Hawking Vs. Wittgenstein on God

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"Hawking Said, 'Let There Be No God!,' and There was Light!

That headline flashed to all corners of the media universe . . . ."

"In his new book, [The Grand Design, Stephen] Hawking, the celebrated author of A Brief History of Time (1988), declares on the first page that 'philosophy is dead' because it 'has not kept up' with science, which alone can explain the universe. 'It is not necessary to invoke God,' the authors [Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow] write, 'to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.' [Is the role for that claim in Hawking's job description?]
Hawking sound-bited the hard stuff for interviewers: 'Science makes God unnecessary,' he told Good Morning America. [In response to the most fundamental of philosophical questions, How can something come from nothing?, he says] Something simply came out of nothing."

Ludwig "Wittgenstein and [Stephen] Toulmin taught us about religion, science, and cosmology. Their message to Hawking? Scientists eager to delete God exceed their job description.

Wittgenstein turned decidedly religious during his World War I service in the Austrian Army, when he read the Gospels repeatedly. He prayed often. Even before the war, William James's Varieties of Religious Experience exerted a powerful influence on him. Later, during the only public lecture of his career, he explored the psychological state of 'feeling safe in the hands of God.' More  Tweet