God did not create the universe, says Hawking

[edwest2]

And if Catholic Christian teachings say something its automatically true?

Maybe one day everyone will realize that none of us know anything

“none of us know anything”? A bit over the top, don’t you think?

God bless,
Ed

 

[Touchstone]

Naturalism (the idea that that all is physical and self explanatory), logically speaking, is a dead philosophy, and it his been known to be dead for long time by those who are willing to see the truth through to its consequence.

First, naturalism doesn’t suppose ‘all’ is self explanatory. Manifestly, much of what naturalists do is provide explanations from data and experience that perform empirically. The explanations are hard won, and come through rigor and effort from humans applying naturalism as a method.

What Hawkins is saying is nothing new. Its the art of trying to get something for nothing;

I haven’t read the book. I haven’t hardly skimmed the article. But Hawking’s thesis has come up several times now on email loops I’m on for physicists and astronomers (I’m neither, btw, but have finagled my way onto several of these managed loops because I’m just really interested).

It’s right in one sense to say Hawking’s ideas in this book are not new; he’s talked about this before, and for some ideas, he’s been advancing them for years now. But there is something new in terms of the traditional credulity of “something for nothing”. The developing picture in physics and cosmology is a universe that is an emergent property of the larger fabric of reality – call it the ‘metaverse’, perhaps.

The insight that is new is that given the way we are now beginning to understand our universe, the dynamics involved suggest that a universe like this (and innumerable related permutations) are simply “automatic”. That’s new because it’s both a) impersonal in nature as a creative dynamic, and b) well ground in quantum and macro-physics, theoretically.

Previously, it was just so much theology – as vacuous as theism – to say “the universe just impersonally popped out of the void”. Could be, but it’s untethered speculation, just as “God did it” is.

But here, Hawking is matching up a deep reading of quantum physics with this idea, and finding resonance. Physics points to a generative model for universes that needs no magic worked by a will or personality. Or, perhaps it’s better to say that at the very lowest levels “something does come from nothing”, not per our foolish intuitions, but as an extrapolation of our performative theories.

which should in itself reveal the desperate circumstances in which an atheistic world-view finds itself. The only reason that naturalism appears to have survived this long as a rational world view is because it is a parasite that has latched on to the methodological naturalism of science, and it is refusing to let go, simply because it cannot rationally stand by itself.

Naturalism works. It’s performative, and incorporates objectivity and feedback loops in ways not non-naturalism (in the known varieties) does not. That’s why science makes the gains it does – it can separate more performative models from less performative models (or non-performative models), and thus is a cumulatively progressing enterprise. The reason science uses methodological naturalism is because it is itself a method, rather than an “ultimate questions” philosophical framework. It’s natural explanations for natural phenomena. But if it’s parasitic to pay heed to the performative nature of science, and to apply its principles of empirical grounding, objective analysis and liability to falsification more broadly, then so be it. Would that I (and you) be parasitic, if we esteem ideas that perform and are accountable to the extramental world.

Thus scientists can get away with promoting irrational ideas because they are viewed as the new infallible Popes of human knowledge.

Uh, they’re not that at all. They are “anti-pope”. They don’t speak from ecclesiastic or theological “authority”; their credibility, in stark opposition to the Pope, obtains only in the performance of their ideas in the real world. Science rejects the principle of authority the Pope and the Church rest on. *Eppur si muove, *and all that…

Atheism survives on mere appearances, but is rationally redundant as a world view. Practical Atheism is popular in the western world. Therefore if a popular scientist, who is seen as a genius, says that the world popped out of nothing by itself, you can be sure that people are going to be fooled into agreeing with him despite it being one of the most irrational things a human being can think.

That’s quite a baroque, and I think self-flattering rendering of “irrational” you are using there. Anyone who’s delved into quantum physics just a bit will understand that such a view is quaint at best. If “irrational” is just that which the mind intuitively struggles with or objects to, then yes, much of science is “irrational”; science is in large part the scythe that cuts down man’s hubris in his intuitions, and annihilates the conceits one has about “rationality” as something “I just know when I see it”. Quantum physics, in particular, is spooky weird in an exquisitely mind-bending way, as “irrational” as it gets in the sense you are using it.

