LONDON - GOD no longer has any place in theories on the creation
of the Universe due to a series of developments in physics, British
scientist Stephen Hawking said in extracts published on Thursday
from a new book.
In a hardening of the more accommodating position on religion
that he took in his 1988 international best-seller 'A Brief History
of Time', Dr Hawking said the Big Bang was merely the consequence
of the law of gravity.
'Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and
will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason
there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists,
why we exist,' he writes in 'The Grand Design', which is being
serialised by The Times newspaper. 'It is not necessary to invoke
God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going,'
added the wheelchair-bound expert.
Dr Hawking has achieved worldwide fame for his research, writing
and television documentaries despite suffering since the age of 21
motor neurone disease that has left him disabled and dependent on a
voice synthesiser.
In 'A Brief History of Time', Dr Hawking had suggested that the
idea of God or a divine being was not necessarily incompatible with
a scientific understanding of the Universe. But in his latest work,
Dr Hawking cites the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star
outside our own Solar System as a turning point against Isaac
Newton's belief that the Universe could not have arisen out of
chaos.
'That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions - the
single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar
mass - far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence
that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human
beings,' he wrote.
Dr Hawking argued earlier this year that mankind's only chance
of long-term survival lies in colonising space, as humans drain
Earth of resources and face a terrifying array of new threats. He
also warned in a recent television series that mankind should avoid
contact with aliens at all costs, as the consequences could be
devastating. -- AFP