Hawking Does A Dawkins With A Touch Of Lapace

I have to say that I think there is a lot more to selling books than physics or theology in Stephen Hawking's latest pronouncements:

Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

There is simply no way that you can use untested abstractions about what we think, but do not know, the universe is like to make theological statements the way Hawking is doing.

The only partly valid thing you can do is agree with Laplace and claim that your equations "have no need for that hypothesis" - the existence of God. But you do not know if the equations are valid, and you don't know why the equations are the way they are.

The religious are perfectly entitled to say the creator has made the universe this way.

Certainly its elegant that the equations produce a universe - and so you may be able to claim that adding God into the picture complicates the picture unnecessarily (assuming they are right!) - and lets be honest God is a massive complicating factor - how you explain God is not theologically trivial - but elegance doesn't say anything about reality. It just shows that theology is deliberately adding complexity where it may not be necessary - why do this - because the believers want to do it based on their belief.

Fine - but be honest about it - is there any evidence to make this addition necessary? And must such a God be perfect, good, Christian?

Certainly there is a symmetry here - Saying the equations justify claiming there is no God makes a massive assumption that the equations are correct and accurately describe the entire universe. And you can only hold such an opinion based on your own biases not evidence.

Believers make just as heroic assumptions about God being necessary, and then the aspects of his personality they ascribe to him.

I've always admitted humanity doesn't know diddly about such things and hence I am ultimately agnostic - but I feel we can objectively look at the world and judge whether the Gods of the major religions are reasonable hypothesises for the world as I see it.

I am so sceptical of the divinity of Christ, of the existence of an old Testament type God, or of a demon and angle haunted world as outlined in the other Abrahamic religions to discount them - same with the Hindu divinity. Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism all have very ascetic branches which are basically agnostic and hence un-disprovable. Where that leaves Hawking I aint got a clue! But he's doing nothing to alter my basic agnosticism.

I presume I'll get round to reading his new book sometime - but whether I'll get anymore than a very partial gloss of how the physics justify his statements is rather unlikely - The Universe in a Nutshell was pretty simplistic and physics has only got harder since then!

I don't quite know what you mean by this not altering your agnosticism. It wouldn't make sense if you were to agree with Hawking and be gnostic.

There is simply no way that you can use untested abstractions about what we think, but do not know, the universe is like to make theological statements the way Hawking is doing.

is hawking doing so? or are these statements simply sensationalised extrapolations by greedy advertisers desperate to sell his book to both sides of the fence.

some of his sentence structure still allow for a small amount of ambiguity. Or leave a bit of wriggle room.

The Grand Design, part serialised in the Times, says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

I would need to read up further to see the reasoning behind the statements that spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing.

Diddy Mao says

Certainly there is a symmetry here - Saying the equations justify claiming there is no God makes a massive assumption that the equations are correct and accurately describe the entire universe. And you can only hold such an opinion based on your own biases not evidence.

Not that I hold any truck with any religion but isn't this a shot in your scientific foot?

Jeebus, Father Christmas, Thor, Krishna and that other child raping son of a... Faith needs to stop at the individual. Don't involve me.

Or is that wrong?

The universe, we're told, is almost infinite; so how is it that, in some 14 billion years, the right circumstances to provide the 'Big Bang' have only occurred once? Does that not seem strange?

The universe, we're told, is almost infinite

...

so how is it that, in some 14 billion years, the right circumstances to provide the 'Big Bang' have only occurred once? Does that not seem strange?

And why would you think it would not be strange for it to happen after the Big Bang?

We don't know what came before it. Only that this one thing happened at some point.

I think the very idea of a Big Bang comes across as strange. But then so many things do seem strange.

Not that I hold any truck with any religion but isn't this a shot in your scientific foot?

Science only works really where there is evidence - once you get to the big bang (or through an event horizon) you're stuck. You could have two theories both of which provide indistinguishable results post big bang, but which are different pre it. Evidence cannot distinguish between these theories (assuming our understanding that you cannot observe anything pre-big bang is correct) - therefore all you are left with is personal opinion, arguments about elegance etc to decide which one is valid - these are poor validation tools.

Science is a tool and a way of thinking which works and is understandable, but it is limited in its application.

Saying God did it, or ordained it, is too often not understandable, and is even more limited in its application!

