Book Review: A Brief History of Time

Author: Dr. Stephen Hawking
Spiritual Bias: Agnostic
Origins Bias: Evolutionist
Rating: Top Shelf
Level: Advanced

Comments: This book is a tough one to get through because of the deep subject matter but it tells the fascinating story of important scientific advances during the last century. It chronicles the work of Einstein, Heisenburg, and Hawking. If you are looking for a good explanation why most scientists believe in the Big Bang this is your book. In addition, Hawking describes his no boundary proposal which attempts to do away with an absolute singularity in the beginning of time which reduces the role of God as the immediate cause of the universe. This book is very good and a must read if you are interested in origins.

Summary Quote: "[I]f the universe is completely self-contained, with no singularities or boundaries, and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as Creator. Einstein once asked the question: "How much choice did God have in constructing the universe?" If the no boundary proposal is correct, he had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions. He would, of course, still have had the freedom to choose the laws that the universe obeyed. This, however, may not really have been all that much of a choice; there may well be only one, or a small number, of complete unified theories, such as the heterotic string theory, that are self-consistent and allow the existence of structures as complicated as human beings who can investigate the laws of the universe and ask about the nature of God."