than fighting about it and using it to
buttress their agendas. Part of me identified with what he was saying,
but part of me did not. Why should I care about what the universe is
like, I wondered, if it is not part of a story about God’s love and how I
can arrive at a state of spiritual health and fulfillment? There are
black holes out there in the universe—-so what? That probably sounds a
bit narcissistic on my part, and maybe it is.
As I think some more, I wonder if learning about the universe can
somehow enhance my wonder and appreciation of the universe, and even
God. I am not talking about looking to the universe for proof or
evidence that God exists—-resting my faith on the universe having a
beginning, or being fine-tuned for life on earth. I am talking more
about appreciating the universe for what it is, and allowing that
enhance my sense of wonder, and maybe even teach me about God. There
are a lot of mysterious things out there in the universe, and scientists
are continually adjusting things that they think they know as they
learn that there is more to the story. Hawking in the movie said that
God throws dice, and we do not know where the dice are. A number of
theists may think that theistic belief is buttressed more by a Newtonian
model—-one in which the universe is fairly orderly and predictable.
“Where does that order come from? It must come from God,” they say, and
they believe that the order of the universe attests to the orderly
wisdom that God has. They may have a point, and yet could not the
unpredictability and disorder in the universe teach us something about
God? Those things could teach us about God’s mystery, God’s depth, and
the importance of humility.
I recently watched a speech by Rob Bell, a pastor. It was part of
his “Everything Is Spiritual” Tour. Bell was talking about science. He
referred to quarks disappearing and reappearing unpredictably and
without any explanation, and how there are scientists who say that the
universe has eleven dimensions. I thought that Bell was jumping to
conclusions, in important areas. He was trying to argue that the
quarks’ disappearance and reappearance show that there is a personality
behind the universe, and, while I am intrigued by his claim that there
are scientists who believe that the universe has a personality, I do not
think that is a necessary conclusion. I was especially turned off
when, near the end of the message, Bell was saying that atheists do not
disbelieve in God for intellectual reasons, but for spiritual reasons:
that they are rejecting God, when God’s existence should be obvious to
them. I hate hearing this from conservative pastors, and I hate hearing
it from Rob Bell. (And, yes, Paul’s statement to that effect in Romans
1 turns me off, too.) Such an approach does not seek to understand
where atheists come from or acknowledge that they may have valid reasons
for their conclusions, but it puts them down and judges them. Still, I
did appreciate a number of things that Rob Bell was saying: the
universe is more mysterious and larger than many of us might assume, and
that insight perhaps can influence how we approach God, or
Christianity.