Three weeks after Billy Graham crossed the confines of time and entered eternity, so did physicist Stephen Hawking. In this life, both were focused, effective, influential, and intensely missional. And then both met their Creator. One was embraced, his arrival anticipated and heralded in heaven. (Psalm 116:15). The other was dismissed, forever tragically separated from the Creator he had spent his earthly existence denying.
And both determined that destiny in this life.
Hawking, who suffered bravely from ALS since he was 21 years old, passed away at 76 on Wednesday morning, March 14. Hawking was brilliant and engaging. A world-renowned British theoretical physicist, he contributed to the fields of cosmology, general relativity and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. In this life, he was heralded as one of the greatest minds in physics since Albert Einstein.
Hawking’s life goal was focused and grand, the “complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” But Hawking sought to gain wisdom and understanding about creation in the absence of any belief in God. The result was predictable.
His early writings and interviews exhibit a bit of confusion about the existence of God. In 1988, in his most popular book A Brief History of Time, Hawking wrote that achieving a “theory of everything” would be “the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind of God.”
Many of his readers assumed that Hawking meant by this that he held to some kind of belief in God, and even creationists grabbed this quote for support that the greatest minds alive must acknowledge God. But later Hawking did not waffle when asked his position on the existence of God. In 2007, Hawking said “I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science,” conceding that “the laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.” Still a glimmer of theism, but getting dimmer.
This trend continued, as he eventually closed the door on theism. In 2010, in his book The Great Design, he wrote that the idea of God was “not necessary” to explain the origin of the universe. The laws of physics were all that was needed. In 2014, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo he scoffed at the idea of miracles and declared that he was an atheist.
And later he clarified his earlier statement, and avowed that, well, there was no “mind of God” to know in the first place. “What I meant when I said we would know God’s mind was that we would know everything that God would understand if he existed. But there are no Gods,” he said.
When it comes down to it, what we believe about origins will determine what we believe about our destiny. If humanity is a happy accident, then we have no destiny to be concerned with. In a naturalistic worldview, nature is all there is.
Hawking’s slide toward absolute atheism did not begin with a rejection of Christ. It began with a rejection of his Creator. From the opening words of the Bible, we are clearly designed to understand one simple truth: There is one Creator, and we are His creatures. Everything else hinges on this. And when we foolishly deny these truths, our only alternative is that we are the creators. And it’s all downhill from there. When we diminish our created nature, that the hand of a Creator lovingly made us into His image, we diminish ourselves. Hawking illustrated this when he claimed, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the universe. That makes us something very special.”
No. Actually, it just makes us arrogant.
In Romans 1:20, Paul declared that not only does the universe indicate the existence of the Creator, it also reveals some of His attributes and His character. As a result, no one has an excuse for intentionally denying the Creator’s existence. No matter how smart they are.
Affirmation of our Creator is the first step toward faith. Real faith, faith that moves and saves and gives us access to our Creator. Such faith must begin by acknowledging we are creatures who have a Creator, and we have sinned against Him (Heb. 11:3).
Hawking once said, “I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.”
In this life, Hawking’s god was himself.
In 2011, Hawking reflected, “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.”
I wonder what he thinks now?
Sources: https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-stephen-hawking-believe-god-093023745.html
https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_hawking.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/03/14/stephen-hawking-quotations/423145002/