Stephen Hawking was clear on his views about God

Say the words “British,” “scientist” and “atheist,” and the first person to come to mind probably isn’t Stephen Hawking.

Hawking, the theoretical physicist who died Wednesday at age 76, was certainly overshadowed in the atheist department by fellow countryman, evolutionary biologist and atheist activist Richard Dawkins. But Hawking’s atheism was more of a slow simmer when compared with Dawkins’ explosive ire.

“What could define God (is thinking of God) as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God,” Hawking told journalist Diane Sawyer in 2010. “They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible.”

One reason Hawking’s atheism was less wellknown was that he seemed to fudge the question of God’s existence for years. In his 1988 bestseller, “A Brief History of Time,” he wrote: “The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”

Later in the book, he wrote of the quest for a unifying theory of the universe: “It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.” For a list of religious events in central Ohio, visit Gatherings at

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