Stephen Hawking, leading and well known astrophysicist whose fame has landed him guest spots on Futurama, The Simpson’s and Star Trek, releases his controversial new book The Grand Design next week.
The Grand Design argues that the Big Bang theory is an “inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.”
Hawking is 68 and suffers from a neuro-muscular dystrophy that has advanced so rapidly over the past two years that he is almost completely paralyzed. Hawking’s latest proclamation, that the Big Bang theory would have happened regardless of Divine Intervention, negates a fundamental belief that even Isaac Newton held dear--that there is a God who created the universe and the existence of that God is a final explanation for all questions that scientific theory and fact do not answer.
“Because there is such a law as gravity,” Hawking writes, “the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.” Hawking goes on further to state that it is “not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
StephenHawking’s previous work, the record breaking and bestselling, A Brief History in Time, mentions God, but overall is ambivalent about whether or not God is responsible for the creation of the universe.
In that book, Hawking says that if scientists, philosophers, and “just ordinary people” could take part in the “discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist...that would be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we should know the mind of God.”
Hawkings also says that one can “imagine that God created a universe at any time in the past,." But on the "other hand," he writes, "there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way to make it look as though there had been a big bang.”
He goes on to say that an “expanding universe does not “preclude” a creator, but “places limits on when he might have carried out his job!” Hawkings has made significant and lasting contributions to cosmology - the study of the origins, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe.
Hawking comments about God questioned
In an interview with Diane Sawyer over the summer, Hawking said the fundamental difference between religion and science is that religion is based on authority and science is based on observation and reason.
Critics have lambasted Hawking for that because his assertions pose an either or argument with no middle ground. In other words, some believe the better question is not whether science or religion is better, but whether or not science and religion can co-exist in a world that relies on both.
The Vanity Fair story is written by Michael Joseph Gross. The image illustration is by Edward Sorel.
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