“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” the physicist wrote in his book, “The Grand Design.” “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

“Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation,” Hawking said in an interview with Spanish publication El Mundo. “What I meant by ‘We would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”