They both always had something pertinent and measured to say to me personally, whether about suffering, about man’s place in creation or about good and evil, and under their guidance I began to formulate my own simple philosophy about some of the stumbling blocks to faith, principally by understanding that free will is a prerequisite of the human condition.
If belief in God were automatically decreed by the creator, the human race would simply be a breed of automatons with neither evolution of thought nor motivation for discovery. Evil, I reasoned, was often reducible, even if distantly and hazily, to human greed and selfishness – predatory animal instincts, dictated by nature for survival in a distant evolutionary past, long before the development of finer intelligence and the dawn of conscience. Selfish, instinctive reaction, the root of evil, is outside the reach of God precisely because free will prevents His intervention.
God could not prevent suffering, but He could alleviate its effects by restoring hope, peace and harmony. There was still the stumbling block of illness, degenerative, incurable, paralysing and devastating, which did not fit into this system – unless, that is, illness also sometimes happened to be the result, however remotely, of human fallibility, an error in research or treatment, in a chosen way of life or in the environment.
If the cause of Stephen’s illness was really a non-sterile smallpox vaccination given in the early Sixties, it might be accounted for thus. As for the present chaos, one could only hope that, by keeping faith, by still trying to give of one’s best, a brighter, calmer day might one day dawn.
— Travelling to Infinity (Jane Hawking), Loc. 5721–33