‘Big Bang due to physics, not God’

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God did not create the universe, according to eminent theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
In his new book, The Grand Design, the British scientist has argued that a new series of theories have rendered redundant the role of a creator for the Universe, explaining that formation of the Universe is not a once-in-a-million event, but the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.
“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. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going,” Prof. Hawking has written, according to an extract published in the Times on Thursday. The book, which Prof. Hawking has co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, is to be published September 9.
Prof. Hawking till October 2010 was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He is now a professor emeritus at the university.
The 68-year-old world famous cosmologist, who has written bestseller A Brief History of Time, suffers from motor neurone disease, is wheelchair-bound and speaks with the aid of a voice synthesiser.
Prof. Hawking is one of the longest-surviving sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which has left him almost completely paralysed. He developed the disease as a student at Cambridge in 1960s. Twice-divorced academic has three children, Robert (41), Lucy (39) and Timothy (30).
In A Brief History of Time, Prof. Hawking did not reject the idea of God, suggesting that God as creator was not incompatible with a scientific understanding of the Universe.