Hawking: God did not create the universe

The universe was not created by God but physics says Professor Stephen Hawking in his new book due to be published later this month.

The scientist believes that the Big Bang which created the universe was caused by physics in a challenge to traditional religious beliefs. In his book Grand Designs extracts of which have been printed today, the scientist concludes: ‘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. The book is co-written by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and sets out to contest the belief originally but forward by Sir Issac Newton that the universe must have been designed by God as it could have not been created out of chaos. He also cites the discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our sun, making a coincidence out of out planetary conditions, meaning that the Earth-Sun combination we have is far less remarkable and less compelling as evidence that the Earth was designed for human beings. Professor Hawking also leaves open the possibility of life on other planets and entire new universes. Theoretical physics known as the M-theory could be the ‘holy grail’ and that will explain everything in the known universe, Hawking says, adding this is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. Professor Hawking has been quite outspoken in the past few months over a number of issues. In April he argued that it was perfectly rational to assume intelligent life exists somewhere else in the universe.