But yet, it moves. Science is notable as an enterprise that just shrugs at such criticism. What does the data say, and how do the models perform? If that’s squared away, then charges of “irrational” ring hollow. It’s just polemics at that point. This is where Hawking gets to be quite disruptive. He has the natural models mastered as well as anyone going. I’ll wait to read the book before producing any substantive judgment on his thesis in the book, but my understanding is the implications of physics, in his expert view, make God unneeded, extraneous to economical models.

-TS

 

[MindOverMatter2]

First, naturalism

Is not science.

 

[cassini]

(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.

Gee you guys are slow, falling for that load of codswallop. Isn’t it obvious Hawking needs a few bob (dollars) after his divorce and the best way is to get is to challenge God’s necessity in the world of science and physics.

Just as an afterthought to let you guys know a truth. My brother became a Professor of Quantum mathematics at the age of 28. He presided in a Canadian university, maths genius, scholarships up past his PhD to become a Professor. So, he ought to know a bit about the subject that appears on various threads on CA. By 29 he was starting to get a bit uneasy. Finally the truth occurred to him and he quit to study Irish literature. ‘I just realised,’ he said to me,‘Quantum theory and maths has to be the most useless idea ever invented by man.’

So you guys who feel uneducated when the word quantum pops up, do not let them impress you any more.

 

[Touchstone]

What needs to be remembered is that Hawking is only trying to think outside the box. He has no proof whatever that the universe created itself from nothing. Indeed, how can you invoke the laws of physics when such laws did not exist before the universe came to exist?

Scientifically, we can’t know what, if anything, obtained as “physics” that transcend our universe. That’s a hard limitation by the principles of science because it’s beyond our empirical reach; if we could observe, measure, test, see, it would by by definition part of this universe.

We can’t test these ideas, empirically. We can say, though, that if the physics we have come to understand inside this universe also obtain beyond, or transcendant to it, then several interesting and important things start to make sense, automatically. For example, the “magic formula” for the fine tuning constants of our universe has at length eluded, and has given way to a broader understanding; there is no “one solution” to those constants, but instead a whole mathematical landscape of solutions, just as there a great number of solutions for “formulas that equal 4”, for example (2+2=4, 8-4=4, 40/10=4, …). See Leonard Susskind’s excellent The Cosmic Landscape and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, for an extended treatment on this idea.

Theoretically, that grounds the idea that our universe is just one coherent configuration of innumerable available configurations. That doesn’t meant that some metaverse containing billions or infinite universes like ours (in all sorts of different configurations of their cosmological constants) obtains beyond our universe. But it does mean that such a hypothesis would neatly harmonize with the physics we observe in this universe, and explain not only why this universe has the physics it does, but also how a universe like this comes to be, and in a natural (i.e. impersonal) way.

Or maybe I should just ask how you know that the laws of physics do not obtain outside our universe?

Hawking is an old man who has suffered well beyond what most people in his condition have suffered. To be a powerful intellect imprisoned in that body is enough to challenge any man’s belief in the existence of a personal God. Yet Hawking had enough brains, and certainly enough leisure, to have thought his way through to the hidden God . It’s a pity he has chosen this route as his exit strategy. Neither wise nor thoughtful, his spirit has burned out its flame. We can only pray that it will rise again from its ashes before his final hour.

Ahh, yes, it’s really a character issue. The dismissal is rooted in judging Hawking’s character. I think that says a lot about the quality the criticism you’re offering.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Is not science.

Science is a subset of philosophical naturalism. It would be wrong to say “Animals are cats”, in the same way it’s wrong to say that “Naturalism is science”. But to say “science is naturalism” obtains in the same way “cats are animals” does.

One can be a theist and a thorough, expert scientist, employing methodological naturalism for the practice of science only, and relying on supernaturalism for non-scientific questions. The “methodological” there is just a way to say it can be adopted for practical use by those who don’t accept naturalism in a more thoroughgoing sense. But for the philosophical naturalist, science is just the rigorous, empirical expression of those principles.

