AUSTIN, Texas _ Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain, an outspoken member of the Texas House Freedom Caucus, tweeted his condolences Tuesday night on the death of world-acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking, sort of.
"Stephen Hawking now knows the truth about how the universe was actually made," Cain tweeted at 11:34 p.m. Tuesday. "My condolences to his family."
At the time of his death, Hawking was probably the most famous scientist and exemplar of rational thinking in the world. More to the point, for Cain, Hawking may have been the globe's most famous atheist.
Cain, a freshman legislator from Harris County now seeking a second term, had the most conservative voting record in the 2017 session of the Texas House, according to the liberal-conservative index produced by Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.
The New York Times obituary of Hawking begins: "Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76."
The obituary goes on to note that, "Nothing raised as much furor, however, as his increasingly scathing remarks about religion." He was a thinker about who believed that "there was no need to appeal to anything outside the universe, like God, to explain how it began."
The Times quoted a 2011 interview with The Guardian in which Hawking said, "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
Asked about the etiquette of trolling the recently deceased, Cain told the Austin American-Statesman, "I am sympathetic for his family's loss. Losing a loved one is difficult for everyone. My prayers are with them."
But, Cain continued, "While many see him as one of the greatest public intellectuals of the last century, and no one disputes that he was brilliant, the fact remains that God exists. My tweet was to show the gravity of the Gospel and what happens when we die, namely, that we all will one day meet the Creator of the universe face to face."
"Stephen Hawking was a vocal atheist, who advocated against and openly mocked God," Cain said. "Hawking has said, '(T)here is no god. No one created our universe, and no one directs our fate.' And, elsewhere, 'I'm an atheist.'"
Most of the tweeted responses to Cain's tweet were unsympathetic to his point of view.
Without making specific reference to Cain, state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, policy director for the Freedom Caucus, tweeted, "Hey fellow Christians _ cool it with the hateful & snarky Stephen Hawking condemnations. We should mourn when someone passes without knowing Jesus and celebrate with the angels when any man comes to faith. I pray that, at some point before his final breath, he did the latter."
State Rep. "Poncho" Nevarez, D-Eagle Pass, directly responded to Cain's tweet: "At a time like this, and I don't care who it is, and I am sure they care less who you are, but mocking the deceased and his family reveals the smallness of your character. Be better than that."
Nevarez ended the 2017 session in a scuffle on the floor with state Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, another member of the Freedom Caucus, who competed with Cain and state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R- Bedford, for the distinction of having the most conservative voting record in the House.
