{"id":4851,"date":"2010-09-02T08:21:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T08:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2010\/09\/hawking-god-didnt-do-it.html"},"modified":"2010-09-02T08:21:44","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T08:21:44","slug":"hawking-god-didnt-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/09\/hawking-god-didnt-do-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Hawking: God didn’t do it"},"content":{"rendered":"

The celebrated scientist is throwing cold water<\/a> on the idea that God created the universe: <\/p>\n

\nGod did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.<\/p>\n

In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“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,” Hawking writes.<\/p>\n

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”<\/p>\n

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.<\/p>\n

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The celebrated scientist is throwing cold water on the idea that God created the universe: God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book. In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-that"],"yoast_head":"\nHawking: God didn't do it - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/09\/hawking-god-didnt-do-it.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hawking: God didn't do it - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The celebrated scientist is throwing cold water on the idea that God created the universe: God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book. 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