God did not create the universe, says Hawking

[Touchstone]

Mystic Banana:

There is an infinity of “conjecturable extensions of physics models” and no reason to pick this one, beyond the ideological…

True, in a strained sense. Insofar as “reality is real and evidence from our senses reflects that reality to some degree” is a metaphysical commitment, which I guess we could agree is “ideological”. But it’s unusual among all the religious ideologies if competes with in that it is a non-voluntary part of human physiology – we are wired for that ideology as it were, and it admits of objective adjudication – it stands or falls outside of our own prejudices and biases, based on the the evidence available.

This is the thing that makes me see the appeal and idiotic pretension of Darwinism most of all.

We have ‘folk tales’ of Dragons. We dig up dinosaurs.

We have ‘folk tales’ of trolls, Yetis, Goblins. We dig up hominids of considerable variety.

What do we do? Assume everyone who lived before about 1500 hallucinated constantly, and that fossil findings that cheerfully correlate to ‘myths’, legends in endless cultures all over the place have no actual relation to them whatsoever, since we’ve cheerfully (and doubtless, as we’ve satisfied ourselves) objectively guessed it’s all rooted in fear of snakes and other races, or whatever excuse is dreamt up this week. Meanwhile… that dinosaur slipping in the mud… can’t get it out of my mind…

This just doesn’t consider the salient factor of human psychology. We are story-tellers, by nature. We love tall tales. We operate by the inspirations of myth and legend, and use them as truths (and they are true on their own terms) even and especially when they aren’t ground in factual, historical objects and entities. Given that, there’s no need to bother matching every dragon up with a dinosaur skeleton or species, or Neanderthal bones with a Yeti. It’s just much more efficiently explained to note that we as a species love to make stuff up. We have wild, fertile imaginations, and we produce lots of made up beings and entities as actors on our story-telling stages.

Darwinistic evolution, as far as I can see, is a gargantuan exercise in Scientismic tautology in the face of a past invincible to truly honest validation due to extent of disintegration. An incredible modern conceit. “Evolution as fact?” Enforced Dogma!

Science holds a fact to be an observation, a measurement, something objectively experienced, not a “truth”. In that sense, evolution is indisputably a fact, we see it every day. Even for the parts that are problematic for our human time scales – our whole lives aren’t even one “movie frame” in a very, very long movie – we can observe speciation and population genetic divergence. It’s a fact, and a fact in the sense that you don’t have to believe anything but your own lyin’ eyes to verify it. No dogma needed or required.

As for the “world created last Tuesday”, well, Science textbooks themselves are generally rejected as cobblers after about 10 years or so… Scientifically, the latest version probably was invented last Tuesday, so your analogy works better for Science than religion, chum!

???

-TS

 

[greylorn]

Mystic Banana:

Darwinistic evolution, as far as I can see, is a gargantuan exercise in Scientismic tautology in the face of a past invincible to truly honest validation due to extent of disintegration. An incredible modern conceit. “Evolution as fact?” Enforced Dogma!

Science holds a fact to be an observation, a measurement, something objectively experienced, not a “truth”. In that sense, evolution is indisputably a fact, we see it every day. Even for the parts that are problematic for our human time scales – our whole lives aren’t even one “movie frame” in a very, very long movie – we can observe speciation and population genetic divergence. It’s a fact, and a fact in the sense that you don’t have to believe anything but your own lyin’ eyes to verify it. No dogma needed or required.

Both of you seem to be missing an important distinction— that between evolution and Darwinism. Evolution is scientifically determined fact. Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, Lamarckism, Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Beon Theory are all theories which attempt to explain evolution.

The Darwinists have cleverly packaged their extremely poor theory with the word “evolution,” so that people who do not think clearly, treat Darwinism and evolution as synonyms. They are not. Darwinism cannot be supported with mathematics, and there is no evidence for its primary tenets, which declare that species development is driven by random mutations and filtered by “natural selection.”

