I don't believe in science. I believe in Christianity. That's what someone said to me yesterday. All I can do is SMH. Really? All that translates to is "I am ignorant, and I only believe in God's authority, so you might as well not talk to me." I don't understand how anyone can survive in life with such a worldview. Our entire society is dependent on science and technology. Perhaps this woman should move out to the sticks and start her own farm. Like the Amish. Every time you flip on the lights in your (designed-by-an-architect) house, you are using technology that depends on science never dreamed of by the authors of the Christian Bible. How can you "not believe" in science? It's sort of like the retort that god doesn't believe in atheists, so atheists don't exist. I bet these people think the ontological argument is the greatest thing ever dreamed up. (boils down to: god is perfect, existence is more perfect than non-existence, therefore god exists) In a way, I'm glad I wasn't in a position to tell this lady what I really thought of her at the time, because it would have probably resulted in a poorly-planned ad hominem. It can't really be her own fault she's that ignorant about the world, can it? I've often heard the argument that science is no different than religion. I believe in relativity because Einstein says so. It's no different than believing in Jesus because the pastor, biblical author, academic theologian, or whoever else says so. Let me point out the fallacy here. Einstein discovered (authored) the theory of relativity. He is not the only scientist who has experimentally proven relativity. The whole point of science is that it is based on evidence, and that all hypotheses (and later theories) are falsifiable. Come up with a situation where energy does NOT equal the product of mass and the speed of light squared, and we'll all toss out relativity! They're working on that right now! One of the features of relativity requires that no travel can exceed the speed of light, and an experiment has produced evidence of neutrinos (tiny subatomic particles) which appear to do just that. If this it verified independently to be true, the world of science will be shaken, and we will know more than ever about just how little we know about the nature of the universe. Really, I don't "believe" in science either. I trust science to provide the best explanation possible given all of the available evidence. I don't have faith in science the way a Christian has faith in god. The two aren't even mutually exclusive. Yes, there are scientists who believe in god. There probably aren't too many actual scientists who believe in the literal historical truth of the Christian Bible, but there are most certainly scientists who believe we cannot eliminate the "first cause". Hawking may come damn close to saying there is no god, no first cause, but his view represents a hypothesis, not even a theory. Until we can create synthetic universes, there will always be room for faith with regard to where it all came from. I can wrap my mind around conservation laws (mass, energy, etc) but to say something arose spontaneously from nothing (and those laws simply did not exist until this epoch moment) sounds no less faith-based than "God initiated the process we call the big bang." Maybe there is something more that Dr. Hawking just failed to convey to me in his book, or maybe we all believe the same thing and just call it something different. Given the choice, I'll sooner take Hawking's side on "faith" than trust in a book written by several authors over a few centuries in multiple languages before the invention of the printing press. I am not saying that I think Dr. Hawking is a "god"; he is a man like me, with a brain to analyze and senses with which to take in the world. And his hypothesis doesn't contradict the rest of the whole of science.