Stephen Hawking, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, retired last year after 30 years in the job.

Professor Hawking has been a larger-than-life figure in some ways – an expert in fields too tricky for most of us — like quantum theory, black holes and dark matter.

And his heroic courage, in battling on despite being crippled by muscular dystrophy, has been admirable.

Hawking has become a bit of a celebrity.

So if he decided to write a book with a catchy title, plus a hint of controversy, it couldn’t fail to sell — even if it was no good.

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Professor Hawking’s new book entitled “The Grand Design” goes on sale next week.

Some controversy has been engineered by leaking a few seemingly bold quotes, like:

“Because there is a law such as Gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing . . . It is not necessary to invoke God . . . .”

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Pretty simplistic stuff – but likely to appeal to TV-watchers and Dawkins-readers.

He’s asking us to choose between God and the Laws of Physics, as if they necessarily contradict each other. But do they?

Hawking’s argument rests on a dogma that there is a basic conflict between Science and Religion. But is there?

Science is handy for answering certain kinds of questions — about electricity and matter and energy and those black holes . . . .

Not very basic questions.

More fundamental questions are beyond science to answer.

Like, for example, why isn’t there nothing?

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Believers in God believe that if there had ever been Nothing, there would still be Nothing.

(Real Nothing can never turn into Something)

Believers believe that there was always an original Something — Something whose existence needs no input from outside itself.

(We exist because of our parents. We didn’t make ourselves. They didn’t make themselves . . . .)

The Bible says, “Ask the beasts, they will teach you.  And the birds of the air, they will tell.  Speak to the earth and it will give answer . . . Who can be ignorant that the Lord made these things . . . ?”  (Job, chapter 12)

Florence Nightingale died 100 years ago yesterday.

Florence had an experience at the age of 17 when, “God spoke to me, and called me to his service.”

Back then, nursing wasn’t a very respectable profession. Hospitals were famous mainly for bad smells and frightening death rates.

Despite family protests, Florence became a nurse anyway. By 1853, she was superintendent of London’s “Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen”.

She and 38 of her trainees went to Turkey to nurse soldiers injured in the Crimean War.

At first, recovery rates didn’t improve much – but after the hospital’s sewers and ventilation were fixed they did.

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Back in England, Florence published a book, “Notes on Nursing”, covering what professional nurses needed to learn, plus “everyday sanitary knowledge . . . which every one ought to have.”

She wrote, altogether, 17 books on medical topics.

Plus another, 829 pages long, entitled “Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth.”

Due to health problems, Florence spent much of the second half of her life bed-ridden.

But she remained a great organiser, intellectual and author.

She died at the age of 90.

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Florence made her nurses recite a pledge:

I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practise my profession faithfully.

I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.

I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling.

With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician, in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.

When young, Florence worked in a Paris hospital staffed by nuns. She wore the postulant habit, but never became a nun herself.

She never became a Catholic. She told Cardinal Manning that she wished to, but he said no, as she didn’t accept some Catholic beliefs.

Florence Nightingale is venerated as a Saint in the Episcopal Church, but not in the Catholic Church.

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A phonograph recording of Florence’s voice, made in 1890, has been preserved. She sounds a bit like Queen Elizabeth II:  www.archive.org/details/FlorenceNightingaleVoice

Professor John Mendoza, chairman of the Australian Federal Government’s National Advisory Council on Health, resigned the other day.

He says the Government has no vision or commitment to mental health.

Like most rows, this row was about money. The government intended putting in $30 million a year where Professor wanted a billion.

Professor’s pet project seems to be “Headspace” — a youth mental health service. He talks about mentally-ill young people losing touch with their families, getting into crime etc.

Losing touch? Surely the biggest reason family members lose touch isn’t so much having an illness in the house, as having a television in the house.

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Think of depression, less as an illness, more as an industry.

Drug companies get rich selling Zoloft, Prozac etc., chemicals said to rectify “chemical imbalances in the brain”, which perhaps cause depression .

What makes our brain chemicals imbalanced anyway? Doesn’t what happens to any body organ largely depend on how we use the organ? What goes wrong with our brain chemicals might result from the moral and spiritual decisions that we use our brains to make.

And if “depression” results largely from such spiritual malfunctions, the solution may be a turn to true religion.

Tablets and counselling could also be a part of the answer — but only a small part.

* * *

“Depression” is a fashionable word for what would have, in the past, been called sadness or suffering.

Shouldn’t we be giving priority to teaching children how to suffer — and to teaching them that suffering has meaning and purpose? Might one reason we have guilty feelings be that we are guilty? Guilt is best resolved by forgiveness. Once forgiven, a weight rolls off our shoulders.

Ask a priest to hear your confession. If you haven’t been for ages, don’t worry, he’ll remind you how it’s done.

Another good aspect of confession is that it is free.

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Blessed Mary of the Cross (Mary MacKillop) wrote to the members of her Order when circumstances were making them depressed, “We have had much sorrow and are still suffering its effects, but sorrow or trial lovingly submitted to does not prevent our being happy — it rather purifies the happiness.”

