Who Or What Created The Universe?

The famous British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking, the guy some say is the most intelligent human alive today, says in his new book, The Grand Design, that there need not be a God behind the creation of the This denies the common idea today that our solar system couldn't have come out of chaos of nature. "Physics can explain things without the need for a "benevolent creator who made the Universe for our benefit.," he writes in the book. "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 ... set the Universe going."

That's an interesting theory and I have little to say about it since my knowledge of both theology and science is tiny. But the reaction to his suggestion has lit afire underneath those who believe God created the universe from nothing.

My question is, does it matter whether a god created life or even if a God exists"? Will affirming that he (or she) does exist change your behavior at all? It won't alter mine. This is a humanistic world in which we live today. Technology and science has removed God from the daily decision making process for the vast majority of people.

Primitive man looked for a God as the answer to all things because he had no knowledge of science to explain even the ordinary things (as in, why it gets dark at night). But as human intellect progressed the old, "Tell me what created whatever it is you think created the universe". is not the only question. One could also ask, "Who created God? How did he appear?"

When at a mall the other day with Jane who was buying school clothes, I sat on a comfy chair while she browsed. An elderly man approached and sat in the adjoining chair. We talked a few minutes and he then said, " May I ask you if you are going to go to Heaven.". Discussing religious views with strangers is not my passion, so I brushed aside the attempt of the man to thrust his religious views toward me, and told him I didn't think about that since I had little control or even interest in speculating about such things.

He handed me a religious pamphlet and started his spiel about God and man and the universe. He knew all the answers, at least to his own questions, sure of his own beliefs and eager to have me accept them as well.

Eventually, as he saw I wasn't listening very intently to is conversion speech, he left. I thought he was a rather sad figure to chase after unknowable theological matters in a mall with a stranger. "Make peace with God, he smiled and said.".....I glanced and fired back, "Peace? But we've never quarreled".

Sometimes people worry too much about the unknowable.