MERIDIAN — Stephen Hawking stirred up a bunch of people this week with his statement that because there are laws such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing.

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

    "The Grand Design," a book co-written by Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist, is to be published Tuesday. According to Hawking spontaneous creation is the reason the universe and everything in it exists.

    It's not like this has never been said before. It's been a theory for centuries. The reaction to statements like this say a lot more about people's faith than some crazy science versus religion debate.

    A quote I read by Fraser Watts, Anglican priest and Cambridge expert in the history of science said it best in his response to Hawking's book excerpt as he points out that it is not the existence of the universe that proves the existence of God. God provides a reasonable and credible explanation of why there is a universe.

    "It is somewhat more likely that there is a God than that there is not," Watts said. "That view is not undermined by what Hawking has said."

    Just as believing in evolution does not mean there is no God, not believing in evolution doesn't mean it doesn't exist or prove that there is a God. Beliefs don't prove anything, but they are the basis of what we have faith in.

    Having a juicy tidbit out there for the masses prior to the publication of this book proves that marketing is everything, however.

    This past spring Hawking made the news prior to a television documentary he was about to be on, in which he said mathematically the chances of life on other planets was perfectly rational. He cautioned, however that these folks from other places might not be entirely peaceful.

     “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans,” he said.

    Frankly I was surprised at some of the shock and fear reactions to his statement. It's just plain old common sense, not super-smart scientist sense.

    Has Stephen Hawking never seen "Critters," "It Came From Outer Space," "War of the Worlds," "Plan 9 From Outer Space," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "This Island Earth," "The Thing," "Independence Day," "Signs," "The Blob," "Predator," "Mars Attacks," "Invasion of the Saucer Men," or "Killer Klowns From Outer Space?"

    At least super-scientists will admit they don't know everything. Lord Rees, president of the Royal Society has been quoted in news reports this summer that some of this cool stuff scientists believe — like big bangs, aliens and parallel universes — may never be proven because our minds are just too small to sort it all out.

    “I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive,” Rees was quoted saying by the London Times. “Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there are aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

    God maybe?



    Steve Gillespie is managing editor of The Meridian Star. Email him at sgilliespie@themeridianstar.com.