Contact: Rev Tony Breeden, Founder, DefendingGenesis.org, 304-993-4792

MEDIA ADVISORY, Sept. 3 /Standard Newswire/ -- Stephen Hawking's new book urges people to believe that unobservable multiverses and alternate histories or existences have explained away the need for a Designer or Creator, but he's begging the question with science fiction 'rescuing devices.'

'The Grand Design,' Hawking's long awaited sequel to 'A Brief History of Time,' is giving some well-known science fiction fixtures a veneer of scientific credibility: multiverses and alternate histories.

Hawking claims "the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously." But is this science? Can we verify these alternate histories or any existence other than the one we observe? No. These things are outside the scope of science. They belong in more familiar haunts, the pages of sci-fi novels and comic books.

Hawking urges us to "question the conventional concept of reality" and instead proposes a "model-dependent theory of reality." One that relies upon another standard sci-fi device: the multiverse, "...the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature." Of course, alternate universes are just as unobservable, unprovable and unfalsifiable as alternate histories; which is to say, just as unscientific.

Scientists can no longer rationally deny (in Hawkings own words) that "the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence," but they refuse to invoke God as a possible explanation, so multiverses are begged as a "rescuing device." Dr. Jason Lisle defines a rescuing device as "a conjecture designed to save a person's view from apparently contrary evidence ('The Ultimate Proof of Creation', p.22-25). Lisle notes "people can always invoke the unknown" when faced with a conclusion they don't like: in this case, God Himself as Creator and First Cause. Romans 1:18-25 reflects that God is clearly evident in His Creation, despite such excuses and denials.

With increasing frequency, scientists now invent science fictions to explain life, the universe and everything without the need for God and present such imagineerings as fact, despite all evidence to the contrary.

DefendingGenesis.org is a non-profit ministry promoting the historical reliability of God's Word through teaching, preaching and awareness initiatives like Creation Sunday & CreationLetter.com. We urge churches to celebrate a Creation Sunday this February 13, 2011, not Evolution Sunday.