I think Hawking is claiming that science for the first time has a complete theory for the universe (which I think is basically untrue, but what the heck he can seek his glory!) and so an Occam's razor type arguement can be used to say you should select the most parsimonious explanation.

Fine - but just because one theory is more parsimonious than another one doesn't necessarily mean its correct. Hence my point that I do not find what Hawking is saying any reason to move from defacto atheism towards all the Deities man has documented but tempered by an admitted agnosticism over where the universe came from.

The universe, we're told, is almost infinite; so how is it that, in some 14 billion years, the right circumstances to provide the 'Big Bang' have only occurred once? Does that not seem strange?

Personal incredulity isn't particularly helpful when dealing with something as complex as the universe.

A throw away retort is how do you know that the Big Bang has occurred only once - the most cutting edge of science is trying to see if theories about multiple dimensions have observable effects on this universe. If the univese is just one part of a multiverse the conditions necessary to create a Big Bang could be occurring all the time - but in universes not dimensionally connected to ours.

There is also an analogy around a cyclic universe which can explain the mystery - the symmetry breaking necessary to create/recreate the universe needs the universe to be in a state of extreme heat-death/high entropy to allow a new big bang to occur. The universe is currently expanding and cooling down but is too hot for a new one to occur. In a billion billion eons the dark energy will have expanded the universe sufficiently for the symetry to break again and energy will be transformed from one state into another and a new big bang will occur. No god necessary - as Hawkings is promoting in his book!

God is one theory of first cause, but Hawking is showing that the Universe is just as valid a theory.

Both are fundamentally unprovable, but its fun to see what the logical conclusions of the theories are.

surely the most amazing thing about this whole debacle is it's appearance on the front cover of the times for 2 days

"Scientist believes God didn't create universe"

"Religious leaders disagree"

well fuck me... never saw it coming....

Sean Carroll a theoretical physicist at Caltech who does research in cosmology, field theory, and gravitation; and who used to be one of the bloggers at Cosmic Variance has returned to CV to do a Youtube piece on Hawking's book etc.

Aye hawkin et al claim to apply critical and logical thinking, bollocks.

A logical man would make no claims about that he could not prove, never mind pronouncements they dont even exist.

See he can personally be an athiest and play safe, say fuck all just in case he is wrong, that way the pearly gates dont get shut in his face when he arrives, and he has only the elevator to the Basement left.

I havent read the thread yet it was only the reference to laplace that caught my eye.

It was laplaces original quote that sagan made non-sensical.

laplace

The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.

sagan

Extraordinary claims reqire exraordinary evidence.

Total bollocks, evidence is evidence, either you have it or you dont, nobody has ever proven a fact with extraordinary evidence.

Laplace was closer to logic, as laplace was talking about on the balance of evidence.

Laplace is still flawed, as he does not allow for the undermining of evidence{established theory} by unrelated events or discoveries, so shifting the balance of evidence in favour of the strangness, as he put it, without any new evidence at all needed to affirm the strangeness to accepted theory.

The universe, we're told, is almost infinite; so how is it that, in some 14 billion years, the right circumstances to provide the 'Big Bang' have only occurred once? Does that not seem strange?

Almost infinite, righto tell us how that works.

The universe, we're told, is almost infinite; so how is it that, in some 14 billion years, the right circumstances to provide the 'Big Bang' have only occurred once? Does that not seem strange?

How do we know that there are not regular "Big Bangs" spawning other universes, all dimensionally separate from our own? Big Bangs may be very common.

Anyway, the reference to time periods is irrelevant as time does not really exist outside of our heads - it is purely a construct of the human mind, albeit apparently vital to our being able to make sense of things.

We may make sense of things EG, but i see it this way.

Humans are clever inquisitive barstewards on the whole, been the same since we first stood up straight.

Because we are inquisitive we ask questions, and then we find the answers, problem for us is that the answers always lead to harder questions.

Our wonder and theory about the universe now, may be as innocent as a 5 year old is when your trying to explain something to them, and one answer always leads to another !! why !! from the child, i just dont think its the final frontier, answers will just beget more questions, and so forth and so forth until we do not exist anymore.

FULL OF 5h17 them be

FULL OF 5h17 them be

You are obviously a highly erudite person and I am sure I speak for others when I say I look forward to more such intellectual contibutions from you.