Please note that these comments are in the context of this discussion about Hawking’s assertions, which necessarily involve all aspects of the creation-or-not issue, and are not intended to provoke a side debate about Darwinism. It would be fun, but not without our moderator’s okay.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Both of you seem to be missing an important distinction— that between evolution and Darwinism. Evolution is scientifically determined fact. Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, Lamarckism, Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Beon Theory are all theories which attempt to explain evolution.

The Darwinists have cleverly packaged their extremely poor theory with the word “evolution,” so that people who do not think clearly, treat Darwinism and evolution as synonyms. They are not. Darwinism cannot be supported with mathematics, and there is no evidence for its primary tenets, which declare that species development is driven by random mutations and filtered by “natural selection.”

Please note that these comments are in the context of this discussion about Hawking’s assertions, which necessarily involve all aspects of the creation-or-not issue, and are not intended to provoke a side debate about Darwinism. It would be fun, but not without our moderator’s okay.

Lucky for you c*ntoss.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

True, in a strained sense. Insofar as “reality is real and evidence from our senses reflects that reality to some degree” is a metaphysical commitment, which I guess we could agree is “ideological”. But it’s unusual among all the religious ideologies if competes with in that it is a non-voluntary part of human physiology – we are wired for that ideology as it were, and it admits of objective adjudication – it stands or falls outside of our own prejudices and biases, based on the the evidence available.

Not really. Not most of it. Basic, everyday chemistry, physics and biology do. That we generally die when the heart stops, that ice melts and becomes water when it gets hotter, that gravity works etc. but how trhe mind works, how the universe came into being (etc) has no real correlation to these more easily isoloatable, testable aspects, and allow a trainload of subjective, ideologically loaded interpretation at the drop of a hat

This just doesn’t consider the salient factor of human psychology. We are story-tellers, by nature. We love tall tales. We operate by the inspirations of myth and legend, and use them as truths (and they are true on their own terms) even and especially when they aren’t ground in factual, historical objects and entities. Given that, there’s no need to bother matching every dragon up with a dinosaur skeleton or species, or Neanderthal bones with a Yeti. It’s just much more efficiently explained to note that we as a species love to make stuff up. We have wild, fertile imaginations, and we produce lots of made up beings and entities as actors on our story-telling stages.

… except for the fact that the assumptions behind these often barely evidenced (and genuinely evidencable) are only more reasonable than such ancient legends in the mind of a deluded culture, who somehow see the genius of conjurors as such as Hawking are transforming themselves into as some kind of correlation for Scientists, who rely on the scientific method…

Science holds a fact to be an observation, a measurement, something objectively experienced, not a “truth”. In that sense, evolution is indisputably a fact, we see it every day. Even for the parts that are problematic for our human time scales – our whole lives aren’t even one “movie frame” in a very, very long movie – we can observe speciation and population genetic divergence. It’s a fact, and a fact in the sense that you don’t have to believe anything but your own lyin’ eyes to verify it. No dogma needed or required.

???

-TS

The dogma remains very much required… to positivistically interpret uncertain change as some kind of inevitable progressivism, and to assume an extreme series of changes from simple to complex as inevitable

To casually paraphrase Fort “survival of the fittest? The seemingly fittest often tumble and die, and yet hopelessness and stupidity flourish everywhere!”

And we do, after all, still have amoebas… and pandas

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Both of you seem to be missing an important distinction— that between evolution and Darwinism. Evolution is scientifically determined fact. Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, Lamarckism, Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Beon Theory are all theories which attempt to explain evolution.

The Darwinists have cleverly packaged their extremely poor theory with the word “evolution,” so that people who do not think clearly, treat Darwinism and evolution as synonyms. They are not. Darwinism cannot be supported with mathematics, and there is no evidence for its primary tenets, which declare that species development is driven by random mutations and filtered by “natural selection.”

Please note that these comments are in the context of this discussion about Hawking’s assertions, which necessarily involve all aspects of the creation-or-not issue, and are not intended to provoke a side debate about Darwinism. It would be fun, but not without our moderator’s okay.

