When this book was released, I was reading a story about it on-line, and the headline said something like: “Stephen Hawking Says There Is No God”. Then I made the critical mistake of looking at the user comments under the story. It was the usual collection of badly spelled notes from ignorant asshats who tried to say that stupid science didn’t know nuthin’ or that it was all Obama’s fault.

But one in particular caught my eye. It was by someone who undoubtedly dabbles in both neurosurgery and rocket science in his-or-her spare time, and it said something along the lines of: “THAT”S WHYY STEVN HAWKENS IS IN WHEEELCHAR!!!!!! BCAUSE HE DON”T BELIVE IN GOD!! JEBUS IS PUNSINGHING HIM!!!”

Which got me thinking about why anyone would expect a guy who has suffered from ALS and been confined to a wheelchair for most of his life to believe in God? Among the many people who have just cause to question that a loving God is waiting in heaven to dish them out a heaping plate of Sky Cake, I’d think that Stephen Hawking would be one of them.

It’s that kind of thinking that Hawking and Mlodinow take on here. Some people will point out the odds against any kind of life existing on Earth and say that God must have set it all in motion and made this place just for us and that it’s proof of an intelligent creator. Or you listen to a scientist like Hawking who points out that there’s whole multiverses where life doesn’t exist and that the only reason we know how lucky we are is that we exist to appreciate how lucky we are. Basing the idea that there must be some kind of intelligent creator simply because we’re here is bad science.

And that’s Hawking’s point. This isn’t an anti-God book, it’s a pro-science and pro-critical thinking book. Hawking does a nice job in the early chapters of giving a brief overview of the development of the scientific method and how beliefs in mysterious beings have been incorporated into theories and then debunked over the centuries. Then he lays out the flaws in the models that insist that there has to be some kind of creator being in the mix.

Even though Hawking does his best to dumb down the quantum physics that he claims proves his point and provides lots of handy pictures and graphics to help out the math and science challenged like me, it’s not exactly light reading. It’s short at 181 pages, and that helps, but while I’m fascinated by this kind of stuff, I’m also stupid enough that I had to read over some sections a couple of times before I thought I had a handle on it.

It’s enlightening and a nice overview of both the scientific method and quantum physics, but unfortunately, I can’t see any of the people who should read this actually picking it up.