Is it true that the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics—that is, do the laws of physics, rather than the will of God, offer the true explanation for how life on Earth came into existence?

New Atheists claim that the findings of science disprove the existence of Allāh. In their view, our understanding of how the universe operates has advanced so far that invoking Allāh is now redundant and unnecessary. That is, they argue we can explain the workings of the universe entirely without reference to a Creator. They boast that scientists can describe what happened to our universe as early as a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, understand the most complex interactions between atoms and molecules, know how the living cell functions, and have mapped the entire human genome. Therefore, they claim, the awe-inspiring sophistication of the natural world can be accounted for purely through physical laws such as gravity. In his most recent book, The Grand Design, the renowned British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking—arguably the most well-known space scientist since Albert Einstein—asserted that the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the true explanation for how life on Earth came into being. According to Hawking, the origin of the universe, or the Big Bang, did not result from divine intervention but was instead inevitable due to the law of gravity. Hawking’s book advances the argument that: “because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.’’¹ Oddly and unreasonably enough, Hawking’s simplistic and misguided argument has been hailed as groundbreaking and has resonated with a skeptical public in the secular West. From the outset, Hawking runs into a logical contradiction when, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, he claims that it was only necessary for “the blue touch paper” to be lit to “set the universe going.” But the question inevitably arises: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not Allāh? Hawking asserts that the universe did not require a God to begin, as it was capable of launching its own existence—arguing that it began with the Big Bang, which simply followed the inevitable laws of physics. However, it is logically incoherent to say that something is the cause of itself. A non-existent thing cannot bring itself into existence precisely because it does not yet exist—it is nothing. It has no power, no structure, no properties, and no laws; it is sheer non-being. And nothing, by definition, cannot do anything, because it is nothing. For the universe to have created itself, it would have to exist before it existed—a clear violation of the basic and undeniable principle of causality. For instance, a human being who does not yet exist cannot cause himself to exist. Cows, cats, flowers, and fish cannot account for their own existence, because their existence depends on external causes. In other words, created things are contingent beings—they depend on something outside themselves for their existence. They are never the cause of their own existence—never. A thing cannot cause itself. Likewise, the universe cannot be the cause of itself. Hawking attempted to sidestep the fact that, since there was literally no physical reality prior to the Big Bang—nothing whatsoever—a non-physical agent transcending the physical universe is required to account for the origin and cause of all physical reality. He did this by suggesting that gravity caused the Big Bang. Under normal circumstances, such a theory would not be problematic—one thing, such as gravity, can indeed give rise to another, such as the condensation of stars from hydrogen and helium. But the issue arises when Hawking claims that the law of gravity explains the existence of all physical reality. In other words, gravity is cast as the ultimate creator—a kind of “Gravity God.” Hawking’s reasoning becomes deeply irrational when he insists that the mere existence of gravity makes the creation of the universe inevitable. It is entirely legitimate to ask: how did gravity itself come to exist? Who put it there? What was the creative force behind its origin? Newton was able to describe gravity, but even he acknowledged: “Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws. But whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the consideration of my readers.’’² What we call the laws of physics—including the law of gravity—are merely mathematical descriptions of how the world operates; they are not agents. Gravity is something, not nothing. But the central question that must be addressed is not what processes were involved in the development of physical things already in existence, but rather, what caused any physical thing to begin to exist in the first place. This is a question for philosophy and theology, lying outside the domain and limitations of physics. Funnily enough, Hawking confuses a first-order cause (God) with a second-order cause (such as the law of gravity). Yet a first-order, transcendent, and non-contingent cause is necessary to explain the existence of any second-order cause, including gravity. This brings us back to the self-evident truth: a thing cannot be the cause of itself. God, as the First Cause, operates within nature through secondary causes like gravity. That is, gravity functions as a secondary cause only because it has been made to do so by the will of the Omnipotent God. Contrary to what Hawking and other like-minded atheists claim, physical laws can never offer a complete explanation of the universe, because laws, in and of themselves, do not create anything. Rather, they merely describe what happens under certain conditions. Hawking