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“Women. They are a complete mystery”–Stephen Hawking

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I love that a man who was a complete genius found women to be a mystery! I must admit, I never knew much about Stephen Hawking. I knew he was a genius and that being confined to a wheelchair did not confine his mind. In fact, of his physical disability he said, “Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.”

In 1963, when Hawking was 21, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as “ALS”. He was not expected to live past 24 years old, yet when he died on March 14, 2018, he was 76! The disease paralyzed his body, but it certainly did not paralyze his mind.

Countless articles about Hawking note his work and intelligence. Primarily, he was a physicist. He did develop theories about the cosmos, many involved black holes. However, his work with other experts advanced our understanding of space. As Phillip Ball states in his article, “Hawking’s genius, which arguably deserves a Nobel Prize, is to have brought together several different but equally fundamental fields of physical theory: gravitation, cosmology, quantum theory, thermodynamics and information theory.”

He was not a man of faith, at least, not of faith in God. He once surmised:

 “When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.”

Although I appreciate his sentiment that “we have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe” and that “we are each free to believe what we want…”, I disagree about what he feels is the “simplest explanation”. I personally believe that the simplest explanation of our own creation and that of the universe–all that we do know and all that we don’t–is that one, Mighty and Creative God made it all.

Interestingly, scientists in the 1700s and 1800s credited what they discovered through science to the One who designed it. In other words, the scientists of those times found that their discoveries proved the existence of a Designer, not against. Somewhere along the line, scientists began to believe that the more scientific they were, the less religious they could be.

Jesus died for us all, those who believe in Him and those who don’t. He died for Stephen Hawking– a modern genius who contributed so much to science that no doubt it will be studied for eons. He died for me– a newly minted college student and stay-at-home-mama who thinks the stars are mysterious and beautiful. And He died for you, the Lovely Reader with much to contribute to the world.

I’ll leave you now with a quote from our late modern genius physicist:

“We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.” –Stephen Hawking

Writer: CJ Heath

 

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