God physic from Avicena to Hawking
God and Physics: From Hawking to Avicenna William E. Carroll The first religious obligation of every intelligent boy who comes of age, as marked by years or by the dreams of puberty, is to form the intention of reasoning as soundly as he can to an awareness that the world is originated. Abū ‘l-Ma’āli al-Juwaynī (1028-1085) 1 Al-Juwaynī thought that an awareness of the originatedness [ hud_th ] of the world necessarily meant a rejection of any claim to its being eternal and led, consequently, to the affirmation that it was created by God. He argues that it is reasonable to hold that the world is temporally finite -- this is what it means to be originated -- and that, on the basis of such an observation, one can come to know that there is a Creator. Furthermore, knowledge of creation is knowledge of divine sovereignty, which leads one to submit religiously to God’s plan. Discussions about the relationship between physics and theology — between our knowledge of the world of nat...