Washington, Sept 27 - Stephen Hawking has said it out and loud confirming that he's an atheist.

According to the Huffington Post, during the Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands, the 72-year-old renowned physicist said that it was "natural" to believe in God before people understood science, but at present, science provided "more convincing explanation" for the facts of the universe.

Clarifying a passage in his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, he said that what he meant by "we would know the mind of God" was that people would know "everything that God knew if there was a God, but there was no god," adding that he was an atheist. (ANI)