(March 16, 2018 at 9:50 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(March 16, 2018 at 6:22 pm)Jehanne Wrote: You seemed to imply that because Professor Hawking was not a "good philosopher", that his research in cosmology was not relevant to the atheist viewpoint.
In short, Hawking said that his research led him to conclude that it was not necessary to believe that a god (or gods) created the Universe any more than it was necessary to believe that planets and stars move because there are angels (or other invisible beings) who are pushing them.
Like I said, philosophy wasn’t his strong suit. I find this to be fairly common, among those who publically scoff at philosophy. Quite the shock...I know! And if that is representive of his view of religion, then I would dare say he had a poor and naive grounding in that area as well.
Angelology used to be a subject that scholars once took seriously. I have no doubt that Professor Hawking felt that he had better things to do with his precious time than sift through the minutia of theological writings, and for that, we can all be thankful.