Has science really replaced God? Many people believe it has, especially following Stephen Hawking's claim a few years back that the universe could have created itself without God. But does explaining how the universe began actually eliminate the possibility that God exists? Perhaps scientific explanations and belief in God are not necessarily incompatible.
The claim that changed the debate
So then, has science finally replaced God? Apparently so, according to no greater authority than the late Stephen Hawking. Professor Hawking informed us of God’s redundancy in his 2010 book “The Grand Design”.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
In an interview about the book on the American CNN network, Hawking told the interviewer Larry King,
"God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator,"
Later, in 2018 when his final book “Brief Answers to Big Questions” was released, Hawking went further to say;
“It’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science.”
So, that’s it then. There’s your answer, job done. If Stephen Hawking says that God does not exist then who is going to argue with him? I mean, he’s very possibly the greatest scientific mind of all time. Who would dare…
Well…, me obviously. Surprise!
Does science really eliminate God?
OK, so it’s not really a surprise and I’m not really about to argue with Stephen Hawking, not about science, anyway. Firstly, I’m no scientist, which is sort of important, and secondly, I’m certainly not one of the great minds of the 21st century, you may be surprised to learn. Scientifically, I’m about as evolved as an amoeba compared to Professor Hawking. But the thing is…and where I get myself off the hook, in case you’re wondering…the thing is that I can’t help wondering if we are, in fact, talking about science.
Professor Hawking and his contemporaries are no doubt entirely correct scientifically, but the question is whether being “correct scientifically” is the point? Science may be able to explain how the universe could have made itself without God shouting “Go”, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that a god can’t exist. Why? For the simple reason that a god, as defined by most if not all religions, is not part of the universe. The universe may not have needed someone to light the fuse. That doesn’t prove to no one did.
Let’s imagine the beginning of the universe was the planting of an oak tree. The mighty oak could have grown up from an acorn that fell from another tree and germinated, or it could have been planted intentionally by someone who wanted some nice shade in the backyard. Being able to explain that the tree grew from a seed does nothing to prove whether the tree was planted intentionally or not. Either is possible. So, being able to explain how the universe began does nothing to clear up whether anyone began it on purpose, to coin a phrase. In other words, just because we don’t need God to light the touch paper, it doesn’t mean he couldn’t have.
Wait, what?
Explaining something is not the same as explaining it away
Look at it this way. What scientists such as Professor Hawking are saying is that because we can now explain how the universe was, or at least could have been made, we no longer need a supernatural being as a creator to explain it. Fine. That’s true up to a point, but the key word there is “need”. Sure, we don’t “need” a supernatural being to explain it, but that in itself is not proof that one didn’t. The problem is, unfortunately, that far too many people claim that it is. The problem is not what Professor Hawking is saying, it’s with what people are claiming that it means.
The real question is this: how does our ability to explain scientifically how the universe began rule out the possibility that someone or something was responsible for its beginning? Put another way, if we can show how the universe could have come into existence through natural processes, does it follow that it could not have been intended to come about that way?
Would a creator leave any clues behind?
The questions we should ask are these: What would we have expected to find if a god had created the universe? And further, would we have expected the evidence to look any different from what we have actually found?
In other words, if some kind of creator did bring the universe into existence, what signs should we expect? A cosmic "blue touch paper"? A cartoon-style plunger that God pressed to set off the big bang? Were we expecting God to come out from his hiding spot with hands up saying, ‘well done, you got me?’
So, does being able to explain how the universe began change anything about the possibility of a creator? If that creator has not left clear and irrefutable scientific evidence of itself elsewhere in our study of the universe, why should we expect to find it because we know how the universe came about? Any possible creator left no evidence of itself anywhere else, so finding no evidence of it at the universe’s beginning can’t therefore be taken to be proof of its non-existence. It’s using a lack of proof as proof. But we already had a lack of proof so we’re really back exactly where we started.
A scientific universe is exactly what we should expect
While we haven’t found proof of a creator of any type, what we have found is that the universe is intelligible. The more closely we examine it, the more scientific explanations we uncover. So, given that fact, why should we expect the origin of the universe to be any different? Why would we expect there to be no scientific explanation for its beginning simply because there may have been a creator involved?
If a supernatural being of any sort possessed the ability to create something as magnificently complex and ordered as our universe, then it seems entirely reasonable that such a universe would operate according to discoverable laws. Indeed, we would and should expect it to be scientifically understandable. The existence of a natural explanation for the universe's origin would therefore not count against the existence of a creator. Rather, it would be exactly what we should expect to find in a universe deliberately designed to be coherent and governed by consistent laws.
The limits of scientific explanation
A scientific explanation of the universe's beginning answers the question of how it came to be. It does not, by itself, answer the separate philosophical question of whether there was intention behind it. Those are distinct questions and resolving one does not necessarily resolve the other.
So where does that leave us?
You might be surprised to learn that it leaves us exactly where we have always been: with a choice to make about whether some kind of god created our universe or not. Being able to explain scientifically how the universe came about does not, by itself, settle that question. It simply explains how it happened.
