There are sure to be many reviews of the new Stephen Hawking book The Grand Design. Here is an excerpt from the one in today's Wall Street Journal:

"The Grand Design" thus attempts to outline, in under 200 pages, a complete scenario for the nature of the universe and our place in it. The universe exists because it must exist; if it didn't, it would come into existence spontaneously. Once it exists, the combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity coaxes the universe into creating a dizzying variety of regions with different local conditions and physical laws. Most of these might be extremely alien and inhospitable; but some will be just right to allow for the development of complexity and consciousness. Among those, happily, is our own.

Et Dieu, Monsieur? Pas besoin de cette hypothse!Update:Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., has been mentioned on the thread below. He is the author of a new book, New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy. A recent article says of the book:

The brilliant originality of Father Spitzers book lies in this new approach. It does not devote itself to translating the latest physics into the old philosophical jargon in order to defend the old proofs. Instead, it boldly formulates fresh new proofs for a contemporary mind willing to be informed by the new language of the latest cosmology. If you are not already pre-disposed to swallow Hawkings philosophical mistakes, then it will stimulate you onto a path of rigorous thinking.

The article concludes interestingly, though with a bit of a flourish:

Father William A. Wallace, OP, wrote in 1968, Thomists have been content to remain at a very general level, concentrating on metaphysics, and neglecting the specialized disciplines that have developed because of the needs of modern man. Without intending to do so, they have promoted a divorce between philosophy and science, and as a result, they have allowed their theology to be completely untouched by scientific progress.Father Spitzers magnificent New Proofs for the Existence of God, however, rectifies that sin of omission. Theologians, therefore, should take notice of this indispensable contribution to healing the divide between faith and reason in contemporary thought. Once again, the dawn breaks: physics meets metaphysics, and Aquinas is rising.

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a longtime Commonweal contributor.

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