As a scientist who fully believes in God, I could not have disagreed more with the response of Stephen Hawking to the question on the existence of God. While Prof Hawking’s staunch atheism was not exactly a secret, the fact that it received wide media coverage on his recently published posthumous collection of articles and essays only points to the level of significance this question holds even to those who aim to treat it as a nonsensical topic.

As I once pointed out to a gentleman who I encountered while walking past a street exhibition put up by atheists on the streets of New York city a few years ago, why make so much noise about someone who does not exist? If God really doesn’t exist, why does that topic get so much attention? Could it be because as the Bible says, the evidence of his existence is plain for all to see and only a fool would choose to think otherwise?

To be fair to Prof Hawking, one of the reasons behind his stance is that not believing in the existence of God is a simpler answer to the question (presumably than contemplating other answers). Another reason he has given in the past is that science negates the reason for God’s existence. Choosing an answer based on simplicity is obviously not a recipe for answering a question correctly and certainly not the approach one would expect a scientific mind to follow. Prof Hawking does the study of science a great disservice especially by misleading young, aspiring scientists into thinking science and questions about God are diametrically opposed and a choice between the two necessary. As a female scientist, I have sometimes worked alongside those with a mindset like that of Hawking who aim to define the study of science by projecting themselves as the prototype. The study of science is crying out for a diversity of thinkers including those who believe in a Creator.

I have had the privilege to train and study in world-class scientific institutions but even i know that science will never answer the question as to why we are here or where we are headed when we die. That is a question lodged in every human soul whether it is acknowledged or not. A few weeks before he died, Stephen Hawking announced that before the big bang, there was nothing. This was presumably a question many of his followers had been waiting for him to provide an answer to. His response after a life of studying the universe was that it came out of nothing. The big news media touted this annoucement as if it had been proclaimed by a divine being as opposed to a human with the sane limitations and finite thinking as everyone else. Even as a scientist, I would have to switch my brain off and put my mind in deep freeze to find that concept remotely plausible. There is simply no form of Life that comes out of nothing and you don’t need to be a genius to know that. Such an anoucement would be akin to studying the iPhone in great detail and then proclaiming Steve Jobs never existed.

The one thing Mr Hawking is right about with regards to the existence of God is that we are each free to believe what we choose. This is a God given right albeit with universal and eternal consequences. Prof Hawking, as brilliant as he was, was proven to be mistaken in some of his scientific theories, like any other scientist. From all accounts, he was gracious in accepting his errors. I am pretty certain, once he closed his eyes in death, he would have been immediately confronted by his biggest error of all. Only by then, there would have been no more room left for gracious turnarounds.

The source of this all too common error is explained in great detail in the Bible. God makes himself known to those who have the humility to acknowledge and follow him. Those who see God most clearly are often not the ones who consider themselves to be wise or knowledgeable by standards set by the world.
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

I Corinthians 1:20

I end with a quote from CS Lewis, the brilliant Oxford University professor who began his career as a staunch academic atheist just like Hawking, but ended it on a very different note which continues to inspire generations to think outside of the box long after his death.

the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys’ philosophies–these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.

Tagged: Christianity, does God exist?, faith, female scientist, science, Stephen Hawking