{"id":593,"date":"2010-09-07T07:37:58","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T07:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html"},"modified":"2010-09-07T07:37:58","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T07:37:58","slug":"stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hawking, God, and Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stephenhawking.jpg\"<\/span>Last Thursday,<\/b> in an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Grand Design<\/a><\/i>, world-famous physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking revealed<\/a> that he no longer believed the universe needed a creator God. “The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he wrote. That’s a fairly simplified statement, and one he will no doubt expand upon in the new book.<\/p>\n

But that didn’t stop comment sections, discussion boards, and Twitter<\/a> from exploding in a Big Bang of hatred and derision toward Hawking from people who DID believe in God. As a Christian, I bristle anytime other Christians are sources of hatred and derision — especially toward people “on the other team,” so to speak. (What part of “love your enemies” don’t we understand?)<\/p>\n

Also, I’m a big fan of Hawking and his work. So I wrote a quick Guest Voices piece for “On Faith<\/a>” at the Washington Post<\/i>. The piece is called “Stephen Hawking says there’s no creator God; the twitterverse reacts<\/a>.” Yes…it’s a really catchy title. Anyway, here’s an excerpt:<\/p>\n

There were tweets belittling the physicist’s physical ailments.
\nTweets chortling about how he’ll be sorry when he dies and meets God.
\nTweets over-simplifying his ideas and then cheerfully labeling them
\nstupid. Tweets calling Stephen Hawking an idiot.<\/p>\n

Like dogs backed into a corner, my religious brethren went on the attack, escalating the culture war between science and faith.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Jesus taught slowness to anger, compassion for the sick, and love for
\nour enemies. But even accounting for the simplicity of Twitter, and the
\ntroll-like culture of the Internet in general, we still come across as a
\nbunch of petty, rage-filled monsters eager to discount the life work of
\none of the world’s greatest scientists. <\/p>\n

A genius with a debilitating disease says something we disagree with,
\nso we make fun of his wheelchair and laugh at his impending death.
\nGreat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I hope you’ll read<\/b> the whole article here<\/a>, and then consider the following question: What is the Christian (and\/or God-believing) response to this kind of situation?<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday, in an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Grand Design, world-famous physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking revealed that he no longer believed the universe needed a creator God. “The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he wrote. That’s a fairly simplified statement, and one he will no doubt expand upon in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,56,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-questions","category-science","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"\nStephen Hawking, God, and Twitter - O Me of Little Faith<\/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\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stephen Hawking, God, and Twitter - O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last Thursday, in an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Grand Design, world-famous physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking revealed that he no longer believed the universe needed a creator God. “The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he wrote. That’s a fairly simplified statement, and one he will no doubt expand upon in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"O Me of Little Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-09-07T07:37:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/stephenhawking.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Boyett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Stephen Hawking, God, and Twitter - O Me of Little Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Stephen Hawking, God, and Twitter - O Me of Little Faith","og_description":"Last Thursday, in an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Grand Design, world-famous physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking revealed that he no longer believed the universe needed a creator God. “The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he wrote. That’s a fairly simplified statement, and one he will no doubt expand upon in…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html","og_site_name":"O Me of Little Faith","article_published_time":"2010-09-07T07:37:58+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/stephenhawking.jpg"}],"author":"Jason Boyett","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html","name":"Stephen Hawking, God, and Twitter - O Me of Little Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/stephenhawking.jpg","datePublished":"2010-09-07T07:37:58+00:00","dateModified":"2010-09-07T07:37:58+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/stephenhawking.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/files\/import\/stephenhawking.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2010\/09\/stephen-hawking-god-and-twitter.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Stephen Hawking, God, and Twitter"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/","name":"O Me of Little Faith","description":"A blog by Jason Boyett about Doubt, Christianity, Culture & Writing","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7","name":"Jason Boyett","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a5a\/a5a647d97bed4014325bf9a1fb0b6900x96.jpg","caption":"Jason Boyett"},"description":"Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker, and the author of several books, including O Me of Little Faith (Zondervan), and the Pocket Guide series (Jossey-Bass). His work has appeared in Salon, Paste, The Daily Beast, Relevant, and a variety of other publications. He has also appeared on the History Channel and National Geographic Channel. Jason lives in Texas with his wife and two kids. Follow him at twitter and jasonboyett.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/author\/jboyett"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}