Stephen Hawking Doesn't Believe in a Creator God... Okay?

I really like Stephen Hawking.

To me, he is a statistical outlier. He is one...not just in a million...not just one in the world... not just in human history... but one of all time.

The odds that he would be born with the capacity he has to to know, understand, and explain what is invisible and unknown to the rest of us is beyond comprehension. The odds that this person would also have such a rare form of neuro muscular dystrophy leaving him almost completely paralyzed and dependent on a machine to speak for him is just plain unbelievable.

How in the world did the factors that created Stephan Hawking come together in the way that they did? How do we explain him?

Further, he is not best known for his disability, (although it is noted that he has endured this is a way never documented or experienced by anyone before) but rather for the guidance he has given his contemporaries, students, and the common person regarding the creation of the universe. He has given us the gift of possibility, and stunned us with knowledge of a beautiful chaos that came together to form order.

I find it sort of fitting that such a "one in all time" person like him would be spending his life working to make sense of the universe...the creation of which is also (it would seem) to be a, "one in all time" event.

Let me pause a moment to make a disclaimer here. I am not a statition (in fact I had to look up how to spell that word) I am not a scientist. I can barely explain the difference between reflection and refraction. I believe I have a fairly good head on my shoulders but my capacity is not even in the same realm as Hawking let alone in the same world. I have no reason to believe that he isn't WAY smarter and more knowledgeable about a million different things regarding the world I live in that I haven't even bothered to notice yet.

I read a short article about his recent book, "The Grand Design" today. Here are a couple quotes from Stephen that caused me to pause.

"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."

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Stephen Hawking doesn't believe that "God" created the universe. I get that. It is sort of far reaching in some respects to think that an entity separate and apart from this world decided one day to pull a couple strings for us.

We get so hung up on creation don't we?

I've never really understood what all the fuss was about.

Why did God have to create the world in 7 days? Why couldn't it have evolved? What is it that makes us think it must be one way or the other?

When I was small I went to Sunday School....I also LOVED dinosaurs...creatures that weren't explained very well in the Adam and Eve story.

I always wondered about that.

I figured that perhaps it was sort of silly for me to imagine that one of God's days must be the same as mine. God was infinite (I couldn't understand that idea either...much like I can't wrap my head around the idea of never ending time and space). If God was infinite, then why was his (or her!) day confined to the same 24 hours as mine?

My view of God was still very external and apart when I was small. God was like a heavenly parent with the power to do anything.

While I could rationalize how dinosaurs could exist at the same time as God it was harder for me to understand how if God was all powerful and all loving why there would be so much death, destruction and evil in the world.

God as an entity separate and apart from us doesn't make sense. I think I actually agree with Stephan Hawking.

But...

What if God were not separate and apart but rather a relational process inherent in all people and all creation. What if God was the very act of creation itself? It is not that God flipped a switch one day but rather that the process of our universe IS God... rather than a product of God.

Remember Stephen said, "Spontaneous Creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing."

I think we're too busy looking at product and missing the point. The point is not product but process...it is the way, not the end.

If we shift our thinking in this direction then all people and every creature contains and is God...including Steven Hawking.

On to more from the article...

"Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang."

Why must we believe that because an entity did not "intervene in the Big Bang" that there is no God?

It seems to me that conversations about God and what is God are incredibly limited in scope. We are forced into a situation where there is a "yes" or a "no". If we don't believe that an entity created the universe we must believe that there is no God.

Why?

Why have we limited God to being an old man that lives in the sky and gives us direction from afar?

Why do we become so upset when someone tell us that it isn't so?

Why...when we outgrow our old ideas about God that we are taught in Sunday school is it so difficult to replace them or evolve them into something more meaningful?

How can we live in this life without experiencing creation or the effects of it? We can't. We can not live this life without witnessing creation, development, innovation, and inspiration. We can not be human without experiencing love, compassion, intimacy and awe.

Are we not then experiencing God?

I believe in a God that is with us, in us and around us.

Does that mean I do not believe in a God that gives comfort, strength and love? Does that mean I can not believe in an afterlife?

No...

Why is it an, "either" "or" position? It seems to me that one is incomplete without the other.

Stephen Hawking is smart. It is entirely possible that no super powered entity created this world. Rather, as he sees it, it could have been a series of coincidences reacting to laws of physics.

God is not a thing but rather a process.

I can't believe that a masterpiece can exist in this world or any other without a process that is beyond our ability to understand its conception.

Explain to me Leonardo Da Vinci's process. While he is intentional and what he creates is the outcome there are millions of other variables at work that brought him to that place in time and space where he was able to manifest creation that changed the way we would view our world.

Is that process not God?

The continuous mystery of evolution and the beauty of movement, the eb and flow of energy in, around, through all things, the fact that our imperfection is what causes us to sync up yet move independently simultaneously...these are the things we experience day to day that seem to have similar patterns as what seems to have happened over our head.

God was no switch flipper.

God is the big bang.

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