Hawking’s rejection of God unpersuasive, say faith leaders

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have all rejected claims that belief in the divine has been disproved by British physicist Stephen Hawking, who recently asserted that science leaves no role for God in the creation of the universe.

In his new book The Grand Design, Hawking says, "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."

In a previous book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had written that finding a theory for creation would be humanity's greatest achievement, "for then we should know the mind of God."