Fr. Robert Barron on Stephen Hawking

[Linusthe2nd]

Fr. Barron explains why Stephen Hawking is wrong. The universe could not have created itself out of nothing where " nothing " is defined as no being or non-being. The reason is that " out of nothing, nothing comes, " nothing cannot create something. Only God who has the reason for his existence within himself can cause the universe to come into existence out of nothing.

youtube.com/watch?v=S-yx5WN4efo

Pax
Linus2nd

 

[runningdude]

While I lack the time to watch the entire video, based on your description, Fr. Barron is mistaken about Dr. Hawking’s theory.

Dr. Hawking teaches there to be in an infinite series of Big Bangs and collapses throughout the cosmic void. There is no beginning, and no creation out of nothing, because the mechanism of creating and vacating matter has simply always existed. Hawking then, inappropriately, declares that this disproves the existence of God.

Science can only ever observe what exists (thus what was created by God). Science cannot make any conclusions about God, because God did not leave physical traces of himself in creation to be observed. Even if Dr. Hawking’s theory could be definitely proven, without any possible doubt, it would not preclude God creating a universe where his creative hand is impossible to observe. God could have, for instance, created a perfect illusion of a perpetual universe.

God has chosen to reveal his truth through spiritual means. He created our very souls with an ability to seek communion with him. He has given us the prophets, his scriptures, and the life of his very Son to show his love. He has fostered a relationship with humanity from our ancient grandparents, who had no tools of science investigate their creator.

Revelation, culminating in his Church on earth, is God how has chosen to reveal himself; it would be presumptuous of us to expect him to give us further proof by opening himself to scientific scrutiny.

Thou shall not put the Lord thy God to the test…

 

[Brendan]

While I lack the time to watch the entire video, based on your description, Fr. Barron is mistaken about Dr. Hawking’s theory.

Dr. Hawking teaches there to be in an infinite series of Big Bangs and collapses throughout the cosmic void. There is no beginning, and no creation out of nothing, because the mechanism of creating and vacating matter has simply always existed. Hawking then, inappropriately, declares that this disproves the existence of God.

Then Dr. Hawking hasn’t been keeping up on physics.

There cannot have been an infinite series of Big Bangs. It would be a violation of increasing entropy.

As all are aware, the universe tends towards entropy. If you drop a glass, it breaks. If you shake a jar of white sand, and black sand, they intermix.

So either this is a function of the universe expanding, in which case, during the universe contraction, glass shards will suddenly jump up and form into glassware, and jars of gray sand will shake themselves and sort into separate white and black layers

Or else singularities in which the world collapses are a source of entropy decrease.
Hawkings own papers dispute that

So each resulting universe would be more entropic than the one before. So there could not have already been an infinite series of such collapse and expand universes, as we still have a decrease in entropy, stars still shine, glasses still exist and can break.

So if that is what Hawking is proclaiming, he is so wrong that any 3rd year physics student can defeat him.

What I HAVE heard is Hawking being a proponent of the infinite universes theory. That there are an infinite number of universes. This is an answer to the question of why the universe can support life. It is incredibly against all odds that the universe could support life at all.

There are too many natural constants that, if altered slightly, would render the universe totally unable to support life.

So why are we here. Hawkings answer is that the Big Bang produced an infinite number of universes, we happen to be in the one that could support life.

That, of course, is no longer science, as such universes can not be empirically verified and tested, by definition. The theory of multi-universes, by definition, is not scientific.

So then Hawking is really no different than theists, proposing a totally unverifiable, non scientific, infinite reality

 

[Al_Moritz]

Then Dr. Hawking hasn’t been keeping up on physics.

There cannot have been an infinite series of Big Bangs. It would be a violation of increasing entropy.

As all are aware, the universe tends towards entropy. If you drop a glass, it breaks. If you shake a jar of white sand, and black sand, they intermix.

So either this is a function of the universe expanding, in which case, during the universe contraction, glass shards will suddenly jump up and form into glassware, and jars of gray sand will shake themselves and sort into separate white and black layers

Or else singularities in which the world collapses are a source of entropy decrease.
Hawkings own papers dispute that

So each resulting universe would be more entropic than the one before. So there could not have already been an infinite series of such collapse and expand universes, as we still have a decrease in entropy, stars still shine, glasses still exist and can break.

