WORLD-RENOWNED Stephen Hawking, English mathematician, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, spent his entire life studying about the black holes and the theory of relativity, and questioning the universe.
For all his genius, this great mind could not fathom how a Being mightier and more powerful than he could exist. So even until his death last March, he believed that God does not exist.
Ordinary people like me can easily embrace the concept and existence of God. We think that this universe with its galaxies, constellations, meteors, planets, suns and stars do not collide, simply by their own volition or by chance.
A more powerful being...God I call Him... must keep all of them in order, to provide some harmony and peace up, up there so that we ordinary earthlings can go about our daily lives.
Now comes a Philippine president who, perhaps feeling more cerebral than usual, delivers in a tone of infallibility, “God is stupid.” And shortly after, that God does not exist.
This, at age 73 and being the oldest president ever,
Now he reveals that he was molested in his youth by a priest. From that must arise his disdain for priests, and then, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. But where exactly did the whole series of non-sequiturs leapfrog to “God is stupid” and “God does not exist”?
Wait! How can one who does not exist, be stupid?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if President Duterte could meet 11-year-old William Mailis from Pennsylvania, USA? Aspiring to be an astrophysicist, Mailis is already finishing a doctoral degree, has read all of Hawking’s books, and is now writing a book with one clear goal: To use science to prove God’s existence.
Seventy percent of his research is done and Mailis has already contradicted even Albert Einstein’s idea of the black holes being supermassive. After doing almost a year in astrophysics research, he is confident “that only God is capable of creating the universe...; only an external force could do what we know today, happened in the universe’s history.”
His father Peter’s humility is classic and reverential. He attributes his son’s brilliance to God. His son could not have gotten his IQ from them because he and his wife have average IQs.
Of his son’s overarching goal, Peter is happy. God gave his son a gift, so “the worst thing would be to reject that gift and not use it for the betterment of the world.”
Naturally, William’s goal is making the US liberals squirm in their seats. Imagine those billions of dollars set aside to drive, sledgehammer-like, the very opposite thought... that God does not exist.
Here in the Philippines, Duterte thinks his being president is enough to make this dominantly Catholic country believe that God is stupid and that God does not exist.
Duterte might have convinced 16 million Filipinos to elect him president by a plurality vote, on the promise of ending the drug problem in three to six months.
Now he calls their God stupid and even non-existent. What was it again? If a man fools you once, shame on him; if twice, shame on you?