John I am very grateful for this fantastic article and also grateful that the Daily Mail allowed to include a decent Christian response to Hawking’s troubled metaphysics. You raise some important points and make some good distinctions.

I don’t really see what all the controversy is about because as you say it isn’t a new argument and it just goes to show that many scientist like Dawkins (and now Hawking) fall short when it comes to philosophical reasoning. To take the laws of nature as a brute fact like Hawking does is a major cop-out. And it is certainly “not really nothing,” as he says because the laws of physics are not nothing. It doesn’t cross his mind to ask where these mysterious laws came from? It puzzles me how such an eminent scientist can make such an elementary mistake in philosophy but this isn’t really surprising since he rubbishes philosophy in his book too.

Thanks again John!

I always appreciate Prof Lennox’s razor sharp logical arguments. I don’t want to sound as if I have no respect, but I think Stephen Hawking, who I highly regard, is less than what he used to be.