This is very true. I see Darwinsm as the Scientistic equivelent of YEC

Still, how is evolution true? Adaption seems to me not be be quite so proven as I thought, after investigation. Change is. The 2 are not neccesarily the same, but are easily confused, I think, if you try hard enough…

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Lucky for you c*ntoss.

That Young’s theorem, since you blazen it everywhere… you realise that discounts Hawkings ponderings pretty much far more than anything theistic, don’t you?

 

[Anselm33]

Both of you seem to be missing an important distinction— that between evolution and Darwinism. Evolution is scientifically determined fact. Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, Lamarckism, Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Beon Theory are all theories which attempt to explain evolution.

The Darwinists have cleverly packaged their extremely poor theory with the word “evolution,” so that people who do not think clearly, treat Darwinism and evolution as synonyms. They are not. Darwinism cannot be supported with mathematics, and there is no evidence for its primary tenets, which declare that species development is driven by random mutations and filtered by “natural selection.”

Please note that these comments are in the context of this discussion about Hawking’s assertions, which necessarily involve all aspects of the creation-or-not issue, and are not intended to provoke a side debate about Darwinism. It would be fun, but not without our moderator’s okay.

:thumbsup:You’re saying exactly what I’ve said in another thread! Good show!
(and saying it better).

 

[Liinus]

The running debate on " Naturalism " vs " Methodical Naturalism " is esoteric in the extreme. What a specialty chooses to call itself has nothing to do with the specialty. In my day Natural Philosophy or Cosmology were used to describe the first philosophical inferences beyond the physical sciences. Later you moved into Metaphysics, etc. But none of this, including my own comment helps in the analysis and evaluation of the Grand Design. It would be nice if everyone would stick to the subject and not go off on tangents.

 

[Betterave]

You know I just don’t see the basis fior either “cast out” or “heretics”. Those are religious notions, aren’t they? Which is not to say Dawkins doesn’t have heaping loads of criticism and ridicule for those who revile real knowledge and engage in denialism, (see his particular disaffection for young earth creationists), but after following him for years now, I’m quite sure he doesn’t wish to throw any one out, censor, or use official state powers to punish, but just for the foolish to be seen as such based on the merits of their follies. Dawkins is just an instrument of natural consequences in the free speech arena for naive credulity, denialism, and prevarication.

Doubting is good. Denialism in the face of evidence that shows the denialist to be incorrigible and intransigent is bad. And I’m not Dawkins, but for my part, just a “free speech” context where that can be clearly shown and articulated is plenty “punishment” enough for me; no need for anything further than that. Same as I would expect from people who think my ideas are bad, faulty, foolish.

Nihilism or fideism. Those are the options you are left with. Maybe a kind of existentialist blend of the two.

Heh. Well, see my recent exchange with Betterave on this. You don’t need to “reasonably justify” a hypothesis. All you need to be able to do is test it.

Or you can just assert an hypothesis, ignore and miscontrue the counter-evidence which suggests that your hypothesis is “bad, faulty, foolish”, and not worry about feeling the pain of “punishment”, because you are unable to take in the criticisms made against your claims - they just flow like water right off the duck’s oily back, nothing ever penetrates. (Indeed, see our recent exchange on this in the “Matrix”-thread.)

That’s a general problem with people like Dawkins and yourself: you may not have the intellectual wherewithal to understand when you’ve been “punished,” so instead you end up “punishing” others with your intransigent irrationality. It’s not that you’re stupid, but it seems that your intellect may be warped by your will.

Just to be clear: the issue is not primarily about the particular viewpoints that you have, it’s about your repeated irrational reponses to criticisms of those viewpoints.

 

[Touchstone]

Or you can just assert an hypothesis, ignore and miscontrue the counter-evidence which suggests that your hypothesis is “bad, faulty, foolish”, and not worry about feeling the pain of “punishment”, because you are unable to take in the criticisms made against your claims - they just flow like water right off the duck’s oily back, nothing ever penetrates. (Indeed, see our recent exchange on this in the “Matrix”-thread.)

