Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking created an uproar this week after The Times of London published an excerpt from his latest book, The Grand Design, which asserts that the universe was created "spontaneously" with no help from God. "Because there is such a law as gravity," he writes, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing... It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Church leaders in the U.K. and elsewhere have reacted with fury. Commentators weigh in:
In the beginning, there was physics: Hawking hasn't exactly "proven that God does not exist," says Sean Carroll in Discover. But he does have a point. "Science has progressed to a point where we don't need to go outside the universe to explain the universe." Thinkers like Hawking have answered the "ancient question" of why we exist using quantum mechanics. On a practical level, "the universe can simply exist, end of story."
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