God, Stephen Hawking and M Theory

Yesterday, when I should have been writing a paper about data from the Atlas detector at Cern's Large Hadron Collider , I was taxied across Geneva to talk live on television to Jon Snow about Stephen Hawking's apparent sudden conversion to atheism. Talking about God is well out of my comfort zone but I thought I should agree to do it since I worry that manufactured religion vs science wars can be very damaging and I didn't feel I should wimp out of trying to inject some sense. In fact Jon Snow and Channel 4 News hosted what I think was a very reasonable discussion. Phew. Oh, and by the way, Stephen Hawking hasn't changed his mind about God .