In his best seller, A Brief History of Time (1988), Stephen Hawking attempted to explain creation in such a way as to avoid the God hypothesis.  Hawking suggested that if scientists were successful in developing a unified theory of ‘quantum gravity,’ then it would do away with the necessity of a big bang singularity.  The singularity is interpreted as a last remaining “gap” in science’s explanatory framework, where religious and superstitious folk still invoke the idea of God or a Creator.  The problem for scientists, as Hawking explains, is that:

 ... all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity, where the curvature of space-time is infinite. ... predictability would break down at the big bang. … Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. ...  There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang.   (1988, pp. 46-7)

In Hawking’s unified theory of quantum gravity, the mysterious singularity would be “smeared out” according to the uncertainty principle of quantum theory and Feynman's sum over history approach to quanta.   In this“sum over history,” all possible paths of a quantum in “imaginary time” are added together to represent the quantum–instead of describing it as a point particle. (Essentially, the sum over history represents the plenum condition of all possibilities.)  Hawking argues that such a view enables science to arrive at a completely natural explanation of the origin of the universe and there will be no need to invoke any metaphysical causes, or God to account for the beginning.  Heaven forbid that a singularity “smack of Divine intervention.” 

 “So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator.  But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be.  What place, then, for a creator?” (Hawking, 1988, pp. 140-1)

Professor Hawking used to strive to discover a wave equation for the universe consistent with quantum theory which could avoid any big-bang singularities by eliminating “such badly behaved points.” (1988, p. 133)   Hawking notes that, in this case:

 In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down.  But in imaginary time, there are no singularities or boundaries.  So maybe what we call imaginary time is really more basic.... (p. 139)

According to Hawking’s philosophical musings, dissolving the singularities into imaginary time and dimensions would somehow mean that the universe would not require “an undefined boundary condition,” represented by the singularity.

Of course, it does seems that even in this model we have a boundary condition where the real time passes over into the imaginary.  In 2010, Hawking agrees with the notion of the point source derivation of the universe.  He notes:

Dr. Hawking (1984) considered the philosophical implications of how quantum gravity theory could resolve the singularity enigmas:

There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time.  One could say: “The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.”  The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself.  It would neither be created nor destroyed.  It would just BE.  (p. 136)

Dr. Hawking’s arguments for why we no longer need a Creator if we can smear out the singularity are really quite peculiar.  Even if one smears out the naughty singularity into imaginary time, it still represents a boundary condition–what Blavatsky calls a ‘ring-pass-not’ or a portal between different levels of reality.   Dr. Hawking’s logic in dismissing God is his leap of faith–faith in his own intellect and the powers of rational science.  In an interview, Hawking comments: “We still believe that the universe should be logical and beautiful.  We just dropped the word ‘God.’”  (Weber, 1986, p. 212)  

 Stephen Hawking, Leon Lederman, and George Smoot–these are men at the heart of contemporary physics. ...  All these men have publicly associated the quest for a unified theory with God.  In drawing an association with contemporary physics and God, they are not alone.  Indeed, this kind of dialogue has become endemic among physicists–at least as far as their popular writing is concerned. ...

            But many physicists using the God drawcard are not engaged in serious theological or spiritual thinking.  Following a millennia-old tradition that has associated mathematically based science with divinity, they simply assume it is legitimate to present their activities in a quasi-religious light.  Despite the supposedly secular climate of twentieth-century science, some physicists are once again demanding that we see them as high priests, leading humanity “upward” toward transcendent, even divine knowledge of the world.  (1997, pp. 221-222)

             Stephen Hawking provides the most unusual paradoxes in his writings and philosophy.  Most people—even many who have read A Brief History of Time—think that Hawking embodies a religious or spiritual attitude in his search for the ultimate quantum gravity theory.  However, this is far from true and in interviews, Hawking readily dismisses the belief in God, afterlife, mysticism and the like–believing instead “in science” and ‘natural laws’ instead of ‘supernatural laws.’

            Wertheim examines the paradoxes of Hawking’s public image and his inconsistent underlying attitude: 

            The immense success of A Brief History of Time–it has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide–and Hawking’s personal success in the public arena, are, I believe, in part attributable to the quasi-religious tone in which he presents the enterprise of contemporary physics. Although his reference to “the mind of God” actually occurs at the every end of the book, it opens the film of the same name.   As the filmmakers rightly recognized, in an age when many people are hungering for a rapprochement between the spiritual and the scientific, the concept of the physicist as high priest is immensely appealing.  And, like Einstein, Hawking is very convincing in the role. He too has assumed an almost mystical aura, which in his case is compounded by the extreme disjunction between the power of his mind and the lameness of his body. … Hawking may be confined to a wheelchair, but his mind soars.  Not even many physicists understand the concept of “imaginary time.”  He is a being seemingly poised at the junction of the human, the subhuman, and the superhuman—and many people long to believe that this disabled physicist might just take us to God.
 

