In the beginning God created, and an athiest says because of law predating time, God was not needed; WHAT? Oh, really . . .

Prof. Stephen Hawking has created a stir by declaring that the “Big Bang” that is believed to have kicked off the creation of the universe “did not need” a divine being to happen.

An extract of the 68-year-old atheistic scientist's new book, The Grand Design, was released on Thursday in The Times of London. Hawking is a British scientist who before retiring held the same professorship post at Cambridge University that Sir Isaac Newton did in the 17th century.

Hawking said in excerpts from the book that new theories make a creator of the universe redundant. “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he said. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

Gerald Schroeder, a Jerusalem scientist with 14 years at MIT and lecturer at the Orthodox yeshiva Aish HaTorah, counters Hawking's conclusions.

"I may surprise some by agreeing with Prof. Hawking," he said. "Indeed, to create a universe from absolutely nothing, all that is needed are the laws of physics (complex and couched in quantum fluctuations as they are), which allow something to arise from nothing.

"The laws of nature – not nature itself, but totally nonphysical, abstract laws – can create nature," he added. "Of course, since these laws create the universe with its many physical aspects, including the flow of time as we understand it, they must predate the universe. If something predates the universe and time, it is outside of time, timeless."

That's where Schroeder finds Hawking's conclusions lacking. "Prof. Hawking skipped that part. This means that some non-thing, not physical, outside of time created the universe," he said. That, "sounds to me like the traditional description of God."

Hebrew University physics Prof. Jacob Bekenstein offers additional insight to the Hawking book project and theory. Bekenstein is a religious Jew and leading theoretical physicist who studied black hole thermodynamics at the same time that Hawking did. Bekenstein told The Jerusalem Post Thursday that Hawking’s new statements “are a bit simplified.

He added, "We learn things about the universe from watching and conducting experiments, but we are limited and can err about physical laws. (Hawking) has reached a grandiose conclusion that even many non-believer scientists would agree is too much.”

Bekenstein said there is a practical reason for Hawking to take a sudden opportunity to publish his book. “He is a known atheist, from the time I first met him in the 1970s," Bekenstein said. Due to poor health, "his care is very expensive, so he lives from his books and other projects. It’s not hard for him to get attention and publish.”

I, for one, am thankful for the debate itself. With all the evolutionist, atheistic posturing to protect their intellectual orthodoxy, shutting down the principled exchange of ideas on these issues, it is good to see the whole agenda of argumentation rocking and reeling.