Chapter 6: Does the Universe Point to God?

As promised, you’ll get no feeble attempt from me to explain how the universe came to be. When looking for these kinds of answers, it makes sense to defer to experts in the field of cosmology and physics, and refer to their books on the subject. For example, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Hawking believes our universe was created roughly 15 billion years ago through an event known as the Big Bang . According to his 1988 essay, “Origin of the Universe”, there was originally “nothing.” But through Relativity and quantum mechanics, matter can be created out of energy in the form of particle-antiparticle pairs.

In short, Hawking does not see any need for a creator, scientifically speaking. However, he acknowledges that science cannot answer the bigger question of why there is something rather than nothing. He leaves that question for “God.”

Until recently, Hawking was never quite clear on his view of God. Theists and atheists have both used Hawking to support their positions. But in a 2010 interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Hawking made his position quite clear. “What could define God (is thinking of God) as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God,” Hawking said. “They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible.”

Some may disagree with Hawking’s conclusion that human life is insignificant, but I don’t. In my opinion, we are not significant; we are only significant to us, we do not possess some transcendent property of “significantness. ”

Hawking, as bright as he may be, is not the only authority on the subject. Hawking is also not an authority on theology or God. His conclusions about God are made as a result of his study of the universe. But his conclusion is that God wasn’t the “Banger” of the Big Bang.