Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking can’t be one of the most brilliant minds alive today if he is an atheist, according to creationist and Christian minister Ray Comfort.

“The Bible says he is a fool,” Comfort said last month on his weekday video program, the “The Comfort Zone.”

In September, Hawking told the Spanish-language paper El Mundo that he did not believe in God because science provided more convincing answers to the origin of the universe.

“You know, if we disagree with the Bible, when someone says, ‘I’m an atheist,’ they’re saying, ‘I’m a fool,” Comfort added. “They’re saying nothing created everything, which is just ludicrous intellectual suicide. The Bible says he who denies God’s existence is a fool, and if we say the guy is intelligent, then we are denying what scripture said.”

Comfort, whose so-called “banana argument” became a viral sensation, said it was obvious that the universe had been designed by a higher power.

“It’s like someone who sits in a 747 [airplane] and says I believe this happened when nothing exploded and everything fell into place,” he explained. “Everything, the wings, all fell into place without a designer. That is ludicrous.”