Stephen Hawking isn’t choosing gravity over God. He is saying gravity can explain the beginning of our universe.
AUSTRALIA: This is in reference to the article “Relief from belief” by Farzana Versey (September 7). Stephen Hawking isn’t choosing gravity over God. He is merely saying that gravity can explain the beginning of our universe. And he is providing a hypothesis which can be disproved empirically. The God argument, for what it’s worth, has been framed over millennia and we simply can’t avoid talking about it, even metaphorically. And that’s exactly what Stephen Hawking did. He isn’t speaking specifically about God or religion. Atheism isn’t a doctrine — however much one may want to spin it. Some atheists may use their personal belief system as a doctrine but atheism, per se, isn’t one. It merely and simply means an absence of belief in God. It is partly true, that atheism has to refer to the arguments framed by various believers in order to disprove them. But isn’t that true of any debate or arguments one enters into? After all, the terms of the argument has to be framed in order for the argument itself to be intelligible.
Stephen D’Souza
Published in The Express Tribune, September 8th, 2010.
