"Stephen Hawking is a remarkable person whom I've know for 40 years and for that reason any oracular statement he makes gets exaggerated publicity. I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don't think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic."
Martin Rees, when he was President of the Royal Society, the Astronomer Royal, etc. and a friend of Stephen Hawking. You know Hawking as a figure in pop-culture and atheist polemics (look it up,I'm tired of playing dictionary researcher for post-literates), If he hadn't been disabled I doubt one in a thousand of you guys would have heard of him. Rees knew him as a fellow scientist and personally and what he said makes perfect sense so I'll go with that atheist instead of you.
And if Hawking read little philosophy and less theology there's no reason to trust any "oracular statement" he made on those topics. That's a general rule with atheists, few of whom have the philosophical chops or the background knowledge to have anything interesting to say on those topics. The internal critics of theology are fully able to handle the job, depending on the people you cite would be like calling a professional cake decorator without any relevant experience to work on your electricity, depending on your typical sci-ranger blog rat would require something even more far fetched to reach a useful analogy.
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