God or the Laws of Physics?

Taken from God and Stephen Hawking by John C. Lennox MA PhD DPhil DSc and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. The book is a refutation of Stephen Hawking's claim which can simply be stated as, "we know how the universe works and what caused it, there is no need for the idea of God in modern thinking, therefore God does not exist."

I have long admired Mr Hawking, as both a scientist and great man, but I cannot fail to see the overall flaw in Hawking's argument. Whether or not the physics stands up to scrutiny is, at the present time, beyond my jurisdiction, but I can, with certainty, proclaim that even if mankind was able to explain away the intricacies of the universe, it would not give the slightest credence to the notion that there is no God.

Lennox - "A supernatural being or god is an agent who does something. In the case of the God of the Bible, he is a personal agent. Dismissing such an agent, Hawking ascribes creative power to physical law; but physical law is not an agent. Hawking is making a classic category mistake by confusing two entirely different kinds of entity: physical law and personal agency. The choice he sets before us is between false alternatives. He has confused two levels of explanation: agency and law. God is an explanation of the universe, but not the same type of explanation as that which is given by physics.

Suppose, to make matters clearer, we replace the universe by a jet engine and then are asked to explain it. Shall we account for it by mentioning thee personal agency of its inventor, Sir Frank Whittle? Or shall we follow Hawking: dismiss personal agency, and explain the jet engine by saying that it arose naturally from physical law?

It is clearly nonsensical to ask people to choose between Frank Whittle and science as an explanation for the jet engine. For it is not a question of either/or. It is self-evident that we need both levels of explanation in order to give a complete description. It is also obvious that the scientific explanation neither conflicts nor competes with the agent explanation: they complement one another. It is the same with explanations of the universe: God does not conflict or compete with the laws of physics as an explanation. God is actually the ground of all explanation, in the sense that he is the cause in the first place of there being a world for the laws of physics to describe."