Did I Miss Something?

Sometimes I think I may have missed something. Hm. I guess I need to back up and explain that one.

Currently, I am listening to the book, A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I personally think Hawking is great. He has a great sense of geeky humor that I totally get (so what does that say about me?), is brilliant at what he does and has the talent to make ridiculously complex mathematics, physics and cosmology understandable to the layman. He is also quite talented at marketing himself. We're talking about a man who has been confined to a wheelchair for decades and unable to do anything except think. He can't even write down the equations he comes up with in the middle of the night, but has to remember them and wait for someone to write it out for him! And what does he think about? Creation. How did we get here? Where did we come from? Why does the universe have such order from the largest scale down to the smallest?

I love listening to his books and make it a point to watch all the documentaries about cosmology on the science channels. I don't have the talent or skill to be a theoretical quantum physicist but I certainly enjoy listening to their theories. And the way Hawking breaks them down makes the basics actually fun for me. Everything I've learned from just watching science shows about him and his theories have only made me more aware of the awesome creative power of God Who not only made the BIG, BIG things like galaxies but also the tiniest parts that make up those galaxies like quarks.

The reason why I think I may have missed something is because I have some friends who aren't fans. Why? Because Hawking isn't a believer. I was talking about something in Hawking's book and a friend said, "I don't bother with him. He's not a Christian and I just don't want to hear what he has to say." So they dismiss what he says and disregard what he has contributed because he doesn't have faith? That is so annoying to me. A lot of people don't believe in God, does that mean we get to dismiss everything they have done? That their contributions to whatever field are not valuable, that THEY as human beings are not valuable because they see the universe differently from me? How limiting and arrogant that is. Frankly, I don't care if he believes in God. I can't make him. I am fairly certain the gospel has been presented to him at some point--most people in thew Western world have heard it--but he has not responded to it as far as I know. Who knows if he will in the future or not? If he does will he have to recant all his science and theories for these people?

So I am thinking I must be missing something because I definitely enjoy Hawking. He is a genius and I've learned lots from him. Many people have and have neither lost their faith nor started sacrificing goats in their backyard. I don't comprehend this insular attitude. Why hide from M-theory, branes and quantum physics?

I think a lot of the issues people have with Hawking lie in the fact that the man does not seem humble. He does sometimes project a very "I am smart and you aren't so just listen to me" attitude, but I have gotten that vibe from plenty of people who are tops in their field. It's a human failing; deal with it. I've been there and done that myself. And Hawking has come out and said that he was wrong on more than one occasion. I don't know if that means he's humbled himself sufficiently or not. You put a bunch of crabs in a pot and they always manage to pull the one nearest the top back down.

Hawking's theories and beliefs have no bearing on me and mine. As a Christian, I believe God created the heavens and the earth. He created them according to laws and rules He put in place which we call mathematics and physics. Those laws sustain life as we know it and probably life as we have yet to discover because God made it that way. While this doesn't mean we will find God in those laws and rules and it also doesn't mean we cannot discover those laws and rules and use them.

Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man. He can teach us a lot about what it means to persevere and succeed in spite of the odds against you (his doctors told him he had two years to live back in the mid-1960's). He loves what he does, that is obvious. Dismissing him because he is not Christian is not a Christian thing to do and, I think, it leaves one the poorer for it.