The last book written by Lucasian Professor of Physics, Stephen Hawking, before he died attempted to answer what he considered the most important questions that humans can ask. The first three are:
Hawking notes the first two questions can be answered either by religion or science. He concludes the religion answer is wrong and his science answer, which we will now explain, is correct.

Hawking's prominence in science is indicated by the fact that the introduction to his book by leading astrophysicist, Kip Thorne, noted that Hawking, an aggressive atheist, is buried in one of the most hallowed places on Earth, Westminster Abbey Church in London between creationist Isaac Newton and agnostic Charles Darwin. Hawking's daughter, Lucy, wrote her father was "dearly loved and respected … by millions of people … from all around the world," especially scientists and educated laymen. Hawking is also "one of the most celebrated and respected personalities of our century … the Einstein of our time" whose theories influenced "heads of state, students, scientists, and even the Pope."

Hawking's answer to how the universe began is the Big Bang. He explains that religion was an early attempt to answer where all matter and life came from until science began developing about 200 years ago. Now, he informs us, science has shown religion to be wrong. In  Hawking's words, "science provides better and more consistent answers, but people will always cling to religion, because it gives comfort, and they do not … understand science."

He ignores the fact that many people both trust and understand science and still accept the Christian explanation for life and the universe. Hawking, a page later, admits he "prefers to think that everything can be explained … by the laws of nature," but never attempts to explain the origin of, and what sustains, these laws. These laws include the four forces that hold the entire universe, and everything in it, together, namely gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism.

These forces are called laws only because they function consistently. For example, any two masses always attract each other with a force equal to the gravitation constant multiplied by the product of the two masses, divided by the square of the distance between them. Gravity always works, but why and how action at a distance (meaning an object can be moved, changed, or otherwise affected without being physically touched by another object) works Hawking does not attempt to answer in his book, or elsewhere. Nor has anyone documented how this law works, why it always works, and even a 1,280-page book written by leading scientists failed to answer this question.

Hawking assumes these self-sustaining forces are laws that ultimately explain everything in the universe. Consequently, what he believes is contrary to those who push the idea that science and religion are separate and distinct fields of inquiry. Furthermore, we do not need God to explain the existence of the universe or life.  Some claim that God's existence "is an invalid question for science," but Hawking and other leading scientists have concluded that it is a valid idea that has been rejected by science.

Hawking also explains how life was created without God as follows: "somehow, some … atoms came to be arranged in the form of molecules of DNA… As DNA reproduced itself, there would have been random errors, many of which would have been harmful, and … a few errors would have been favorable to the survival of the species—these would have been chosen by Darwinian natural selection." Thus, he concludes, humans and all life are the result of chance, and billions of mistakes, mistakes of which an estimated 99.9 percent are harmful or near neutral, which, in fact, have been shown to add up to produce genetic meltdown, not progressive evolution.

Hawking added that evolution first produced simple organic molecules, then multi-cellular organisms which, after another few billion years, evolved into fish that, after another million years or so, evolved into mammals, and, after a few hundred more million years, evolved into humans. Needless to say, the claimed evidence for this view is very problematic at best and, as a whole, the observed evidence unequivocally refutes it.

Since Hawking concluded that science has proven the origin of all life is by biological evolution, the last question left for religion is how the universe began. This question, Hawking assures us, has been answered by the Big Bang. The Big Bang ultimately has caused the creation of everything from nothing. The first something that appeared from nothing was "perhaps smaller than a proton." Then the expansion of the universe occurred from this smaller-than-a-proton object and the stars and planets soon followed. Thus, the Big Bang explains the origin of space, matter, energy, and time, all as somehow appearing from nothing.

Hawking opines, thanks to the Big Bang, "you can get a whole universe for free" because "the fantastically enormous universe of space and energy can materialize out of nothing" by the Big Bang. Thus, Hawking writes, "the universe itself, in all its mind-boggling vastness and complexity, could simply have popped into existence… [and] we do not need a God to set it up so that the Big Bang could bang." Atheists respond to theists that, if God created the universe, who created God? Theists respond with the first law of thermodynamics, viz matter cannot be created or destroyed, and for every result there must be a sufficient cause.

