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What's important is that we continue striving towards a goal of ultimate truth, whatever that means.

I'll tell you what that means. It means that we, man, think that we can approach God. We cannot. We are human. Not God. We can NEVER BE GOD. Let us only try to be HUMAN. Let us try to treat each other like we would like to be treated. Let us love one another. I believe that that message was sent to us LONG ago by someone we all know. It is a simple message. We are not listening. We are too busy being smart.

" I'll tell you what that means. It means that we, man, think that we can approach God."

No good science attempts to do any such thing. Good scientists recognize that there is a limit to what we can and cannot know. They recognize we are limited by the fundamental laws of physics and of the universe in which we exist. Hawking is the first to say his concern does not extend to the instant prior to the Big Bang, simply because physical laws, as we understand them, do not function prior to the Big Bang. Ask him a question about what things were like before the Big Bang and his response will be something along the lines of, "I don't care because there's no way for us to know". It's not about approaching God, it's about using our God-given intellect to the best of our abilities to test the bounds of what humans can understand in our current existence.

"We are too busy being smart."

It almost sounds as though you're advocating the total abandonment of all human discovery. We seek to better understand ourselves and the world (universe) in which we live. In religious terms, one could say that we are mystified by God's creation, and therefore yearn to find out all we can about it, much like a child's curiosity. Scientists are merely adults who never lost the curious nature of a child. To not explore creation is to cheapen it. It's essentially saying, "yeah, there's a universe... so what? Lots of stars, lots of different things - who cares?". If you ever needed evidence as to God's intent for man's scientific exploration of the world around him, simply look to the innate curiosity of a child, and the fascinating and beautiful world that captures the imagination from cradle to grave for virtually every human being ever born. We live in a universe created for the purpose of being explored. Otherwise, all we'd need is one planet on which to live and one star to feed us energy. Everything else that exists, exists to be understood.

Science and religion are never in conflict with one another, unless one tries to do the job of the other. Good science tries merely to explain what the bullet is made of, how fast it's travelling, and it's trajectory. Good religion tries to explain who fired the gun.