Stephen Hawking and God

When asked what his thoughts were about God, Stephen Hawking replied:

“It is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among 100 billion galaxies.  But, ever since the dawn of civilization, people have craved for an understanding of the underlying order of the world. There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe. And what can be more special than there is no boundary…And there should be no boundary to human endeavor. We are all different.  However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there is life, there is hope.”

Most of us were fascinated by Stephen Hawking.  Here was a brilliant physicist suffering from ALS, confined to a wheel chair for many years, unable to move but a muscle or two, suffering in ways most us will never have to experience, searching for the truth, and these were his thoughts about God.  We are compelled to engage his ideas.

He knew what religious people wanted to hear but that was not what his scientific enquiry into the universe had told him. 

We need to pay attention to Hawking and ask ourselves whether our images of God, given to us by our respective religious traditions are accurate. Do we need to rethink or reimagine what we mean when we say the word, God? What measure of God would create a universe that looks like this?  Could our way of talking about God be wrong?

The problem is we have so much invested in our ways of speaking about God.  And many are desperate to retain the old images of the deity.  And what new images would appeal to us?  How would we ever know whether they were correct?  But if Hawking is telling us something true about the nature of time and the universe, and if we care about the truth, must we not alter our way of talking about God?  After all, God does not live and is not boxed inside the Church or the Synagogue or the Mosque.  God lives in the world and in the energy of the universe and is not bound by our religious notions.

Some would argue, asking a scientist about the existence of God may not be wise.  Some religious folk will just ignore Hawking anyway and go on as usual.  But, I advise anybody out there who wants to be an honest religious person to ponder with care Hawking’s words and the mystery that is God.