It’s with some reservations that I write a Blog on the occasion of Stephen Hawking’s death. There has been much commentary on social media about the contribution Hawking made to science. Some call his the greatest mind since Albert Einstein. Others point to the wonderful example he was to the disabled and the handicapped in not letting his disabilities hinder his life’s work as a physicist and cosmologist.
The reason for my reservation in mentioning Stephen Hawking at all is that I know very little about him. I’m aware that he was indeed a brilliant scientist. The titles of the books he wrote in his lifetimes sound impressive. ‘A brief history of time’, ‘The theory of everything’ and ‘Black holes and baby universes’, to name just three. I confess I have not read any of his writings but over the years I did pick up the occasional quote from him – I particularly noted those quotes which made clear that Hawking was an atheist.
Hawkins once said, “God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator.” Here is the typical view that scientific progress has made the concept of God redundant. God is convenient when there are things we can’t explain. Some call this ‘the God of the gaps’. Today, however, there are not too many gaps for which we need God. Science has all the answers – or if it doesn’t, it soon will. Hawking’s atheism was still rather veiled at that time. Note that he said, “God may exist”. Later he became more outspoken. Speaking about ‘the mind of God’ Hawking said, “What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.” What a tragedy. Science has never yet disproved God – nor can it – for to disprove the existence of God one would have to look under every rock in the universe at exactly the same time.
Another famous quote was, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.” Obviously Hawking has swallowed the worldview of scientific materialism. Only that exists which can be squeezed into a test tube or slid under a microscope. Religion is a myth belonging to a more primitive era and death is the absolute end of everything. How sad! How could a scientist possibly pontificate on what happens after death? That is outside the realm of scientific experiment. In fact, why not listen to someone who went there and who came back and is alive? But then I guess Hawking was too prejudiced to listen to Jesus.
It often strikes me that those who claim to be atheists lack humility… because the fact is that Hawking didn’t know enough to be an atheist. Okay, he wrote a book called “The theory of everything” but I maintain that he didn’t know enough.
Let me explain. Many years ago there was a discussion about religion in my office. It had been precipitated by my announcement that I was leaving to go to seminary. A new analyst in the office walked away from the conversation with the words, “If you’re talking religion I’m going; I’m an atheist.” I followed him back to his desk and offered him my congratulations. He looked rather stunned that I as a Christian would congratulate him for being an atheist. I explained to him that I was congratulating him because of his perfect knowledge. He looked even more puzzled so I asked him, “How much do you know of all there is to know? Fifty percent? Sixty percent?” Being a humble sort of fellow he conceded that he probably only knew about forty percent of all that there was to know. I then asked him if he thought it possible that God could exist in the other sixty percent of reality that he had just admitted he didn’t know about. The penny dropped. He retorted that he wasn’t an atheist but an agnostic. The quickest ‘conversion’ I ever saw!
Stephen Hawking didn’t know enough to be an atheist – unless of course he was arrogant enough to claim that he knew everything that there was to know about everything. We as Christians would argue that today Stephen Hawking is no longer an atheist. In March of 2018 he was called to face his Maker.
John Westendorp