So if that is what Hawking is proclaiming, he is so wrong that any 3rd year physics student can defeat him.

Aah, but entropy ‘resets’. At least that’s the mathematical model It’s funny how some scientists are eager to ‘create’ rather than describe reality with math. Needless to say that nobody has ever observed a ‘reset’ of entropy (aargh, this pesky little thing called scientific observation again…) but hey, who’d want to be that petty in their arguments…

What I HAVE heard is Hawking being a proponent of the infinite universes theory. That there are an infinite number of universes. This is an answer to the question of why the universe can support life. It is incredibly against all odds that the universe could support life at all.

There are too many natural constants that, if altered slightly, would render the universe totally unable to support life.

So why are we here. Hawkings answer is that the Big Bang produced an infinite number of universes, we happen to be in the one that could support life.

That, of course, is no longer science, as such universes can not be empirically verified and tested, by definition. The theory of multi-universes, by definition, is not scientific.

So then Hawking is really no different than theists, proposing a totally unverifiable, non scientific, infinite reality

Aah, but it’s a hypothesis from science, don’'t you understand? As if that argument would make the proposition any less philosophical than theism (some are confusing an argument ‘from science’ with a scientific argument proper)…Hey, and anyway, why did you have to spoil the game again with that nasty little phrase ‘can not be empirically verified’?

 

[Aloysium]

It’s bad enough that we, as amateur physicists, argue about stuff we really know nothing about. Worse when the leading people in the field do it.

As to what is known, here’s a quote from NASA Astrophysics on Dark Energy that sheds light on our knowledge base:

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - ***everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. ***Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.

Note that it can also be questioned, whether the universe is expanding at all. It appears that the red shift changes that are observed could also be caused by matter increasing in mass (Of course - phys.org: “Wetterich’s theory can’t be tested because of the relative nature of mass. Everything we are able to see has a mass that is relative in size to everything else. Thus if it’s all growing, we wouldn’t have anything to measure it against to see that it’s happening.”).

 

[Brendan]

I know, I disrupted the good Doctor’s perfectly good, but non empirically verifiable, fantasy.

I’d offer to turn in my ‘engineer’ card, but doing empirically verifiable things is kinda’ how I got my engineer card in the first place

 

[meltzerboy]

Then Dr. Hawking hasn’t been keeping up on physics.

There cannot have been an infinite series of Big Bangs. It would be a violation of increasing entropy.

As all are aware, the universe tends towards entropy. If you drop a glass, it breaks. If you shake a jar of white sand, and black sand, they intermix.

So either this is a function of the universe expanding, in which case, during the universe contraction, glass shards will suddenly jump up and form into glassware, and jars of gray sand will shake themselves and sort into separate white and black layers

Or else singularities in which the world collapses are a source of entropy decrease.
Hawkings own papers dispute that

So each resulting universe would be more entropic than the one before. So there could not have already been an infinite series of such collapse and expand universes, as we still have a decrease in entropy, stars still shine, glasses still exist and can break.

So if that is what Hawking is proclaiming, he is so wrong that any 3rd year physics student can defeat him.

What I HAVE heard is Hawking being a proponent of the infinite universes theory. That there are an infinite number of universes. This is an answer to the question of why the universe can support life. It is incredibly against all odds that the universe could support life at all.

There are too many natural constants that, if altered slightly, would render the universe totally unable to support life.

So why are we here. Hawkings answer is that the Big Bang produced an infinite number of universes, we happen to be in the one that could support life.

That, of course, is no longer science, as such universes can not be empirically verified and tested, by definition. The theory of multi-universes, by definition, is not scientific.

So then Hawking is really no different than theists, proposing a totally unverifiable, non scientific, infinite reality

With regard to the universe’s supporting life, wasn’t there some discovery not too long ago that there are or may be different kinds of life-based forms not biochemically and structurally resembling those we are currently familiar with? Or am I hallucinating?

 

[Al_Moritz]

I know, I disrupted the good Doctor’s perfectly good, but non empirically verifiable, fantasy.

You sure did some good disrupting there

I’d offer to turn in my ‘engineer’ card, but doing empirically verifiable things is kinda’ how I got my engineer card in the first place

Yes, that’s what I do everyday as a biochemist in the lab too – empirically verifiable stuff.

