Last Thursday, in an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Grand Design, world-famous physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking revealed that he no longer believed the universe needed a creator God. “The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he wrote. That’s a fairly simplified statement, and one he will no doubt expand upon in the new book.

But that didn’t stop comment sections, discussion boards, and Twitter from exploding in a Big Bang of hatred and derision toward Hawking from people who DID believe in God. As a Christian, I bristle anytime other Christians are sources of hatred and derision — especially toward people “on the other team,” so to speak. (What part of “love your enemies” don’t we understand?)

Also, I’m a big fan of Hawking and his work. So I wrote a quick Guest Voices piece for “On Faith” at the Washington Post. The piece is called “Stephen Hawking says there’s no creator God; the twitterverse reacts.” Yes…it’s a really catchy title. Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

There were tweets belittling the physicist’s physical ailments.
Tweets chortling about how he’ll be sorry when he dies and meets God.
Tweets over-simplifying his ideas and then cheerfully labeling them
stupid. Tweets calling Stephen Hawking an idiot.

Like dogs backed into a corner, my religious brethren went on the attack, escalating the culture war between science and faith.

…

Jesus taught slowness to anger, compassion for the sick, and love for
our enemies. But even accounting for the simplicity of Twitter, and the
troll-like culture of the Internet in general, we still come across as a
bunch of petty, rage-filled monsters eager to discount the life work of
one of the world’s greatest scientists.

A genius with a debilitating disease says something we disagree with,
so we make fun of his wheelchair and laugh at his impending death.
Great.

I hope you’ll read the whole article here, and then consider the following question: What is the Christian (and/or God-believing) response to this kind of situation?