The reason is a logical one. If a god of some kind created the universe, then that god would necessarily be distinct from the universe itself. Logically, you cannot be a part of something that you create.
Even an all-powerful god must still be logically coherent otherwise logic itself becomes meaningless. A being that can make contradictions true—such as creating something that is both separate from itself and physically part of itself at the same time—would not be a being that exists within any meaningful framework of reason.
Consider some examples. A carpenter who builds a table is not the table. A worker who assembles a machine is not the machine. The creation may reveal something about its creator—the skill, intention, or methods involved—but the creator remains a separate entity from the object created.
So, if a god created the universe, then that god would therefore not be a part of the universe in the same way that physical objects within it are. However much we study the universe, we are studying the creation, not the creator. Studying a table may tell us that someone designed it, but it does not, by itself, reveal the carpenter's identity. Studying a machine may reveal the principles behind its operation, but it does not automatically reveal the person who assembled it.
Can science study the creator?
This means that even if science were able to provide a complete explanation of how the universe originated through natural processes, the possibility would still remain that something beyond the universe was responsible for establishing those conditions. A scientific explanation of the universe's beginning would answer the question of how it happened; it would not necessarily answer the separate question of why there is a universe at all.
We therefore remain, in one important sense, where we have always been: confronted with a philosophical question rather than a purely scientific one.
The rise and fall of the God of the gaps
There is, however, another issue that must be considered. It is an argument often associated with claims about the relationship between science and religion: that gods were created by human societies as explanations for things that science did not yet understand. According to this view, as scientific knowledge expanded, the need for gods diminished. Where once people attributed storms, disease, natural disasters, even the rising and setting of the sun to supernatural causes, science has since provided natural explanations.
The argument is that gods have historically occupied the gaps in human knowledge, and as those gaps have narrowed, the space left for supernatural explanations has narrowed with them. In that view, science has not disproved gods; rather, it has made them unnecessary as explanations for phenomena that were once mysterious. Now that science has closed or is closing the gaps, so long god.
To paraphrase author Douglas Adams: perhaps our gods could simply say, "So long, and thanks for all the sacrifices."
Is religion only an explanation for what science does not know?
But that argument raises another question: is the role of a god merely to explain what science cannot yet explain? Or is the concept of a god intended to address deeper philosophical questions—such as why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe is governed by consistent laws, and whether there is purpose or meaning behind existence?
The answer to that question depends not only on what science discovers, but also on how we interpret what those discoveries mean.
But is that all we use religion for—to cover up our ignorance?
The assumption that scientific discoveries will eventually remove the need for a god often rests on the idea that religion exists primarily to explain things we do not yet understand. Certainly, there is an element of this. The “I don’t know, but I trust that God has an explanation” approach has existed throughout history.
Faith and science: conflict or complement?
However, while faith can be a valuable source of comfort and guidance, it should never become an excuse for ignorance or a reason to reject knowledge. To suggest that this is the only role religion has played in people’s lives, though, would be inaccurate, unfair, and potentially dismissive of the many religious people who have embraced science and scientific discovery.
A person of faith can quite reasonably believe that God has an explanation for something we do not yet understand, while also believing that this explanation will be discovered through science. The search for natural explanations does not necessarily conflict with belief in a creator.
The search for meaning
What is often overlooked in the “God of the gaps” argument is that religion has traditionally served another purpose entirely: offering people a sense of meaning, purpose, and significance. It attempts to answer not only the question of how we exist, but the deeper question of why we exist.
That is a question that almost everyone confronts at some point in their lives. It is a question that may have brought you to this very discussion.
And this is where the distinction between science and religion becomes important. Science is extraordinarily powerful at answering questions about mechanisms: how stars form, how life develops, how the universe evolves, and how the physical world operates. But the question of whether there is an underlying purpose behind existence is a different kind of question.
A purely scientific description of human existence might tell us that we are the result of a vast chain of cosmic events, biological processes, and chemical reactions. That explanation may be accurate, but for many people it does not answer the deeper existential question: what does it mean that we are here?
The final question: how and why
Science can explain the conditions that allowed us to exist. It can describe the processes that produced us. But whether our existence has an objective purpose, whether there is meaning beyond our own minds, or whether our lives have significance beyond the fact that we exist—those questions move beyond the realm of science to resolve.
The question, therefore, is not simply whether science can explain how we came to be. It clearly can and will continue to do so. The question is whether science can explain the why, which it simply must do if we are to do away with God.
Because perhaps the most important question we ask is not merely, “How did we get here?” but also, “Why are we here?”
So, has science replaced God or not?
So, after all that, the question remains; has science made God redundant? And the answer must be “No, it hasn’t”, purely and simply. Because it can’t. Any god that may or may not exist cannot be a part of our universe to be discovered scientifically, no matter how much we argue otherwise. It is a logical impossibility, and the fact that we can explain how the universe came into existence does nothing to alter that.
So, no matter how often anyone claims that science disproven the existence of God, the question remains one of faith, as it has always been, and, like it or not, it’s still entirely up to you to decide for yourself.
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