God did not create the universe, says Hawking

[Today]

Source!

LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.
Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.
His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.
He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."
In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.
"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.
Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.
He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."
Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.
"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.
(Editing by Steve Addison)

 

[5ive]

We know, we know (srry christians)

 

[Jonas]

and Santa doesn't hand out presents on Christmas. What's new?

 

[jugfingers]

hawkins is the pinnacle of human scientific pretentiousness

 

[Strong Badam]

Still surprised why this is news. What is this, 1490?

 

[Namaste]

What happened in 1490 that dealt with God and the universe?

 

[5ive]

What happened in 1490 that dealt with God and the universe?

Nothing. People assumed that God made everything because science was not as prevalent. Nothing necessarily happened, SB was just being funny.

 

[Tomo Takino]

The theory of gravity isn't finished yet. We don't understand anything about gravity. I don't see why this is news, I don't get the point of this at all.

 

[IAmBlu3]

i think he was making a reference to the earth being flat....possibly?

 

[Namaste]

Earth was known to not be flat since the Greeks.

I don't believe Hawkings actually said "God did not create the universe", but that "The universe did not need to be created by God", or basically that involving God was not needed to explain the universe.

 

[OizenX]

God wasn't invented til the 1500's >.>

 

[Luigitoilet]

Earth was known to not be flat since the Greeks.

I don't believe Hawkings actually said "God did not create the universe", but that "The universe did not need to be created by God", or basically that involving God was not needed to explain the universe.

Yeah, making this article almost non-news.

 

[Dragoon Fighter]

God wasn't invented til the 1500's >.>

Lol

quoted for semi-turth!

Church as we think of it was invented but religion has been around for a very long time.

But I think I will sig his/her post.

 

[Strong Badam]

God wasn't invented til the 1500's >.>

lol I hope this is a joke.

 

[El Nino]

I think this is a better article on the subject:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19391-hawking-hasnt-changed-his-mind-about-god.html

Hawking's position on religion has remained unchanged since he wrote his bestseller, A Brief History of Time. At the end of that book he famously used God as a metaphor for the laws of nature: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of reason – for then we should know the mind of God."

Hawking has always looked at God metaphorically, in much the same way, incidentally, as Einstein. "I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos" was Einstein's famous quip about his discomfort with quantum mechanics. He also declared, "I want to know how God created the world."

But Einstein was not really religious. He remarked that "the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously". When asked if he believed in God, Einstein explained: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

I think a lot of news articles take liberties with scientific subjects, putting a spin on what scientists say in order to sell papers.

God as a metaphor, or as the sum of natural forces, makes a sort of sense to me.

So. What I'm wondering is.

If the universe created itself. And if we are the universe trying to understand itself. Then are we our own creators. And are we our own gods.

/armchair philosophy ****ery

 

[jugfingers]

bottom line is hawkins is just tryin to sell books by saying stupid ****


wheres the TOE at?

nowhere,

stop thinking you understand the universe let alone how the universe sprang forth from nothing for no reason and go read some taoist literature.

 

[1048576]

Yeah man, hawking is ****in stupid

 

[jugfingers]

making money off saying some stupid **** isn't stupid, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he said some stupid ****.


see ima scientist

 

[deepseadiva]

God as a metaphor, or as the sum of natural forces, makes a sort of sense to me.

So. What I'm wondering is.

If the universe created itself. And if we are the universe trying to understand itself. Then are we our own creators. And are we our own gods.

/armchair philosophy ****ery

Wooooaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Seriously.

 

[El Nino]

bottom line is hawkins is just tryin to sell books by saying stupid ****


wheres the TOE at?

nowhere,

stop thinking you understand the universe let alone how the universe sprang forth from nothing for no reason and go read some taoist literature.

More like the news media needs to sensationalize the things he says in order to get the public's attention.

I haven't read his book, so I can't verify if the things that get reported about it are accurate.