And sometimes it can be humbling when you find out empirically that things are different than you think. But if you think up things like the multiverse, you’ll never know if things are different than you think (shrug).

 

[Aloysium]

With regard to the universe’s supporting life, wasn’t there some discovery not too long ago that there are or may be different kinds of life-based forms not biochemically and structurally resembling those we are currently familiar with? Or am I hallucinating?

Not to be confused with the Vorta, who were members of the Dominion, the Horta was a silicon-based lifeform, composed of an asbestos-like material, from Janus VI. Their physiology was very different from the more common carbon-based norm, and were naturally difficult to detect with tricorders. Invulnerable to type 1 phasers, they could be injured with an adjusted type 2 phaser. They fed on rock.

 

[meltzerboy]

Not to be confused with the Vorta, who were members of the Dominion, the Horta was a silicon-based lifeform, composed of an asbestos-like material, from Janus VI. Their physiology was very different from the more common carbon-based norm, and were naturally difficult to detect with tricorders. Invulnerable to type 1 phasers, they could be injured with an adjusted type 2 phaser. They fed on rock.

LOL I’m not alluding to Star Trek!

 

[Tomdstone]

The theory of multi-universes, by definition, is not scientific.

Please explain why by definition the multiverse is not scientific.

 

[Dtmccameron]

Please explain why by definition the multiverse is not scientific.

Observation, testing, and replication simply being impossible.

 

[Tomdstone]

Observation, testing, and replication simply being impossible.

First of all, that does not indicate that by definition the multiverse is impossible. Secondly, observation has shown bruising of the outer reaches of our universe which some have claimed is evidence for the multiverse.

 

[Al_Moritz]

First of all, that does not indicate that by definition the multiverse is impossible.

Of course it doesn’t. But without even the theoretical the possibility of scientific observation it is not science. Why is observation theoretically impossible? The reason for this is the particle horizon: the maximum distance from which particles (i.e. also particles carrying information) could have traveled to the observer in the age of the universe. It represents the portion of the universe which we could have conceivably observed at the present day. Any other universe would lie outside this particle horizon.

As the known cosmologist Lee Smolin writes in Life of the Cosmos, p. 78 (emphasis mine):

“A fantastic consequence of general relativity theory [is] that the part of the universe that we will ever be able to see does not include the whole of it. The part of reality we can in principle ever see has boundaries. And there are necessarily regions of space and time beyond those boundaries.”

And that holds just for our universe, not to speak of other universes beyond that.

Secondly, observation has shown bruising of the outer reaches of our universe which some have claimed is evidence for the multiverse.

“Some claim” is not good enough. As long you can interpret data any way you want, it is not clear observational evidence.

Yet let’s say that perhaps there will be a possible observational indication of the existence of some multiverse from indirect evidence. While such potential evidence, were it to actualize, is sometimes portrayed as sufficient evidence, this is not correct. The demonstration of the mere existence of a multiverse would not suffice. Scientifically adequate evidence would only be the demonstration of the existence of a multiverse fulfilling the requirements needed to explain the fine-tuning, i.e. sufficient random variation of the physical parameters between the different universes or universe domains. Yet such evidence could only be established by, impossible, direct observation. To think that some imprint in the microwave background might indirectly tell us not just about an incredible multitude of other universes, but also about the exact physical constants of each single one of them (necessary to make the multiverse work as explanation for the anthropic coincidences) seems quite preposterous, far beyond realistic scientific expectations. And even if one day some scientist were to claim to be able to extract such sophisticated information from the CMB map (or from some potential other future maps, like imprints from neutrino radiation or gravitational waves), this claim probably would have to involve a huge amount of theoretical modeling that, again, would lose any reasonable contact with observation and experiment.

No matter how you twist and turn things, the multiverse as explanattion of fine-tuning is not science, but philosophy from science.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I confess that I have not read Hawking or any of the other atheist/skeptical scientists/cosmologists, I just don’t see the point. But if Hawking is saying that the universe began to exist on its own, or that it always existed on its own, then he is absolutely wrong, no matter how he " fine tunes " his argument. And that is what Fr. Barron is saying.

