You may have seen that today Stephen Hawking announced that his upcoming book would state that some sort of divine being was not necessary to set the world and universe into motion. Rather, he says, the law of gravity has something to do with it, somewhat proving that because gravity exists, a divine being may not have been necessary. At least that's the way that I understood it. He's way smarter than me. If you haven't seen it, there are lots of news articles running the story right now.
Particularly interesting to me, his statement to Guardian UK:
Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes. [I added the emphasis myself]
I'm a new theology student who knows next to nothing.
Something tells me, though, that the earth was not carefully designed to please us human beings. Therefore, why do we need evidence?
Scripture says often that the world was pleasing to God.
I think that the existence and necessity of pleasing God might be more of a goal for Hawking to attack.
I might be wrong, who knows.
-B