Ok, here comes Hawkin. Hold on to yer hat Hortlund:
One used for Hawking is the following:
"Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen."
As in the Einstein case, it's a matter of figure of speech. in fact, he's reffering directly to Einsteins statement which Einstein of course later had to explain for reporters and theists who misunderstood it.
Let's see what Hawkings says about the human race. It could be interesting to see if he thinks Genesis has it right and whether mankind is something other than an animal:
"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. "
About the Big Bang and the omnipotence of God:
"One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!"
On the necessity of a God for the creation of the universe:
"The quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary. There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. One could say: 'The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.' The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE."
One more:
"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started -- it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?"
There's much more, but I suppose this will have to suffice, as it proves without a doubt that Hawking have strong reservations about the Christian deity. Let me know if you need more: undernet #atheism has some more direct ones. Would have to install an irc client though.
