"Before we understand science," Hawking told an interviewer in 2014, "it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation." When the interviewer pressed Hawking on his suggestion in his book A Brief History of Time that a unifying theory of science would help mankind ''know the mind of God'', Hawking clarified thus: "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. [And] religion believes in miracles, but these aren't compatible with science." Now, leaving champions of public education aghast, it emerges Bill Shorten has offered the Catholic faith's schools more than $250 million extra in the first two years of Labor office and billions of ­dollars over 10 years. Among the most aghast is Australian Council of State School Organisations president Philip Spratt. He has given what Tuesday's Canberra Times called a "blistering" response to Shorten's promise. Spratt said Labor's "spectacular special deal" for the Catholics had shocked public school parents and teachers.

As well as being a setback for state schools, the news will give new pain to atheists and agnostics. I'm glad Hawking is no longer here to hear it, to hear that Labor will give billions of dollars to assist schools to teach that there is a Heaven and a Hell, that there are miracles and that God, rolling His big sleeves up, created the Universe in just six days of supernatural busyness. Those of you who are believers and who have grown up in an Australia where government funding of religious schools feels like a normal thing and a human right can have no idea how wrong, how sinful, how wicked it can all seem to non-believers. Like Philip Spratt, I am left aghast by the Shorten-Labor promise. In my shaving mirror, my Shorten-induced pallor (for to be aghast is to be left pale by shock) resembles what must have been the deathly pallor of Lazarus' face at the moment (see John 11:38-44) Jesus raised him from the dead … if you believe that kind of nonsense. One of dear Stephen Hawking's evangelising themes was that we should be wary of AI, of the rise and rise of the robots. In 2016 he mused to a conference (in the Dalek-like tones of his voice synthesiser) that "we may be sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by AI". I thought of all this when, earlier in this action-packed week, I read an item about technology and tennis in The Weekly Standard and then sallied forth to the Clay Court Pro-Tour International at the Canberra Tennis Centre at Lyneham.

Trembling reader, is yours a profession soon to be sidelined by technology? Now even tennis officials begin to feel the robot-breath of technology down their necks. Here is Tom Perrotta in his Weekly Standard piece, Hawk-Eye Is Here to Kill Tennis. "If you had been at the Next Gen [tennis] finals in Milan you might have noticed something unusual: There was no one making line calls during points; the only official on court was the umpire sitting on the high chair at midcourt [and he] was only really there for window-dressing. The computers took over the actual calls for the match. "The experiment used a more advanced version of the instant replay software [Hawk Eye] that fans of Grand Slam tournaments see when players challenge individual calls. The technology used in Milan, however, was so strong that the system made every call, on its own, in real time." Perrotta, horrified, sees the day at hand when there will be no human officials at tennis matches. "Imagine simply hearing a recorded voice announcing everything for an entire match. It wouldn't be like the sounds and variances you get from having a crew of judges working a match. Hawk-Eye would be the sole arbiter, the voice of God. It would all be sterilising. The point of tennis is entertainment, not the achievement of absolute precision at all costs."