With the death of Stephen Hawking yesterday, many people on the internet were quick to point out that Hawking was an atheist and therefore not going to heaven. Many even said he would go to hell. Perhaps the timing was inappropriate, but the fact is that the death of the British physicist has reignited a very strange feud between science and religion.
But people who think that Hawking is in the depths being skewered by demons with pitchforks are forgetting two things. First, the Pope himself has been reviewing what hell is all about. Second, Hawking was never an anti-theistic extremist. On the contrary: in life, he made an effort to show that one thing did not cancel out the other, and he made an effort to establish a dialogue with the faithful. Here are 5 occasions when this happened.
1) He was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
– (The Pontifical Academy of Sciences/Reproduction)
The Academy is a scientific institution created by Pope Pius XI in 1936 and based in the Vatican. Its origins go back to Rome, when, in the 17th century, the Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of the Lynxes) was founded, which had Galileo Galilei as president. The institution was dissolved some time later and re-established in 1847 as the Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei (Pontifical Academy of the New Lynxes). In 1936, it gained its current name.
The Academy aims to carry out scientific research and seek solutions to epistemological problems (epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies human knowledge). Despite this, it is independent of the Holy See and is not bound by any creed. Its body is made up of 80 scientists from various ethnicities and religions. Currently, there are two Brazilians among them: Vanderlei Bagnato, a physicist and professor at USP, and Miguel Nicolelis, a doctor, researcher in the area of neuroscience and, get this, an atheist.
Stephen Hawking became a member of the Academy in 1986, during the papacy of John Paul II. Yesterday, on the occasion of Hawking’s death, the Academy posted on its Twitter: «We are deeply saddened by the death of our renowned academic Stephen #Hawking, who was so faithful to our Academy».
2) He personally met four popes
In life, due to his commitments to the Academy, Hawking visited the Vatican a few times and met four popes: Paul VI on April 9, 1975, John Paul II on October 3, 1981, Benedict XVI on October 31, 2008 and Francis on November 28, 2016. In all of them, he was received with respect and affection by the pontiffs.
On the 2016 visit, Hawking attended a five-day conference entitled Science and Sustainability: Impacts of Scientific Knowledge and Technology on Human Society and its Environment. At this event, the British physicist gave a 20-minute lecture defending his “proposal without borders”, a hypothesis that there is no “before” the Big Bang because, at the moment when the Universe began to expand, the laws of physics did not yet exist. This was a particularly bold idea to advocate among religious people, as it eliminates the need for a God to create the beginning of the Universe.
3) John Paul II knelt down to him
– (Reproduction/Instagram (@CasaPioIV))
In 1981, Hawking went to the Vatican with his then wife, Jane, to participate in a cosmology conference organized by the Academy (an act considered daring, since it came from an institution linked to the Catholic Church, which attributes the origin of the Universe to the creation of God).
After the event, participating physicists were invited to the papal residence to meet the pontiff privately. At that meeting, one at a time, all the physicists climbed onto a platform and knelt before the pope. Hawking, of course, could not repeat the act due to his physical condition. When it was his turn to go up to the podium, something happened that surprised everyone: John Paul II knelt down before him. The two then talked longer than everyone else.
4) He was honored by the Holy See
– (Reproduction/Instagram (@CasaPioIV))
The first time Hawking went to the Vatican, in 1975, at the age of 33, it was to receive a tribute. Pope Paul VI awarded him the “Pius XI” medal for his studies of black holes. Hawking was unanimously voted by the Academy to receive the laureate, which recognized his exceptional work and the «important contribution of his research to scientific progress».
5) He never offended religion and even quoted God in his texts
– (Lwp Kommunikáció / Flickr/)
Hawking didn’t talk much about religion. He only fully admitted that he was an atheist in 2014, in an interview with a Spanish newspaper. He stated: “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I mean by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is that we would know everything that God would know if God existed, but he doesn’t. I’m atheist.»
Hawking was referring to a passage from his book A Brief History of Timefrom 1988, in which he said: “if physicists could find a ‘theory of everything’ – that is, a cohesive explanation of how the Universe works – they would have a notion of what ‘the mind of God’ is”.
It wasn’t the only time he cited God in his work. There is a very popular text on his website in which Hawking quotes God several times and even tells an anecdote: once, at a cosmology conference in the Vatican, John Paul II told scientists that it was all right to study the Universe after it began, but that one should not question the beginning itself, because it was the moment of Creation, the work of God.
The point is that Stephen Hawking never took a stand against Christianity or other religions. Whenever he spoke of God, he did so with grace, maintaining detachment and respect. He conducted his research without offending the religious, letting his work speak for itself.