Just because you don't understand why a plane works doesn't mean that the engineers who designed it are spitting out bull****. But the difference between being an engineer and being a theorist is that an engineer can prove that something works by demonstrating it to anyone with or without a science background. A theorist on the other hand has to explain his/her theory, and it requires an audience that is receptive to it. It's hard to understand calculus without knowing arithmetic, and if you don't know arithmetic, you're going to have a hard time following high level math, so the tendency is to write it off as if it's unimportant or untrue. Going back to the basics to understand it would be the only way to do it, but that's a time-consuming approach that a lot of people don't have the time and patience for.

I can't exactly blame them for rolling their eyes at theories they don't understand because the world is full of other distractions, but I'm just saying.

It's also possible that a theory is wrong, but you can't convincingly refute something without first demonstrating an understanding of it, meaning you'd have to be able to play at that level.

I already know I don't play at that level. I just like listening to their stories.

Wooooaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Seriously.

Cosmology is a mind****, ain't it?

 

[KillerJawz]

I could have sworn that Hawking had said something quite similar to this before x.x.

 

[Mota]

If the universe created itself. And if we are the universe trying to understand itself. Then are we our own creators. And are we our own gods.

/armchair philosophy ****ery

Bigger mindfudge then The Matrix and Inception combined

Good stuff Hawkings

 

[Thatfatcat]

Whoaaaa. I totally believe we are our own Gods (seeing as I AM a Leveyan Satanist, and that's pretty much part of our belief), and that the Universe can come out of nothing. I read A Brief History of Time, which explained itself completley, they even had diagrams in the books explaining what was going on. Oh, and the thing about science is that every scientist tries to disprove one another. Hawking hasn't been disproved yet.

Oh, and the dumb **** that got mad===> Do your homework and stop getting mad. Stupid people get mad when they don't understand. Kinda like how people don't believe in evolution. They're too stupid to understand so they deny it. That's what you're doing right now. =)

 

[UberMario]

Kinda like how people don't believe in evolution. They're too stupid to understand so they deny it. That's what you're doing right now. =)

It's stupid to not believe in evolution? Though people that don't believe in it can't disprove it directly, nor can antithesists disprove the supernatural from being a possibility. I can list plenty of things that are issues with the concept of evolution:

-No [surviving] amphibians can survive in the ocean, the closest to that are a few species that tolerate brackish water.
-Frogs are extremely sensitive to the enviornment, if they were as fragile as a whole as they are today, they should have been wiped out faster than the dinosaurs.
-Amphibian eggs are extremely different from reptilian eggs, the former needs moisture, the latter needs to stay dry, not to mention reptile eggs have shells while amphibian eggs do not.
-More and more non-avian dinosaurs are being found with full coats of feathers, what could have been that much different that resulted in their demise, yet not the birds'?
-Insects appear to have little-to-no missing links [dead or alive], they share similarities with wood lice in build visibly, but that's about it. At least centipedes/millipedes are similar enough to rempiedes to make a believable connection.
-The majority of symbiotic bacteria in our guts can not survive in non-human hosts. What are the odds that they evolved perfectly in sync with us?
-Humans: Why would one of the most successful and intelligent organisms in existance have no living related cousins whatsoever [if any? chimps don't count and australopithecines seem more apelike imo, but several could pass for human skulls [with the exception of unusually large "cheekspikes"], Paranthropus looks greatly ape like]? The descriptions for most human species would imply more that they were more-or-less different subspecies [like Neanderthal has been relegated to: Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis]. As far as I see it, all humans discovered can either fit under the species/subspecies Sapiens, Neanderthalensis, or Erectus.


The two sides, and the people in between, will discuss this to the end of eternity, so I'm not going to add anymore to this [in this thread anyway], I just felt that the above post was an insult and thought I should reply to it.


As for Hawking, I'd love to hear what he determines the role of the individual mind is, is there any real evolutionary purpose to them? Wouldn't it be more efficient if all minds thought alike and reacted the same to the same stimuli? Why do animals, such as some reptiles, birds, and mammals, have individual personalities? And the supposed "God gene" (which is sometimes used to explain why some people believe in God [or gods] while others don't) doesn't really have an evolutionary purpose either.

 

[Jim Morrison]

nor can antithesists disprove the supernatural from being a possibility.

