Renowned physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018, was a prominent figure known not only for his scientific contributions but also for his views on religion. In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais, he revealed his beliefs when asked whether he believed in God. The answer was short and simple.
“No”
Hawing believed that there is no ‘God’ that interferes with human affairs, rather the laws of physics govern how the Universe works and flows. Hawking’s also stated that there is no known scientific evidence that one man ‘God’ created the Universe and everything within it.
Hawking’s was an incredibly brilliant man who always maintained that the Universe was not built for human beings and that the Universe does not center around human beings.
While many of Hawking’s religious viewpoints didn’t fair well with a large part of the human population, he did have a large impact on scientific research throughout his life.
In Hawking’s final book prior to his death, he had this to say about the ‘God’ theory:
“There is no God. No one directs the universe,” he writes in “Brief Answers to the Big Questions.” “For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God,” he adds. “I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature.”
A few years before his death, he told Time Magazine this about ‘God’:
“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.”