The universe is contingent, it can be or not be, there is no necessity for its existence. And given an infinite amount of time, the universe would have stopped existing by now. For the simple reason that all the possible " not to be’s, " would have stopped be-ing. So an infinite or eternal universe is out. The only way that scenario could play is if there existed an absolutely necessary being, not a part of the contingent universe, that was eternally creating this contingent universe out of nothing.

But if we are living in a universe which has had an actual beginning in time, then there has to exist a being outside this time bound, contingent universe, that is not time bound and who is necessary in and of itself and that has the power to have created the present, contingent universe.out of nothing.

Either way, God is the creator of the universe. All praise to our Almighty Father.

Pax
Linus2nd.

 

[Brendan]

With regard to the universe’s supporting life, wasn’t there some discovery not too long ago that there are or may be different kinds of life-based forms not biochemically and structurally resembling those we are currently familiar with? Or am I hallucinating?

We are talking about much more basic than that. If the gravitational constant, for example, varied by 1/1000 of 1%, the universe would have either collapsed into a black hole, or have been created as an ever expanding cloud of hydrogen gas (no planets, stars, no novas to create anything larger than helium…

Likewise with the ration between the charge of a proton and it’s mass, any slight difference and no chemical reactions would happen ( every element would be ‘noble’) or that they bond forever with whatever atom happens to be nearby.

There are a myriad of others ( speed of light, strong nuclear force etc)

None of those are condusive to life at all.

 

[Brendan]

Please explain why by definition the multiverse is not scientific.

Well, let’s start with this, what is the definition of ‘science’

 

[Jaaanosik]

It’s bad enough that we, as amateur physicists, argue about stuff we really know nothing about. Worse when the leading people in the field do it.

As to what is known, here’s a quote from NASA Astrophysics on Dark Energy that sheds light on our knowledge base:

Note that it can also be questioned, whether the universe is expanding at all. It appears that the red shift changes that are observed could also be caused by matter increasing in mass (Of course - phys.org: “Wetterich’s theory can’t be tested because of the relative nature of mass. Everything we are able to see has a mass that is relative in size to everything else. Thus if it’s all growing, we wouldn’t have anything to measure it against to see that it’s happening.”).

There is no dark matter and dark energy…
A shocking discovery is right around the corner to the world of physics.

Check these quotes by professor Turok:
“Theoretical physics is at a crossroads right now,” … “In a sense we’ve entered a very deep crisis.”

“But given that everything turned out to be very simple, yet extremely puzzling — puzzling in its simplicity …"

Why does he say “…everything** turned out **to be very simple…” in the past tense?

From here: macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/perimeter-institute-and-the-crisis-in-modern-physics/

… and I know what he knows.

 

[inocente]

Fr. Barron explains why Stephen Hawking is wrong. The universe could not have created itself out of nothing where " nothing " is defined as no being or non-being. The reason is that " out of nothing, nothing comes, " nothing cannot create something. Only God who has the reason for his existence within himself can cause the universe to come into existence out of nothing.

youtube.com/watch?v=S-yx5WN4efo

Fr. Barron has made a lot of videos, although none on physics except this one. His only interest in physics seems to be where a scientist challenges a cherished belief.

He’s world number one at quote mining. He takes one sentence, which he says he got from a review as he hadn’t actually read the book himself, and uses that one sentence to extrapolate a critique based on the notion that philosophy and religion are one domain (conveniently forgetting all the atheist philosophers) and the even stranger notion that scientists must not speak on religion (conveniently forgetting all the religious scientists).

Although Fr. Barron does have one thing going for him - he too seems to share Lemaître’s belief in Isaiah’s hidden God, so that makes at least two Catholics and this Baptist).

 

[inocente]

Then Dr. Hawking hasn’t been keeping up on physics.

There cannot have been an infinite series of Big Bangs. It would be a violation of increasing entropy.

These cosmological models are only hypotheses but are worked out in great detail, as physicists are very happy to tear anyone to pieces who makes even obscure errors, let alone straightforward mistakes.

As an example, here’s some material from Princeton:

Cyclic model FAQ (see first item for your point) - wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/cyclicFAQS/

Short intro for students (pdf) - physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/dm2004.pdf

Long intro for students (pdf) - physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/vaasrev.pdf

Science journal article (pdf) - physics.princeton.edu/~steinh/sciencecyc.pdf