clearly confuses law with agency and thereby commits a category mistake—a semantic or ontological error in which a property is attributed to something that, by nature, cannot possess it. Attributing the power of creation to gravity alone, without Allāh, is like claiming the laws of physics created the jet engine without the involvement of aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle. Of course, the laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to design it, construct it, fuel it, and start it. That is, while the jet engine could not have been created without the laws of physics, its actual development and creation required Whittle’s ingenuity and agency. In the same way, the laws of physics could never have built the universe; some agency must have been involved. Indisputably, gravity alone cannot serve as a sufficient cause for the entire universe. As Brian Thomas, a science writer and editor at the Institute for Creation Research, observes: “pointing out qualities of already-existing energies is no more an explanation for their origin than pointing out how the energy-of-motion in a rolling ball will be exactly matched by the energy-of-resistance from friction. Neither quantity answers where the ball came from and who or what pushed it.’’³ Hawking suggested that the physical universe existed before the Big Bang as a simplified system of physical laws. That is, there were laws already in place which, he claimed, could be understood as the cause of the Big Bang and the subsequent development of the universe. However, such a theory is merely an “add-on” to the Big Bang theory, not a genuine explanation of why the universe exists. It is a step backward in time, rather than an answer to why time and matter came into being in the first place. In other words, it fails to address the fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It is clear that something can be the cause of something else—parents bring children into existence, seeds cause plants to grow, and so on. But so-called pre-Big-Bang physical laws do not explain why the universe exists, for we are still left with the pressing question: who or what caused these laws? Why did they exist at all? One cannot simply declare, “They always existed,” and treat the matter as settled, as though the question itself is invalid. To use a simple analogy, even if it were metaphysically possible to find a chain of infinite length—a scenario granted here only for the sake of argument—the chain’s infinite length would still not explain its existence. The question “Who made it?” remains. No matter how long it is, the chain is still contingent upon a maker. Its existence calls for an explanation, and its length does nothing to provide it. Hawking insists that gravity is the answer to the age-old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” In his view, gravity is the ultimate creator—what might be called the “Gravity God.” But this answer, unfortunately for him, simply does not hold up. In essence, Hawking has attempted to refute the logic of the classical argument for God’s existence—which maintains that since the universe exists, and since something cannot bring itself into being without violating the foundational principle of causality, a cause outside the universe must exist (namely, God)—by merely denying the second premise. Was the universe brought into existence by God? Hawking would respond no; it was just the product of ‘spontaneous creation,’ and he considers the matter settled. Such reasoning collapses under scrutiny. Sir Isaac Newton, Hawking’s own eminent predecessor, reached a far more reasonable and accurate conclusion about the origin of the universe: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God ‘pantokrator,’ or Universal Ruler….”⁴ Likewise, Albert Einstein—widely regarded as the most influential physicist of the twentieth century—remarked: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe, a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”⁵ In short, God and the laws of physics are not in conflict, and Hawking’s fusillade cannot shake the foundations of a faith grounded in evidence.

Finally, it is worth noting that much of the rationale behind atheists’ claim that God is not needed for the universe to be created—or that the laws of physics render God unnecessary—rests on the assumption of a deep-seated conflict between science and religion. This is a discord we as Muslims do not recognize. For us believers, the beauty and precision of the scientific laws only strengthen our faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. Without a doubt, the more we understand science, the more we believe in Allāh, because our wonder at the sophistication of His creation grows deeper. Indeed, far from being in conflict with science, faith actually makes perfect scientific sense. In fact, science flourished so vigorously in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries precisely because of the conviction that the laws of nature, which were then being discovered and defined, reflected the will of a divine law-giver. In other words, science has been driven forward by the widespread belief in a rational creative force—known as God—who made all scientific laws intelligible. It is striking that Hawking, in attacking religion, places so much emphasis on the Big Bang theory, for this very theory is fully compatible with the religious narrative of creation. In short, no matter how much scientific evidence is gathered to explain the mechanisms by which the universe may have emerged from the quantum foam, science can never disprove the existence of Allāh; on the contrary, it points powerfully and undeniably to Him.