Stephen Hawking Says God Did Not Create the Universe: What Do You Think?
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Sept. 2, 2010— -- Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking now says definitely that God did not create the universe or spark the Big Bang.
In his new book, "The Grand Design," scheduled for a September release, Hawking argues that the universe didn't need divine inspiration to come into being.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," writes Hawking. "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," he writes, according to excerpts published in the Times of London today.
Hawking, who co-wrote "The Grand Design" with Leonard Mlodinow, a U.S. physicist, has come to this position fairly recently.
In June, when ABC News' Diane Sawyer asked him about the biggest mystery he'd like solved, Hawking said, "I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing."
"What could define God ... as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a humanlike 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."
When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking told her, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."
Our question to you today: Do you agree or disagree with Stephen Hawking about the role of God in creation?
Reuters contributed to this report.