Oh, it's this argument again!

 

[5ive]

Oh, it's this argument again!

Oh how I hate the disregard for burden of proof aswell. Do I really have to make an analogy to the tooth fairy for you to understand? Can you disprove the toothfairy? Does the fact you can't make it anymore plausible? Read up on Russel's teapot.

And, wow. The proof is overwhelming. Evolution is a well acknowledged fact. Everything we know about life, biology, or science in general only makes sense in the light of evolution. The criteria to disprove such a theory was layed out by the very scientist who thought of it. To this day, no conflicting data has been found. Geological locations of fossils are consistant; time periods are consistant; the genes in which our genetical makeup are made up of show us how accurate this theory is. This disregard of fact is like disregarding gravity or pi. The massive accreations of evidence supports it so strongly that to deny the status of fact seems - correction, is rediculous.

Your attempt to disprove evolution is cute though. I hope you win a nobel prize.

You're basically either inexperienced in the God debate, or...yeah. The questions you posed to us, even if answered the way you want them to be answered, do nothing to support what you are implying. Implying that MG DINOSAURS HAD FEATHERS BUT THEY DIED OUT, BUT BIRDS HAD FEATHERS BUT THEY DIDNT. I mean, come on.

 

[victra♥]

I don't understand evolution either. Like, what are all these geophysicists, medical researchers and all these other non-religion-biased scientists thinking. intelligent design makes perfect sense imo. I mean, there's only ~100 million different species of organisms in the word, plus more that haven't been discovered. I'm sure they'd be able to all fit on a boat. I mean, it'll be a little tight but whatevz, at least there was only two of each species.

 

[Glöwworm]

I don't understand evolution either. Like, what are all these geophysicists, medical researchers and all these other non-religion-biased scientists thinking. intelligent design makes perfect sense imo. I mean, there's only ~100 million different species of organisms in the word, plus more that haven't been discovered. I'm sure they'd be able to all fit on a boat. I mean, it'll be a little tight but whatevz, at least there was only two of each species.

no they won't fit in a boat. and even if they did, the task of finding every single animal in existence, is near impossible.

i remember watching this program in the national geographic channel (or was it the science channel), and it talked about noah's ark. They basically said that it's impossible. My memory is fuzzy on the details but it had something to do with aliens or something and that that task of having every animal in a boat is possible if the ark was really just a giant boat for DNA samples of every animal in a tube. The idea seemed interesting but like I said, i don't remember well.

Maybe somebody who has seen it can correct me?

 

[Dre89]

As discussions, these topics are pointless, because no one here (including myself) has done anywhere enough study in philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and even just science in general to be an authority on this.

As structured debates, they serve the purpose of testing debater's skills, but you're dreaming if you think any of us here (again, including myself) has studied enough theology to criticise religion, or if any theist here can provide strong theodicies, or just defend themselves against high-level criticisms in general.

Most arguments here will just be based on straw men. I don't want to be rude, just telling the truth. It's the equivalent of casual brawlers trying to make a competitive brawl tier list.

 

[Dre89]

no they won't fit in a boat. and even if they did, the task of finding every single animal in existence, is near impossible.

i remember watching this program in the national geographic channel (or was it the science channel), and it talked about noah's ark. They basically said that it's impossible. My memory is fuzzy on the details but it had something to do with aliens or something and that that task of having every animal in a boat is possible if the ark was really just a giant boat for DNA samples of every animal in a tube. The idea seemed interesting but like I said, i don't remember well.

Maybe somebody who has seen it can correct me?

The Noah's Ark story isn't suppsoed to be taken literally. There probably was a boat which contained the local animals, and there probably was a local flood. The boat didn't contain every specieis in the world, and there wasn't a flood all over the globe.

The only people who take it that literally are protestant fundamentalists.

 

[5ive]

As discussions, these topics are pointless, because no one here (including myself) has done anywhere enough study in philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and even just science in general to be an authority on this.

As structured debates, they serve the purpose of testing debater's skills, but you're dreaming if you think any of us here (again, including myself) has studied enough theology to criticise religion, or if any theist here can provide strong theodicies, or just defend themselves against high-level criticisms in general.

