Who has the gall to take on Stephen Hawking?

Who has the gall to take on Stephen Hawking?  Hawking is the poster boy for science, made so by the adulation of the scientific community of a first class intellect and popularized by PBS.  His intellect is magnified by his disability and the authority of his voice is augmented by its mechanical nature.  Hawking has come out in recent years as, not just a scientist, but an ardent atheist.  In his book The Grand Design, Hawking has decided to prove that God does not exist.

Enter John Lennox.  Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy and religion. He regularly teaches at many academic institutions including the Said Business School, Wycliffe Hall and the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, as well as also being a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum.  He has stood toe to toe with many of the more prominent atheists of this generation, including Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.  In this book, God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design is it anyway?, Lennox takes on Hawking's presuppositions and conclusions in The Grand Design.

For me, one small quote encapsulates the destruction of Hawking’s thought.  Lennox says, “Hawking cannot know that miracles have never occurred in the past, or that they might occur in the future. He is simply assuming what he wants to prove. He is expressing a belief based on his atheistic world-view, not on his science.”

For the Christian, the most salient point made by Lennox is this: that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pivotal event in history.  Science cannot disprove it, though it rails against it as against the laws.  Lennox triumphs in the thought that it is the existence of the laws that are the backdrop for God’s entrance into natural order and making the true eternal difference for us, living here in the natural order.

I recommend this, and other books, by Lennox hardily.