That’s a general problem with people like Dawkins and yourself: you may not have the intellectual wherewithal to understand when you’ve been “punished,” so instead you end up “punishing” others with your intransigent irrationality. It’s not that you’re stupid, but it seems that your intellect may be warped by your will.

Just to be clear: the issue is not primarily about the particular viewpoints that you have, it’s about your repeated irrational reponses to criticisms of those viewpoints.

Well, if there’s one thing that’s clear from hanging out on CAF for a while, it’s that “irrational is in the eye of the beholder”. It’s an internet forum, with clashing worldviews, and since we’re philosophizing, rather than doing science (which would enable us to settle relevant questions in a meaningful and objective way), there is only the court of opinion here, subjective reactions to what is said. That makes “He just didn’t see how I intellectually bodyslammed him to the ground!” awkward and a bit tone deaf for the medium.

And more important, it just pushes a thread to “boring” mode. Much better to keep on the track of Black holes and the scientific method and philosophical heuristics and theological principles and the grounds for ethical praxis, and information theory and entropy, and all that.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

Well, if there’s one thing that’s clear from hanging out on CAF for a while, it’s that “irrational is in the eye of the beholder”. It’s an internet forum, with clashing worldviews, and since we’re philosophizing, rather than doing science (which would enable us to settle relevant questions in a meaningful and objective way), there is only the court of opinion here, subjective reactions to what is said. That makes “He just didn’t see how I intellectually bodyslammed him to the ground!” awkward and a bit tone deaf for the medium.

LOL! What an irrational attitude! Was this intended as ironic? You strike me as perhaps being tone deaf to irony when it comes to your own statements. That or you just aren’t very forthright in making it known that you’re an apostle of the absurd.

Obviously “irrational is in the eye of the beholder” - but the question remains whether that beholder is being rational insofar as he has “irrational” in his eye… And this is not some mysterious intangible we’ll-never-really-know kind of thing; it’s only that for those who are irrational (and who insist on being irrational - i.e., who insist on flaunting the accepted rules of rational discourse).

And more important, it just pushes a thread to “boring” mode. Much better to keep on the track of Black holes and the scientific method and philosophical heuristics and theological principles and the grounds for ethical praxis, and information theory and entropy, and all that.

-TS

Maybe it’s boring to you because it’s relevant (indeed, it’s indispensable for productive dialogue) - I’ve noticed you have a pronounced penchant for irrelevant tangents.

 

[greylorn]

This is very true. I see Darwinsm as the Scientistic equivelent of YEC

Still, how is evolution true? Adaption seems to me not be be quite so proven as I thought, after investigation. Change is. The 2 are not neccesarily the same, but are easily confused, I think, if you try hard enough…

The fossil record provides a clear history of life on planet earth, complete with a rough timeline. The parade of critters is good evidence for evolution, as are the hominid bones. More recent evolutionary changes are evident in the DNA record.

I’m trusting that you do not believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago with the fossils in place, never the bones of beasties that actually lived. If this is not true, there is little basis for a rational discussion between us.

You will appreciate Michael Behe’s books, beginning with Darwin’s Black Box. Behe is a Catholic.

What’s YEC?

 

[greylorn]

Well, if there’s one thing that’s clear from hanging out on CAF for a while, it’s that “irrational is in the eye of the beholder”. It’s an internet forum, with clashing worldviews, and since we’re philosophizing, rather than doing science (which would enable us to settle relevant questions in a meaningful and objective way), there is only the court of opinion here, subjective reactions to what is said. That makes “He just didn’t see how I intellectually bodyslammed him to the ground!” awkward and a bit tone deaf for the medium.

And more important, it just pushes a thread to “boring” mode. Much better to keep on the track of Black holes and the scientific method and philosophical heuristics and theological principles and the grounds for ethical praxis, and information theory and entropy, and all that.

-TS

For the record, I find your postings relevant and mostly well thought out, superior in quality and content to most atheists and dogmatists. I hope you’ll tire soon of arguing with posters who argue about arguing, and resume your normal quality of contributions.

