Not to be more of a downer in these already downer times, but the late Stephen Hawking said there is “no possibility” of God in our universe. In other words, we’re on our own, and we only have ourselves to blame for atrocities like this and this and this.
In Hawking’s final book, Brief Answers to Big Questions, published Tuesday, the theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who was smart enough to be played by Eddie Redmayne in the movie of his life, tackled one of life’s oldest and most difficult questions—Is there a God? His answer: A resounding no.
“There is no God. No one directs the universe,” he wrote, per CNN.
While that answer is undoubtedly unsettling for people of faith, they may take some comfort knowing that Hawking doesn’t think we’re entirely alone in the universe. He wrote that there are “forms of intelligent life out there.” They’re just not “God” in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim sense of the word.
The famed author died earlier this year at the age of 76, leaving his final book unfinished. Hawking’s family and colleagues worked, er, religiously to complete the manuscript with help from his archives. The book was intended to collect Hawking’s answers to the questions he received most frequently from answer seekers.
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