-TS

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Or, perhaps it’s better to say that at the very lowest levels “something does come from nothing”
-TS

1. Firstly, scientists as scientists, do not teach that something came out nothing. When they are not working according to the strict principles of science, they certainly have personal philosophical ideas and opinions which they believe they can infer from what they know scientifically, but that’s philosophy. It is not science. And neither is this so called book that Hawkins has brought out. It is a philosophy book which happens to talk about science.
2. Secondly, empirical science is not a science of nothing, it is a science of physical reality, and thus cannot make inferences to that which is nothing, since nothing is not a physical object. When a scientist says that this object came from nothing, if one respects the limitation of the scientific method, one can only conclude that the scientist only means that the object has no empirical “physical” cause.
3. Thirdly, if you believe that the universe came out of nothing by itself, then you believe in the worst kind of magic; because at least in traditional magic tricks there is a magician involved. This view of reality is not acceptable, not simply because it is an opposition to God, but because it undermines the very foundation of rational thought fullstop.
4. Fourthly, Catholics do not know how God created the universe. They merely say that God didn’t create it out of physical reality.

 

[SonCatcher]

Mr. Hawking seems to have neglected a detail. All of the laws of physics must act on something (matter, energy, or X). Gravity is a force that acts on matter. The Law of Gravity is our understanding of that force. It is a human idea created in the mind of people to describe what they see. The existence of the Law of Gravity does not require that matter even exist and certainly cannot cause existence ex nihilo. Gravity must have something to act on. Otherwise, it is nothing.

The same is true of the other physical laws.

Pushing the origin of this universe to some greater, unobservable “metaverse” (as one poster suggested) is equally problematic. First, properly, the “metaverse” would be the universe and this universe would merely be our observable part of it. Second, the problem of the beginning becomes no longer the origin of this universe but the origin of the metaverse. Given that God is outside every universe or metaverse, these theories prove nothing.

I wouldn’t doubt that Mr. Hawking anticipated and explained away these objections in his book but I have no interest in delving into it. In the end, accepting his theory ultimately requires faith. Just like belief in God.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Science is a subset of philosophical naturalism. It would be wrong to say “Animals are cats”, in the same way it’s wrong to say that “Naturalism is science”. But to say “science is naturalism” obtains in the same way “cats are animals” does.

Methodological naturalism is not philosophical naturalism.

But for the philosophical naturalist, science is just the rigorous, empirical expression of those principles.

-TS

Science is not the empirical expression of the philosophical beliefs of atheists. Atheists adopt the scientific method in to their world view because they believe that it supports their cause, while others study science simply because they want to know about physical reality and how it works.

Your agenda has nothing to do with real science.

 

[Peter_Gabriel]

And if Catholic Christian teachings say something its automatically true?

Maybe one day everyone will realize that none of us know anything

But how would everyone know that no one knows anything?

 

[Soulewolf]

As far as i remember, Hawking is a christian.

I’m skeptical untill i see the logic behind his reasoning.

 

[Touchstone]

1. Firstly, scientists as scientists, do not teach that something came out nothing. When they are not working according to the strict principles of science, they certainly have personal philosophical ideas and opinions which they believe they can infer from what they know scientifically, but that’s philosophy. It is not science. And neither is this so called book that Hawkins has brought out. It is a philosophy book which happens to talk about science.
   Science is philosophy – used to referred to as “natural philosophy”. It’s just a particular method and practice of philosophy. And clearly, any ideas about “outside of the universe” or “before the universe” (terms which as terms are problem, and steal concepts from this universe) cannot, even in principle, be scientific in an empirically grounded way.

But if we took some question which we could not in practice observe or test – how long did it take Caesar Augustus’ body to decay to some specific point after he died? – that is not to say there are not bits of knowledge and experience we can bring to bear. We will never know the precise “decay time” for Augustus, but we can provide informed, experience and knowledge-driven estimates and guesses.

The thinking in cosmology is something like that, on a grander scale. We can’t know, because it’s definitionally outside our experience perimeter, but we can apply what we do understand about physics to formulate conjectures that are not just idle speculation, theology. I believe Hawking, like Susskind, is pointing at the theoretically applicability of the physics of our universe to contexts outside of this universe, and the coherence that model has for explaining the existence of our universe and its particular features.

1. Secondly, empirical science is not a science of nothing

Well, one can say whatever one wants, I suppose. The salient point here is that Hawking, like Susskind (if my understanding of the new book is right), is saying something, but with a kind of grounding in theory and natural knowledge that Catholics do not have. Hawking may be incorrect – and fer sher, we will never know – but it is a grounded idea.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Methodological naturalism is not philosophical naturalism.

Yes, as above, just as “animals” is not “cats”.

Science is not the empirical expression of the philosophical beliefs of atheists. Atheists adopt the scientific method in to their world view because they believe that it supports their cause, while others study science simply because they want to know about physical reality and how it works.