 

[Touchstone]

For the record, I find your postings relevant and mostly well thought out, superior in quality and content to most atheists and dogmatists. I hope you’ll tire soon of arguing with posters who argue about arguing, and resume your normal quality of contributions.

Hey greylorn, nice to see you around. I saw your name on a post yesterday, or the day before, and typed in “hey greylorn” but it seemed kinda lame. I keep thinking I’m going to see you in the news sometime, bestselling author interviewed on Charlie Rose, or some such. Weren’t you working on something.

I’ll take your post as admonishment to say something on topic for the thread. Here’s a small passage of Hawking’s book (I can’t cite a page number because the Kindle reader on my iPad doesn’t have page numbers – it’s near the start of one of the later chapters called “The Apparent Miracle”:
Hawking:

Newton believed that our strangely habitable solar system did not “arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature.” Instead, he maintained, the order in the universe was “created by God at first and conserved by him to this Day in the same state and condition.” It is easy to understand why one might think that. The many improbably occurrences that conspired to enable our existence, and out world’s human-friendly design, would indeed be puzzling if ours were the only solar system in the universe. But in 1992 came the first confirme observation of a planet orbiting a star other than our sun. We now know of hundreds of such planets, and few doubt that there exist countless others among the many billions of stars in our universe.

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 as evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings. Planets of all sorts exist. Some – or at least one – support life. Obviously when the beings on a planet that supports life examine the world around them, they are bound to find that their environment satisfies the conditions they require to exist.

I recalled that section as I was listening to right wing radio just for kicks this morning in the car, and a caller got on to announce that he found it suspicious that scientists had decided this recently found planet was “life-supportable”, along with an announcement that the UN had designated an ambassador to alien races (???), and to top it off, apparently someone in the Catholic Church announced that the RCC would be willing to baptize an alien. He had the heeby-jeebies thinking these to be signs that we were being prepared for First Contact…

-TS

(And no, I didn’t look up the conspiracy points there. This is right wing radio!)

 

[Mystic_Banana]

The fossil record provides a clear history of life on planet earth, complete with a rough timeline. The parade of critters is good evidence for evolution, as are the hominid bones. More recent evolutionary changes are evident in the DNA record.

I’m trusting that you do not believe that the earth was created 6000 years ago with the fossils in place, never the bones of beasties that actually lived. If this is not true, there is little basis for a rational discussion between us.

You will appreciate Michael Behe’s books, beginning with Darwin’s Black Box. Behe is a Catholic.

What’s YEC?

You know, I came up with the “God put the dinosaur bones there as a cunning jest!” idea myself, many many moons ago, but the slightest phantasm of that idea was blasted away by a certain Bill Hicks tape… (“that’s what we want - a trickster God!”)

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen most of my arguments before… I contest pretty much every assumption of correct dating, scientific, Biblical etc. (actually, the calculation of dates in the Bible makes all kinds of assumptions anyway, as far as I can tell)… I seriously doubt that the fossil record is really genuinely accurate, or the timings, since I doubt humanity as it stands has anything approaching the real methods or abilities required to determine such processes effectively - and little inclination to consider the issue objectively anyway…

Plus, the presumed erosion of vast quantities of evidence into unreadable nothing presumably makes any honest claim to accuracy an essentially vain one, I’d suspect…

Behe? Well, you can tell me - according to the Uber-scientisitic Horizon show I referred to a few pages ago, Behe’s challenge was based on a propellor mechanism or somesuch in microbes, and this challenge was rejected in the court case, but all the stuff I ever hear about his argument is based on the eye… is that a subsequent argument after the first one was rejected?

 

[greylorn]

You know, I came up with the “God put the dinosaur bones there as a cunning jest!” idea myself, many many moons ago, but the slightest phantasm of that idea was blasted away by a certain Bill Hicks tape… (“that’s what we want - a trickster God!”)

Reply 1 of 2

I first came across the “planted bones” notion in the late seventies, when I signed up for a one-year subscription to a dreadful creationist newsletter. The notion was a serious proposal. The nits (Ph.D.'s and all) lacked the wit to see it as a jest.

