by Mike Gray

Of course, it all depends on how you define “God,” doesn’t it? Richard Fernandez writes about Hawking’s “God” on Pajamas Media:

When Stephen Hawking suggested in 1988 that he could construct a complete theory of physical laws one way, he interpreted it as a way to establish the possibility of an impersonal God by construction. “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.” That is, we would have a God explainable entirely in terms of physical laws. Recently, the British mathematician claims he has done just that.

This “God,” however, isn’t even close to being personal:

… what you would then have, as Hawking himself said, is not “no God” but a kind of god, yet not the necessarily the kind of God that religious people normally seek. It would be a god of mathematical and physical laws without the absolute need for recourse to a Being who cared anything for the universe. …. But what of the Stronger God, the one which men desire? The God that loves each and every one of us? For most people in the world, Hawking’s announcement of the M-theory will be accepted or rejected on the basis of that least scientific of grounds, authority.

And so it goes . . . .