Your agenda has nothing to do with real science.

I know lots of atheists who are not naturalists (Buddhist friends, for example). But there is growing segment of atheist who rely heavily on the performative nature and rigor of science to inform their worldview. That’s applying the tools of science in a more comprehensive way. But as above, it’s a tool for knowledge, natural explanations for natural phenomena, and thus can be put to practical use by the theist and the Buddhist as well as the materialist atheist.

-TS

 

[coolduude]

This is off topic, but relates to the OP.

I thought that before the universe there was… nothing. Therefore, there could be no gravity, unless there was something. But logic dictates that there was nothing. Unless you go with a multi-verse theory, but even then God can still be in the equation.

Mr. Hawking is ignoring the obvious, IMO.

EDIT: Found this: superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo4.html

A tad confusing on some points, but does a good job explaining current theories.

 

[Pieman333272]

Right. But this is sufficient to be problematic for many religions, Catholicism among them. God as ‘prime mover’ is identified as real (or maybe ‘actual’ is a better word) because he is seen as necessary as a way to plug a gaping hole in our knowledge – why does anything exist at all. It’s not that God has been detected, shown, demonstrated, but rather that he simply must exist.

That’s why suggesting that God is not a necessary postulate after all, leaves God in a highly dubious position, not being either identifiable empircally, nor required by inference or default. It’s not to say God doesn’t exist, or didn’t create the universe; that can’t be know. But rather, that God is superfluous, unnecessary, redundant as a matter of explaining and understanding the reality around us.

-TS

And the implementation and creation of gravity without any matter (as in Hawkings’ scenario) doesn’t require (a) God? And his theory seems to assume time was always running. How did time start? How is the Universe, the Galaxy, the Solar System, the Planet perfectly designed to support life, both single-cellular and multi-cellular? How about the creation of Living Matter on Earth? And how and why did single-celled bacteria evolve into multi-cellular beings? There is certainly some intelligent designer, which we can presume to be God. I can recommend studying the conversion of Antony Flew for good info on the evidence for a creator God.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Yes, as above, just as “animals” is not “cats”.

This is a false analogy. Science is not a subset of philosophical naturalism. Science is a method of how best to study physical objects.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

Frighteningly brilliant mind, Hawking is, but lately he’s been inching ever so closer outright atheism. Make up your mind already, Stephen…

 

[Windfish]

Naturalism (the idea that that all is physical and self explanatory), logically speaking, is a dead philosophy, and it his been known to be dead for long time by those who are willing to see the truth through to its consequence.

What Hawkins is saying is nothing new. Its the art of trying to get something for nothing; which should in itself reveal the desperate circumstances in which an atheistic world-view finds itself. The only reason that naturalism appears to have survived this long as a rational world view is because it is a parasite that has latched on to the methodological naturalism of science, and it is refusing to let go, simply because it cannot rationally stand by itself. Thus scientists can get away with promoting irrational ideas because they are viewed as the new infallible Popes of human knowledge. Atheism survives on mere appearances, but is rationally redundant as a world view. Practical Atheism is popular in the western world. Therefore if a popular scientist, who is seen as a genius, says that the world popped out of nothing by itself, you can be sure that people are going to be fooled into agreeing with him despite it being one of the most irrational things a human being can think.

Hi, MindOverMatter2.

How do you know this? Do you have a history of philosophy text or something? I would be interested in buying it for myself.

 

[Anselm33]

INDENT - [

God did not create the universe

 

[Touchstone]

This is a false analogy. Science is not a subset of philosophical naturalism. Science is a method of how best to study physical objects.

I think that is a distinction without a difference. We call it “methodological naturalism” as a way to convey the idea of its limited scope; the naturalism is confined to the areas where it gets applied (observations, empirical testing, predictive models, etc.). But the ‘naturalism’ is there for a reason in “methodological naturalism”. Metaphysical naturalism focuses more on ontology, where as science is chiefly “natural epistemology”.

In both cases, the essential ground is “natural explanations”. A philosophical naturalist who supposes the universe came to be through quantum fluctuations of a “parent universe” has left “methodological naturalism” behind – there’s no empirical basis of that, and no epistemic grounding, either. But it’s naturalism, even so – natural explanations as the stuff worthy beliefs are made of.

-TS