Ironically, it is Hawking himself who has suggested that his relativistic-quantum cosmology might obviate the need for a “Creator.” But he seems to want to have it both ways—at the same time pushing God out of the universe although invoking him as a constant subtext of his work.  It is not at all clear from A Brief History of Time whether Hawking genuinely believes in a god, or whether he is just indulging in self-aggrandizement.  Unlike Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton (and even Einstein in his own way), Hawking is not a serious theological thinker ...  Yet, whatever Hawking’s true feelings about God, many people have come to see him as a scientific high priest, the inheritor of Einstein’s mantle.   (pp. 217-219)

 The use of the words God, the mind of God, the God particle, and the God like Superforce are endemic to popular science writers and TOE theorists.  However, the underlying attitude is usually that we no longer need God, now that we have modern physicists as high priests to answer the ultimate questions about cosmic origins, even having to spend long hours sitting at their desks. 

            Hawking is hoping to fill in the last “gap” in contemporary science, trying to exclude God from the universe by accounting for creation events in purely mathematical and physical terms, thereby explaining away the Big Bang singularity.  Of course, to Hawking, there would be nothing “mystical” about singularities, quantum theory or the quantum vacuum.  Carl Sagan similarly bandies about the name of God, admitting God only if we define “him” as the sum of all the physical laws, but not accepting any of the traditional attributes of God–that is, as an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent Being. 

            Scientists often regard science as the new religion and want to metaphorically see into the mind of God but they do not take to heart the deeper mysteries of what that quest might entail. Scientists leave themselves, their own consciousness and being, out of the equation.  Furthermore, scientists simply do not realize the extent to which their own theories are beginning to vindicate mystical teachings –because of the pervasive lack of familiarity and appreciation of what such occult teachings entail.

            Indeed, what is it that leads scientists to conclude that there is nothing ‘mystical’ about singularities, superstrings, the nothingness and plenum of the quantum vacuum, M-theory and the holographic model, or other emerging ideas in physics?  It is just as ‘mystical’ to have the singularity eventually smeared out, beyond the level of the zero point into imaginary time and the infinite, as for it to appear as a point source at all.  Dr. Hawking does not even consider that such zero points, aethers,  higher space dimensions, the void and the plenum, have been the domain of occultists for hundreds and thousands of years. In fact, metaphysical expositions of creation bear profound relationships to modern theories.

            In the 1970s and 80s, astronomer Robert Jastrow was comparing the big-bang scenario to the Genesis account of creation and noting certain similarities.  All major religious and esoteric teachings depict creation as having occurred once upon a time and this basic idea was confirmed by the discovery of the big bang.   Jastrow noted further how the idea—that God willed that there should be ‘light”—made sense in terms of trying to depict early creation events, as energetic photons can create material particles.  However, thirty years later, scientists have advanced from the big bang scenario to singularities, vacuum states and higher dimensions, we must consider how these concepts have also been articulated by occultist Blavatsky as within other esoteric teachings.

            The search for unity itself arises out of the Judeo-Christian tradition of monotheism and the faith that all things are unified and part of one super-force or Divine Being.  Although modern physicists associate their theories with the search for God, this is not usually accompanied by any serious spiritual search or informed mystical understanding.  References to God and physics may help to sell books but they can obscure the basic mechanistic and materialist philosophy underlying scientific theories. 

            Madame Blavatsky (1888) noted that: “the occult side of Nature has never been approached by the science of modern civilization.”   Although Blavatsky wrote this over a hundred years ago, she would likely not change her attitude if she were familiar with Stephen Hawking’s M-theory and the so-called scientific theory of creation out of nothing.   Scientists are arriving at a knowledge of the profound depths of creation, but because they subscribe to a simplistic mechanistic outlook, they do not recognize or appreciate the mystical and metaphysical dimensions of their own theories.   Blavatsky embodied the truly scientific attitude in her recommendation: 

 The Secret teachings ... must be contrasted with the speculations of modern science.  Archaic axioms must be placed side by side with modern hypotheses and comparisons left to the sagacious reader.  (SD I, p. 480)

Unfortunately, Stephen Hawking does not have such perspective, as most scientists do not.

Steven Weinberg, a well-known physicist and cosmologist, is the author of The First Three Minutes (1979) which chronicles the physics of the early universe.  After providing a fascinating account of the origin and evolution of matter and energy in the early universe following the Big Bang, Dr. Weinberg concludes with these philosophical ruminations:

 
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. … But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself.  Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather.  (pp. 143-4)

In Dr. Weinberg’s view, to engage in tales of gods and giants or to feel that human life has some “special relation to the universe” is nothing more than a source of self-consolation and self deception.  Such ideas, he believes, have nothing to do with the nature of reality discovered by science.  Instead, he suggests that human life is more like a “farcical outcome of a chain of accidents.”  Humanity’s saving grace consists of those scientists who struggle so valiantly to collect data and solve the mysteries of life and the universe--all while sitting at their desks.  It seems quite evident to Drs. Weinberg, as to Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, that there is less and less for God to do, now that we have real science and scientists who sit at desks.