God Did Not Create the Universe : Stephen Hawking

British physicist Stephen Hawking says God was not necessary for the creation of the universe, just as Charles Darwin eliminated the necessity of God from biology.

In an exclusive interview, the science monthly Eureka of The Times of London released Thursday excerpts from Hawking’s new book “The Grand Design.” He asks the question “Did the Universe need a creator?” in a book whose title seems to imply the intelligent design theory.

Hawking`s answer? No.
He says the Big Bang was the inevitable result of the laws of physics, not something explained by the hand of God or coincidence. “Because there is a law such as gravity, 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, he writes.”

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

His new book breaks from his previous views on religion expressed in his 1988 bestseller “A Brief History of Time.” Back then, he said God could co-exist with a scientific explanation of the universe, saying, “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God.”

Co-authored with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, “The Grand Design” deconstructs the Newtonian view that the universe could not have risen out of chaos but was created by God.

Hawking said the first reason is the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than the sun.

“That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of earth-sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings. Not just other planets like the earth, other universes may exist,” he said.

You don't need a God to create a universe: Stephen Hawking

You don't need a God to create a universe:
Stephen Hawking
September 3rd, 2010 11:10 am ET

By Dennis Bodzash

Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has created quite a stir of late in his most recent book, The Grand Design, in which he argues that the Big Bang, which created the universe as we know it (at least according to scientists), did not require divine help.

In fact, the book sets out to contradict Issac Newton, the deeply religious founder of modern physics, who believed that God created the universe. Hawking's latest work also contradicts his earlier book, A Brief History of Time, in which Hawking seems to accept that there could have been some divine intervention involved in the creation of the universe.

However, for Hawking, recent scientific advances since this book (especially the discovery of other planets/solar systems) have helped dispel the notion that we humans, and even our solar system itself, is anything special. Instead, as scientists make more and more discoveries, we continually seem to become more and more a cosmic accident.

In his new book, Hawking explains his belief that the law of gravity is what can spur spontaneous creation, thus the Big Bang, and therefore everything that exists today.

Obviously, such statements will get some people riled up at the mere thought of them. However, the good thing about living in a democratic society is that, for the most part, free inquiry, and free choice, are both equally valued, which means that we can investigate what we want and believe what we want without risk of persecution, unlike in the past.

So what do you think? Did God create the universe? Did the cosmos create itself? Is there even a God at all? Drop a comment (you don't have to be a member) and make your opinion heard!