About 500 babies are born each year in Australia suffering from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS).

This is a terrible disability with abnormalities of brain, facial features and heart.

FAS sufferers do badly in life, with educational delays and behavioural problems amongst other things.

Another 5000 babies are born each year with some, but not all, of the deformities and disabilities — a state of affairs called Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

FASD is the biggest preventable cause of birth defects and brain damage in unborn children in Australia today.

These are things you would not inflict on your worst enemy.

Or would you?

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The Australian Medical Journal this week published evidence that 80 percent of pregnant Australian women drink alcohol while pregnant.

Some experts blame the National Health and Medical Research Council for confusing women by changing its recommendations twice in the last ten years — from advocating total abstinence in pregnancy, to suggesting that small amounts are OK, and now back to recommending total abstinence again.

Sure, it is not a very impressive performance by the boffins.

But you would think a mother-to-be might err on the side of caution in such a potentially life-damaging matter.

A woman making a conscious decision to expose her unborn child to alcohol exposes him/her to at least a possible risk of entering life pre-damaged.

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The worst time to drink is in the second to eighth weeks of the baby’s development (when the brain is forming).

Some women mightn’t realise they are pregnant until those weeks are gone or nearly gone — a good reason, perhaps, for all women of child-bearing age never to drink.

All alcohol drink bottles should carry monster — and graphic — warnings to females of child-bearing years that they must never use alcohol.

Is that too much to ask them to give up?

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Not really. Parenthood is all about giving up things up.

One’s priorities change when a new human life completely dependent on oneself comes into one’s care.

Well, they should.

Last Tuesday, West Australian Member of Parliament, Peter Abetz, proposed that women seeking an abortion should be required to view an ultrasound picture of their unborn child.

No other medical procedure is done without obtaining informed consent based on provision of the maximum possible amount of available relevant information.

Seeing a 3D colour ultrasound of the baby could be a big forward step in letting mothers know who and what exactly is the nature of the candidate for termination.

* * *

Anyway, WA Premier, Mr Barnett , opposes the idea and has ruled out any support for what he calls “such drastic measures”.

A spokeslady for Marie Stopes International, worldwide abortion-provider organisation which does abortions in 40 countries, described the suggestion as “dangerous for women” and “impeding women’s choices”.

Yet figures quoted by Mr Abetz show that, in the USA, when women who requesting abortions were shown a 3D colour ultrasound of what was actually in their womb, 89 percent changed their minds and decided against being aborted.

Mr Abetz says, “Once you see the little heartbeat and the tiny little fingers and feet . . . the reality that this is life really hits home.”

* * *

The argument has been raised repeatedly that babies unplanned are likely to be mistreated when born and would be better off killed, so as to avoid becoming victims of child abuse.

As though killing them in the womb is not abuse . . . .

If we can kill unborn babies to prevent them being abused after birth, perhaps we might consider preventing abuse of 5-year olds by killing them at the age of 3.

* * *

The idea that a human life is sacred only when he/she is wanted is not sustainable. Yet many politicians and abortion lobby activists still try it on.

Difficulties associated with unplanned pregnancies are real enough. But our society is morally obliged to find responses better than killing.

Brodie Donegan was eight months pregnant when a car hit her near her home at Ourimbah, NSW, on Christmas Day 2009.

She suffered a fractured pelvis and her baby was born dead.

The (female) driver of the car, allegedly drug-affected, escaped unhurt.

The mother wants the driver charged with murder, but Attorney-General John Hatzistergos says No. Current NSW homicide laws only apply to children who have been born alive.

So the driver will face court appearances, but only in relation to the injuries to the mother.

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Shouldn’t these laws be changed?

Here politics rears its ugly head.

This is a touchy subject.

The feminist pro-abortion sisterhood will be watching.

Let’s postpone a decision on this.

Preferably forever.

At least for a long time.

Perhaps let’s have an Inquiry . . . .

Sure enough, today, five months later, Premier Kristina Keneally announced that a former judge has been appointed to review these laws.

After all, she says, it’s a complex issue.

“With the changes in technology, it is getting more and more difficult to pinpoint where life begins,” she says.

Nonsense.  We now know, even better, what we’ve known for generations — that a new human life begins the moment the paternal DNA enters the egg cell.

* * *

Once upon a time in 1958, French researcher, Professor Jerome Lejeune, discovered the chromosome causing Down Syndrome.

He was invited to address the United Nations.

His speech followed others expressing views favourable to abortion.  So in his speech, Lejeune said, “Here we see an institute of health turning itself into an institute of death.”

That evening he phoned his wife, “This afternoon I lost my Nobel Prize.”

His Downs discovery would normally have guaranteed a Nobel.  But, sure enough, he never got it.

Such honours aren’t for people who stand up for the unborn.

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Has Mrs Keneally, too, noticed that the position of premier isn’t really intended for people willing to make a stand for legally acknowledging the unborn as real human beings?