霍金今年似乎一直没闲着，前几个月他宣称宇宙中一定有外星人，但是人类千万不要去和他们接触，因为他担心外星人的科技水平远远高于人类，他们可能将地球资源洗劫一空然后扬长而去，他说：“如果外星人拜访我们，我认为结果可能与克里斯托弗-哥伦布当年踏足美洲大陆类似。”他的这些观点毫无疑问地立刻引发了很大的争议。殊不知这只是他今年上的一碟开胃小菜，真正的大餐直到十天前才出现。
9月9号，他出版了他新写的科普书《大设计》(The Grand Design)，这可以看做他20多年前的名著《时间简史》的续集，回答了 一些《时间简史》没回答的问题。不过真正让这本书大热的不是因为它是时间简史的姊妹篇，而是霍金在书中公然向宗教，哲学发起了挑战！”。霍金写到：“ 因为有一些定律，比如引力定律，宇宙可以从无到有，自发形成，”，“这种自发的创造力就是宇宙存在的原因，也是我们存在的原因。”“没有必要求助于上帝，由其点燃导火纸，推动宇宙的运转。”他还写到：哲学已经不能跟上现代科学发展的步伐了，特别是物理学。由于霍金在科学界超然的地位，此书一出版立刻引发了口水战，一些宗教界的大教主也都亲自上阵反击霍金，详情请看这里。
宗教和科学的争斗由来已久，不过到了近代这个争斗平和了许多。当然原因有很多，我想其中的一个原因是物理界提出了一个叫大爆炸的理论，该理论认为宇宙产生于一次大爆炸。这个理论一经提出立刻得到了宗教界的认可，因为他们认为正是在大爆炸的初始点，上帝创造了宇宙，大爆炸理论和宗教的一些想法不谋而合。不过后来由于物理学的发展，特别是近几十年弦论或者说M理论的发展，使得物理学家可以用物理理论而不是依靠上帝去解释大爆炸的初始点发生了什么（霍金本人也曾经在80年代提出了一个物理理论去描述大爆炸的初始点，现在这个理论依旧有很多人在研究），于是宗教再次从具体的科学领域撤退，现在基本上双方井水不犯河水。此番霍金又旧话重提不知目的何在，也许是促销书的一个策略，但不管怎样，书已经出版了，口水战也开打了，最后的结果也肯定是谁都赢不了谁，各自擦擦身上和嘴巴上的口水，接着做各自的事情，倒是留给读者们一个问题：上帝究竟是存在于人的心里，还是在大爆炸之初就已经存在了？
最后附上这本书的序：
How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? Over twenty years ago I wrote A Brief History of Time, to try to explain where the universe came from, and where it is going. But that book left some important questions unanswered. Why is there a universe–why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why are the laws of nature what they are? Did the universe need a designer and creator? It was Einstein’s dream to discover the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything. However, physicists in Einstein’s day hadn’t made enough progress in understanding the forces of nature for that to be a realistic goal. And by the time I had begun writing A Brief History of Time, there were still several key advances that had not yet been made that would prevent us from fulfilling Einstein’s dream. But in recent years the development of M-theory, the top-down approach to cosmology, and new observations such as those made by satellites like NASA’s COBE and WMAP, have brought us closer than ever to that single theory, and to being able to answer those deepest of questions. And so Leonard Mlodinow and I set out to write a sequel to A Brief History of Time to attempt to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The result is The Grand Design, the product of our four-year effort. In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a “model-dependent” theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse–the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. And we assess M-Theory, an explanation of the laws governing the multiverse, and the only viable candidate for a complete “theory of everything.” As we promise in our opening chapter, unlike the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life given in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer we provide in The Grand Design is not, simply。