Lest anyone think the term “nit” is a tad harsh, I freely apply it to Darwinists as well. They are even more desperate to justify incompetent thinking.

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen most of my arguments before… I contest pretty much every assumption of correct dating, scientific, Biblical etc. (actually, the calculation of dates in the Bible makes all kinds of assumptions anyway, as far as I can tell)… I seriously doubt that the fossil record is really genuinely accurate, or the timings, since I doubt humanity as it stands has anything approaching the real methods or abilities required to determine such processes effectively - and little inclination to consider the issue objectively anyway…

Believe it or not, I don’t dote upon your every word, like I’m sure you must do with mine.

Measurements of extended time or distance are difficult, but simply because you may not understand the inferential methods used is no reason to be skeptical about the measurements.

Most folks get their information from pop science blurbs or documentary channels. These omit details in favor of audience interest, and to leave more space for ads and commercials. Real scientific journals and books tell the story differently. Dating methods are described in detail, and come with “error bars.” (For example, Bill the T-Rex died 83 million years ago, plus or minus 17.3 years.) Casual readers just want the “facts,” without the details. If you are one of them, your skepticism only reflects your choice in study material, not the data.

You’ll also find within the literature a fair amount of quibbling over proper dating techniques, and the interpretation of data used in those techniques. Good scientists are their own best skeptics, kept that way so long as academia holds more wanna-be professors than professorships.

Consider, also, that many techniques are fairly simple. Anyone with a shovel can figure out that if he dug up critter B first, then dug up critter A six inches further down, one of them was here first. He can often guess which one.

Plus, the presumed erosion of vast quantities of evidence into unreadable nothing presumably makes any honest claim to accuracy an essentially vain one, I’d suspect…

Unreadable evidence is not used, by definition. But remember that what is unreadable to some is clear and obvious to others. (Watch “Bones.”)

 

[greylorn]

Behe? Well, you can tell me - according to the Uber-scientisitic Horizon show I referred to a few pages ago, Behe’s challenge was based on a propellor mechanism or somesuch in microbes, and this challenge was rejected in the court case, but all the stuff I ever hear about his argument is based on the eye… is that a subsequent argument after the first one was rejected?

Reply 2 of 2

I invite you to find better sources of information than TV shows (presumably that’s what “Horizon” was or is), particularly when the information informs your opinion. You do want your own opinions, do you not? Can’t get them unless you read source material. TV can be a useful way to engage your curiosity, but your mind will be shaped by the opinions of ignorant and biased nitwits unless you do your own work. That means personally checking out what you hear, and everything coming from TV.

Your opinions about Behe are low-grade hearsay, meaning that they come from people who knew nothing when they were delivered, or who slanted the facts to suit their agenda. (Yes, that actually happens on some rare TV programs! Believe it or not.)

Behe appeared in court as an expert witness on behalf of The Discovery Institute and the Dover school board against the ACLU’s censorship of Intelligent Design in a school curriculum. The ACLU’s lawyers were competent, smarmy, and devious. The Institute’s lawyers were of average quality at best, which, in any case involving highly technical information, means downright worthless. The judge was just a grinning yokel who knew some stuff about law. The facts presented in the trial went into his eyes and ears and rattled around in his brain without triggering a single live neuron. In a word, that judge was not qualified to rule upon any technical issue more complex than determining the probable direction in which a dropped rock will fall. Even that would have challenged him.

Excerpts from the trial were shown in a highly biased presentation on my local PBS station a few years ago. The ACLU’s attorneys found a way to use Behe’s scientific honesty against him, and the Institute’s attorneys were too dumb to counter properly. For example, they placed a large stack of textbooks on the witness stand and asked Behe if he’d read them all. He’d not. His own attorneys did not think to bring in the truckload of books which Behe had read.

In “Darwin’s Black Box,” Behe used the simple mousetrap as an example of a concept he named irreducible complexity. The ACLU attorneys dismantled the trigger assemblies on some mouse traps, retaining the base, spring, bar, and retaining staples, and wore these as tie clips. The Institute attorney did not even counter with that fact that the mousetrap was an example used for the purposes of illustration. The real information was in Behe’s book.

