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so much emphasis on the Big Bang theory, because, even if the non-believers don’t like it, the Big Bang resonates powerfully with the biblical narrative of creation. That is why, before the Big Bang gained currency, so many leading scientists were keen to dismiss it, since it seemed to support the Bible story. Some clung to Aristotle’s view of the “eternal universe” without beginning or end; but this theory, and later variants of it, are now discredited.
    Hawking, however, contents himself with saying:
    According to the Old Testament, God created Adam and Eve only six days into creation. Bishop Ussher, primate of all Ireland from 1625 to 1656, placed the origin of the world even more precisely, at nine in the morning on October 27, 4004 BC . We take a different view: that humans are a recent creation but that the universe itself began much earlier, about 13.7 billion years ago. 38
     
    It is clear that Hawking, though he has thought in depth about the interpretation of the data of science, has not thought very seriously about the interpretation of the biblical data. Some might think that resting content with Ussher’s interpretation of the Bible is like resting content with Ptolemy’s interpretation of the universe with its fixed earth and all the heavenly bodies rotating around it – something which Hawking would not dream of doing.
    If Hawking had engaged a little more with biblical scholarship, rather than simply putting the biblical creation account into the same pigeonhole as Norse, Mayan, Africana and Chinese myths, he might have discovered that the Bible itself leaves the time of creation open. In the structure of the text of Genesis, the statement “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” does not form part of the creation “week” but clearly precedes it; and so, however one interprets the days of creation, neither the age of the earth nor that of the universe is specified; and so there is no necessary conflict between what Genesis says and the 13.7 billion years yielded by scientific calculation.
    As Hawking points out, the first actual scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning did not appear until the early 1900s. The Bible, however, has been quietly asserting that fact for millennia. It would be good if credit were given where it is due.

3 God or the multiverse?
     
    In trying to avoid the evidence that is visible to all for the existence of a divine intelligence behind nature, atheist scientists are forced to ascribe creative powers to less and less credible candidates, like mass/energy, the laws of nature, or even to their theories about those laws. In fact, Hawking has not only not got rid of God, he has not even got rid of the God of the Gaps in which no sensible person believes. For the very theories he advances to banish the God of the Gaps are themselves highly speculative and untestable.
    Like every other physicist, Hawking is confronted with powerful evidence of design:
    Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration. That is not easily explained and raises the natural question of why it is that way…The discovery relatively recently of the extreme fine-tuning of so many of the laws of nature could lead at least some of us back to the old idea that this grand design is the work of some grand designer…That is not the answer of modern science…our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws. 39
     
    It is therefore quite clear that Hawking recognizes a “Grand Design”. He devotes almost an entire chapter to giving extensive details of the spectacular fine-tuning of both the laws of nature and the constants associated with fundamental physics. The evidence he gives is impressive, and certainly fits in with what he calls the “old idea that this grand design is the work of some grand designer”. Of course it does: it fits like a glove –