Stephen Hawking is a man who loves to talk science and very rarely religion. While Hawking references God often in reports and findings, he recently admitted that he is an atheist and doesn’t believe in God.

While attending the Starmus festival in the Canary Islands, Hawking was interviewed by the Spanish paper El Mundo. He talked about the origins of the universe and said that he doesn’t think the universe was created by God or any other divine power.

“Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist,” he said.

Hawking has talked about religion and science before and believes that God and other deities were created by humans to make sense of space, time and the world before science came along to explain it.

#StephenHawking declares there's no such thing as God. What he said: http://t.co/7QDBfZeLWc pic.twitter.com/gJuEiegAAs

— Yahoo Singapore (@YahooSG) September 28, 2014

He said that while science and religion will constantly oppose each other, science will eventually win because it is based on facts and evidence instead of authority.

While Hawking may not believe that God exists, he does believe in aliens or otherworldly beings. He says that meeting aliens may not be a good thing and thinks such an encounter would be similar to what the Native Americans experienced when Christopher Columbus came to America.

He also claims that space travel could help save humanity.

“It could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonizing other planets,” he told El Mundo.

Why do you think Hawking is so quick to dismiss God and religion, but so eager to believe in extraterrestrials?