Time, the Universe and Everything

Wendell Berry on the theory of the Big Bang as the origin of the universe:

1. What banged?

2. Before banging how did it get there?

3. When it got there where was it?

      -Leavings (2010)

I have to confess, I am a bigger fan of poetry than of science, but I'm curious and I find scientific inquiry to be a fascinating field.  But I guess I have enough of an "outside" perspective on the world of science to notice when science rather glaringly ceases to be science.  Such was the case as I watched a show about Stephen Hawking and his opinions about the universe on the science channel last evening.  Hawking is a brilliant mind and a remarkable story.  He has pushed the envelope of human knowledge while being confined to a wheelchair for over 50 years and slowly losing his capacity for movement, speech and nearly everything but the smallest movements of his eye. The fact that he is alive and functioning is a wonder of science and technology.
I do not question Hawking's credibility as a scientist, or as a genius.  I do question his credibility as a theologian, which apparently is his latest field of endeavor.  Quite frankly, he's not very good at it.
Hawking claims that he has disproved the existence of God by determining that the big bang could have taken place by the random appearance in nothingness of something, that then exploded and formed the universe as we know it.  He speculates that since, we think, time ceases to exist in a black hole, black holes somehow give us a glimpse into what there was before there was something and ergo before there was something there was no time.  The Science channel says there is very sophisticated mathematical proof of this fact, that we probably can't understand.
I have no doubt that there is sophisticated mathematical proof, and I am sure that I probably can't understand it.  I am willing to accept that, in the nothingness of a black hole, there is no time, not just that time stops, but that it doesn't exist.  I've watched Dr. Who for a really long time, I get it, the universe is amazing.  I will even cede the point that time began with the big bang (yeah, I'll give you the whole theory), but then Hawking makes a leap of faith that is rather mysterious for a man of science: the absence of time before the big bang means there is no god...
Really?
That's an interesting correlation to draw.  He said something like, there was no time for God to create the universe.  Okay... hmmm.
The first thing is that Hawking seems to have discovered a very old theological debate: the chain of causation/ first cause inquiry.  I hate to burst the bubble of such an eminent mind, but a bunch of primitive folks who still thought the earth was flat have pretty much put that to bed as a serious challenge to the existence of God.  Subsequently the search for God as a sort of "first cause" has generally been found to be rather bad theology, because it assumes that God exists in the same physical universe that we do, which indeed would make it rather difficult for God to create said universe.
I'm not going to just shout, "TRANSCENDENCE!" and disappear back inside my faith bubble though.  I am going to note that my introduction to systematic theology course included a rather in depth look at the idea of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.  The definition of nothing being rather a tricky proposition, because we in fact are something, our universe, even the vast empty space and the mysterious blackness of black holes, is in fact something.  Because we really have no way of defining absolute nothingness, we can only really come to the edge of the void and see that which we do not understand.  Some people look into the void and say, "Aha! That proves there is nothing there!  Look at all that nothing!  There can't possibly be something there!" That, apparently, is what Hawking has done.  He has got his wheelchair to the edge of the void and sees nothing, and refuses to admit the possibility of something that he doesn't see.
The problem with that approach is not found in theology, but in science.  Science is constantly pushing the edge of the void farther and farther back.  Einstein uncovered a reality that pushed the edge of the void significantly farther back than Newtonian physics had thought possible, and now quantum physics is challenging the "edge" that Einstein set.
I am of the opinion (and that is honestly what it is, an opinion), that no matter how far we push back the boundary of the void, the only thing that will always remain unknowable is God.  God is outside time, because God is the author of time.  Proving that time had a beginning is not to disprove God.
I have long found that no matter how much we may try to challenge faith, human beings are inherently wired to put our faith in something.  People like Hawking and Richard Dawkins want to say that they put their faith in science.  If that were true they would not be Atheists, who say there is absolutely no God, no transcendence.  If you want to put your faith in science, you cannot say that something does not exist, you can only describe things that are observable and measurable within the bounds of time and space, which is what science, by definition, does.
True scientists should leave the mystery of God well enough alone, unless they want to try their hand at theology.  If so, they ought to go take at least an introductory course in systematic theology so they don't end up sounding like a fool or a megalomaniac.