Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe? Stephen Hawking has the definitive answer

Yeah, this is a little old, but I still wanted to weigh in on the "controversy."

Did you notice the quotation marks around the word "controversy?"

On August 7, 2011, Discovery aired the inaugural episode of it's show Curiosity, asking the question: "Did God create the universe?" First of all, WOW. That's the question you're STARTING the show with? You've made it practically impossible to top yourselves with that one--oh, wait. Mike Rowe peeing on camera. I stand corrected. Anyway, the discussion on this topic was guided by the incomparable mind of one Stephen Hawking, who concluded to no one's surprise that since time began with the Big Bang, there was no room for a God to create the universe, as there could have been nothing before time. Problem solved. Throw away your various holy texts, all Earth religions, Hawking has deemed them obsolete. Nothing could have existed before time! It's all so simple, why didn't I see it before? Should have...sent...a poet...

I'll give you some time to wipe all of the condensed sarcasm off of your screens.

It's really presumptuous for scientists, who can't even come up with much concrete info on the early universe, to say that nothing came before it. There are schools of thought in theoretical physics that propose a cosmic sea of universe bubbles bumping into each other and forming big bangs in the process. Some theoreticians think that our universe Banged out of the Crunch of an earlier universe--which is to say, a previous universe collapsed into a single point, which then exploded back out to form our universe. With all these imaginations working overtime to hash out the particulars of existence (and I haven't even gotten to what different faiths suggest), it just seems a tad odd that Mr. Hawking, in all his unmatched brilliance, couldn't envision anything before time, let alone a God. Which brings me to my next point:

How can you set scientific parameters for an omnipotent Creator? "Well, God wouldn't be able to do that..." And how would you know? It's like the people who say that Superman would not have been able to fly around the world and turn back time in "real life." If Superman exists in real life, all bets are off. If God created time, He would have to have existed before it. Is this impossible? WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GOD, people. Scientists put limits on observable phenomena: motion, gravity, light, etc. Since you say He does not exist, you clearly have not observed Him, so there's no way you can limit Him.

Beyond Earth, the universe has yielded nothing but dead rocks and gas giants and yet people believe that there has to be life out there. Even Kepler-22b, our best shot so far, is still a maybe. And yet people--and by people, I mean serious scientists--believe that there MUST be life out there somewhere. MUST. With no evidence whatsoever. I see an ordered universe, from the motions of planets around stars to the twisting ladder of a DNA strand, and I say there MUST be a Creator. Somehow, my lack of scientific evidence makes that idea sillier than the notion of aliens.

In the final analysis, we return to the quotation marks around the word "controversy." If you believe in God, chances are, Hawking hasn't changed your mind. He's just another guy, like Richard Dawkins, using his authority in the scientific community to tackle subjects outside the realm of science. Let me refine that statement: science can search for God, using its limited tools; but until there is definitive proof of existence or nonexistence, a true scientist cannot, in good conscience, make a definitive statement.