Most arguments here will just be based on straw men. I don't want to be rude, just telling the truth. It's the equivalent of casual brawlers trying to make a competitive brawl tier list.

Implying arguement off authority = IM RIGHT
Implying a degree in theology = respect.
Implying people can't discuss religion or lackthereof because they lack a degree


Obv its taken symbolically, otherwise the text on which your religion is based off of would be completely...lol. Oh wait, the rules given by God telling one how to take care of their slave is symbolic too. I wonder why.

 

[Pikaville]

I remember reading "A Brief History of Time" when I was 14 or 15 and been blown away by it.

I wish I had the ability to do physics but I just really hate maths.

The way our universe/space works fascinates me though.

 

[Dre89]

I never said my opinion on the subject was right, that was the whole point of my post, I know that my opinion doesn't hold that much weight, because I'm not knowledgeable enough in the issue.

It's generally the people who haven't been exposed to the ocean of academic work on this topic that think they're knowledgeable on the topic, and they're the ones who make the most straw-mans, like assuming Catholicism is just about the Bible, or that Catholcis believe anyone who doesn't believe in God goes to hell etc.

I have never read a God debate on these boards (and I've read, and been in a fair few) that has no misunderstandings about a particular position.

When I say misunderstandings, I don't mean they argue a position I personally with, there are several positions I disagree with that I still feel are logically sustainable. I'm talking about people who make arguments based on misinformation of the opposition argument, usually misinformation on religion. I have never seen anyone on these boards criticise a theology without misunderstanding at least one of its teachings.

These things aren't just my opinion, like whether the Trinity is plausible or not, I'm talking about factual issues, like when people will say the Church says X, when in fact it says Y.

 

[PaintedGhost]

Who the **** cares what religion teaches. Do you not get that God doesn't exist? God is a fuccking ******. Hopefully you will realize that you simply rot to death you dirty aussie.

 

[Dre89]

This is coming from the guy that thinks The God Dellusion is taken seriously in academia lol.

Every philosophically educated atheist hates that book, because they know it makes atheism look bad.

 

[PaintedGhost]

This is coming from the guy that thinks The God Dellusion is taken seriously in academia lol.

Every philosophically educated atheist hates that book, because they know it makes atheism look bad.

Okay? And you believe in something fictional? Are you proud?

 

[Dre89]

You don't even know what I believe...

Criticising Dawkins is not criticising atheism. It's like believing MK is the best char in the game because of his grab-game. Mk may be the best char in the game, but it's not because of his grab game, so that is still an unjustified belief. So even if there is no God, believing it because of Dawkins is an unjustfied belief, and shows poor reasoning.


Atheism is a logically sustainable position, and there are sveral intelligent atheists out there in academia. However acclaimed Dawkins is as a biologist, he knows nothing about theology or philosophy of religion, both are which are required, if you're going to criticise arguments which come from those fields. He's like a commedian saying that medically speaking, laughter is the best medicine, when he has no medical credentials to make that claim.

 

[PaintedGhost]

You don't even know what I believe...

Criticising Dawkins is not criticising atheism. It's like believing MK is the best char in the game because of his grab-game. Mk may be the best char in the game, but it's not because of his grab game, so that is still an unjustified belief. So even if there is no God, believing it because of Dawkins is an unjustfied belief, and shows poor reasoning.


Atheism is a logically sustainable position, and there are sveral intelligent atheists out there in academia. However acclaimed Dawkins is as a biologist, he knows nothing about theology or philosophy of religion, both are which are required, if you're going to criticise arguments which come from those fields. He's like a commedian saying that medically speaking, laughter is the best medicine, when he has no medical credentials to make that claim.

lmao you believe in a god. ur so salty

 

[victra♥]

richard dawkin's voice is hella sexy though. I could listen to it all day, no joke

and the fact that he looks like emma watson is :3

I like Dre. tbh.

 

[Dre89]

lmao you believe in a god. ur so salty

Are you actually going to make a logical argument against me?

Edit: Thanks Victra.