State Rep. Briscoe Cain trolls Stephen Hawking on his death,
State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, an outspoken member of the Texas House Freedom Caucus, tweeted his condolences Tuesday night on the death of world-acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking, sort of.
“Stephen Hawking now knows the truth about how the universe was actually made,” Cain tweeted at 11:34 p.m. Tuesday. “My condolences to his family.”
At the time of his death, Hawking was probably the most famous scientist and exemplar of rational thinking in the world. More to the point, for Cain, Hawking may have been the globe’s most famous atheist.
Cain, a freshman legislator from Harris County seeking a second term, had the most conservative voting record among House members in the 2017 regular legislative session, according to the liberal-conservative index produced by Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.
Hawking’s obituary in The New York Times noted his “increasingly scathing remarks about religion” and his belief that “there was no need to appeal to anything outside the universe, like God, to explain how it began.”
In 2011, Hawking told The Guardian, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”
Asked about the etiquette of trolling the recently deceased, Cain told the American-Statesman, “I am sympathetic for his family’s loss. Losing a loved one is difficult for everyone. My prayers are with them.”
But, Cain continued, “While many see him as one of the greatest public intellectuals of the last century, and no one disputes that he was brilliant, the fact remains that God exists. My tweet was to show the gravity of the Gospel and what happens when we die, namely, that we all will one day meet the Creator of the universe face to face.”
“Stephen Hawking was a vocal atheist, who advocated against and openly mocked God,” Cain said. “Hawking has said, ‘[T]here is no god. No one created our universe, and no one directs our fate.’ And, elsewhere, ‘I’m an atheist.’”
Without making specific reference to Cain, state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, policy director for the Freedom Caucus, tweeted, “Hey fellow Christians — cool it with the hateful & snarky Stephen Hawking condemnations. We should mourn when someone passes without knowing Jesus and celebrate with the angels when any man comes to faith. I pray that, at some point before his final breath, he did the latter.”
State Rep. Poncho Nevárez, D-Eagle Pass, tweeted: “At a time like this, and I don’t care who it is, and I am sure they care less who you are, but mocking the deceased and his family reveals the smallness of your character. Be better than that.”
Taking note of Cain’s tweet, and his explanation of it to the American-Statesman, Hemant Mehta, editor of Friendly Atheist, wrote a blog post, “A Bunch of Religious People Think Stephen Hawking Is Currently Burning in Hell,” noting the swift denunciation of Hawking by some people of faith on news of his passing.
“Let’s call this the Stephen Hawking Number: It’s the amount of time between your death and how quickly religious people have to tell people on social media that you’re burning in Hell,” Mehta wrote. “May we all live as Hawking did and strive to make that number as small as possible.”
But Cain was not without defenders. Aaron Harris, head of Direct Action Texas, an advocacy group allied with the Freedom Caucus, tweeted: “And the Godless freak out at the truth that one day we ALL face the reality of Our Creator. Well said @BriscoeCain.”