But the ACLU goons knew exactly what they were doing. The nitwit judge needed any excuse to make a ruling and get the hell out of a bad situation, and that’s what they gave him. It was sad to watch.

Scrap the hearsay crud you’ve heard about Behe and read, “Darwin’s Black Box.” You’ll be smarter and wiser for doing so. I confess that I put off reading it at first, because I never even took high school biology and was afraid that I’d not understand it. Now, I know a little bit about microbiology and have since read even more. Fascinating science! And Behe is a superb teacher. He wrote for the intelligent layman, people just like you. I invite you to honor your mind by giving him a read.

 

[greylorn]

Hey greylorn, nice to see you around. I saw your name on a post yesterday, or the day before, and typed in “hey greylorn” but it seemed kinda lame. I keep thinking I’m going to see you in the news sometime, bestselling author interviewed on Charlie Rose, or some such. Weren’t you working on something.

Still am. A book. Closing in. I doubt that this book will be a bestseller. If so, not in my lifetime. Who’d read a book that annoys Christians and atheists alike?

I’m too ugly to be on TV (tried it for my first book— never again!). Worse, I have a chronic undiagnosed cough that gets worse when I talk.

I’ll take your post as admonishment to say something on topic for the thread. Here’s a small passage of Hawking’s book (I can’t cite a page number because the Kindle reader on my iPad doesn’t have page numbers – it’s near the start of one of the later chapters called “The Apparent Miracle”:

I doubt that Hawking writes his own stuff anymore. In any case, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with his ideas. He’s sold out to the Big Bang crowd and the general theme of atheistic pseudo-science. Hey. Put me in a wheelchair long enough and I won’t be good for much either— a lot less than Hawking.

He believes in some fundamental stuff which I regard as nonsense, such as the notion of a physical singularity. Singularities are mathematical concepts, which, when they appear in the solution to a problem on a physics quiz, mean, “you got it wrong!”

I recalled that section as I was listening to right wing radio just for kicks this morning in the car, and a caller got on to announce that he found it suspicious that scientists had decided this recently found planet was “life-supportable”, along with an announcement that the UN had designated an ambassador to alien races (???), and to top it off, apparently someone in the Catholic Church announced that the RCC would be willing to baptize an alien. He had the heeby-jeebies thinking these to be signs that we were being prepared for First Contact…

There is a lot of money in speculative science these days. I suspect that any church will baptize, anoint, or confer a bogus degree upon anyone in a position to make it worth that church’s while. Being first to jump on a new bandwagon might mean that you get to steer— for a time.

 

[Betterave]

For the record, I find your postings relevant and mostly well thought out, superior in quality and content to most atheists and dogmatists. I hope you’ll tire soon of arguing with posters who argue about arguing, and resume your normal quality of contributions.

Well, greylorn, perhaps you’d like to take a little read through the “matrix”-thread and comment there. Maybe you’ll be able to give me a relevant well thought out explanation of what is relevant and well thought out in TS’s ‘arguments’ (or, often, non-arguments) there.

I should add that your implied claim here, that an argument about arguing is an irrelevant response to an argument about arguing, is… A lot of times if you’re up the creek without a paddle, your first order of business should be finding a paddle, instead of just careening downstream out of control.

p.s., I might agree that TS’s posts are, in general, “superior in quality and content to most atheists” - that’s just a very low standard.

 

[Liinus]

Thank you Father for having revealed your truth to the little ones. For those who are consumed with their own brilliance or their own self importance would never believe. And they asked for miracles and Christ would not give them miracles because they had the Prophets and they would not believe them, nor would they believe Him or His miracles. That is how I feel about the scientists and pseudo-scientists that have plagued the world for the last two hundred years. They believe nothing and because they will not believe they do not think anyone else can believe and even have valid common sense reasons to support their belief. They never, never think they themselves may be wrong. That is why I think these philosiphical forums are a total waste of time.