Religious Belief and Stephen Hawking September 2010

I read Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time 20 years ago. His approach to the question of God was to say that whilst Physics describes the universe, the concept of God addresses the issue of why there is one. Reports last week that in his latest book he dismisses God entirely proved -on inspection- to be overstated. He says that that the ‘big bang’ occurred of necessity as a consequence of the laws of physics. This still leaves us, however, still wrestling with the question of why there is something rather than nothing.

Why did this philosophical analysis, so far removed from the religious experience of ordinary folk, and which will have been read by a tiny number of people, become a leading news item?
Frankly, it was trumpeted in triumph by that part of our secular establishment that hates religion and in particular Christianity.

The reality is, however, that social and political issues are still informed by, and seen through the prism of Christian values that permeated our history and institutions for generations. My postbag is full of letters from constituents whose approach to a political question arises from their religious belief. Indeed, some of the most pressing issues we face are themselves explicitly religious, for example, the problem of terrorism from fanatics driven by a perversion of Islam. Many constituents have written to me –having apparently studied and mastered the Koran- to tell me that that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant. I disagree, this view takes little account of history and our imperial past; it ignores the fact that militant Islamism is primarily a threat to the culture, practice, and worship of the vast majority of Muslims; and it fails to acknowledge the history of Christianity’s own rather more violent and intolerant excesses.

Where I am rather more in tune with the concerns of a large number of my correspondents it is with respect to their complaint about the way that ‘political correctness’ is attempting to drive Christianity out of the public space. Examples abound of employees being disciplined for expressing their faith in the course of their work; some local authorities have even sought to avoid any celebration of Christmas; regulations increasingly interfere with religious expression and practice. The New Testament warns believers that this would happen. For my part I think the best way to deal with it is ridicule: to simply laugh at its utter absurdity.

As for Professor Hawking, he is a brilliant physicist, but he can no better address the question of God than any one of us. Each of us will face the Last Judgement, or none of us will.