The "people of the book", Jews, Christians and Muslims, have taught that God always was and always will be. They feel this truth is more consistent than the view that concluded nothing created everything in violation of the law that all events must have a cause. Scientists agree with this law, but say exceptions exist, namely the Big Bang which came from nothing.  The price for disagreeing with the view that nothing created everything and supporting the God conclusion, includes ending literally hundreds of careers orchestrated by Dogmatic Darwinists.

The Big Bang that hatched from the small proton is the ultimate black hole that does not behave like the black holes Hawking describes in his Chapter 5. Before the Big Bang there was no matter, no space, no energy, and no time. The Big Bang somehow created space, time, matter and energy. How can a particle smaller than the size of a proton explode (actually science teaches time and space rapidly expanded) to produce the many trillions of stars in the many billions of galaxies existing in the universe today. Not only is the origin of the seed that birthed the universe unexplained, except that God was not required to create it, but also unexplained is why it behaved so much unlike black holes, which absorb not only matter that comes too close, but possesses gravity levels so enormous that they do not normally even allow light to leave, hence the name black hole. 

Hawking has no doubt that this story explains the origin of the universe, but acknowledges this Big Bang "is hard to grasp, but it's true . . .  [and] you don't need a God to create it," because it (the universe) can create itself. In an attempt to explain the idea that nothing produced everything, Hawking notes matter and anti-matter annihilate each other, producing gamma rays. Consequently, the reverse reaction produces matter, ignoring the fact that it is energy in this reaction that produces matter, not nothing.

Hawking adds that, before the Big Bang there was no time, thus this was the first uncaused First Cause, because there was "no time for a cause to exist in." As is obvious, his entire line of reasoning rapidly degenerates into speculative, often nonsensical circular reasoning by a man who has been given the stature by his peers, and society as a whole, as one of the greatest scientists that has ever graced the surface of the Earth.

Hawking adds, "when people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them the question itself makes no sense." The reason is because "Time didn't exist before the Big Bang, so there is no time for God to make the universe in." If God existed before the Big Bang, He could have created time first, then once time existed he could have created the universe. Or, instead of the Big Bang somehow doing the creating, God could have created time, space, matter and energy simultaneously, and then fashioned these things into the universe.

This entire issue of the origin of the universe was ignored for much of history because it was widely believed by the Greeks, Romans and other major civilizations that the universe, including time, space, matter and energy, has always existed. As Hawking correctly pointed out, if the universe has always existed it would have heated up (and eventually cooled down) equally everywhere, producing uniform temperature throughout the universe due to entropy. For the same reason the night sky would be lit up with light equally everywhere.    

Hawking opines about another problem: "as far as we can tell, the universe goes on in space for ever and is much the same no matter how far it goes." If it was infinitely old it would appear to go on forever, but if it was created by the Big Bang, depending on how long ago the Big Bang occurred, it will have distance limits. In the end, Hawking admits that "the origin of the universe [is] apparently … beyond the scope of science," adding we haven't solved the origin of the universe problem yet, "but we have made a lot of progress."   

His review of the problem documents my conclusion that secular scientists are farther from an explanation of the origin of the universe today than ever before. Hawking even admits that "all we can do is assign a probability to a particular history of the universe" to explain its origin. What is the probability? 90%? 50%? 10%? or 1%? This is a far cry from Hawking's claim that we have answered the problem of the origin of the universe so confidently that he believes the case is now closed.

Hawking also reviewed the evidence for the Big Bang, ignoring the many good opposing explanations for the evidence used to support the Big Bang worldview. He admits that the Big Bang has created problems for atheistic science because this view requires invoking "an outside agency, which for convenience one can call God, to determine how the universe began." Since the worldview of scientists determines their interpretation of the facts they discover, the Big Bang was reinterpreted by scientists to fit into an atheistic scenario.

In fact, rather than being science, modern cosmology is a set of vaguely connected just-so stories driven by the ideology of naturalism. The cosmological discoveries have only created more questions that naturalism cannot answer without matter, energy, time and space popping into existence for unexplainable reasons in unexplainable locations.

In short, Hawking's very revealing work only reinforces those true-believer readers who want to believe in materialistic naturalism. Hawking's daughter, Lucy, wrote that the arguments reviewed in his work have been used by her "to reduce a vicar to tears with her [Lucy's] close examination of his [the vicar's] proof of the existence of God." To critical readers, it illustrates the feet of clay of the theories of the world's leading evolutionary cosmologists.