Hawking claims: ā
Because there is a law of 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.ā
Not really a very satisfying answerā¦
In reality Hawking āno-boundary modelā is even less appealing:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartle%E2%80%93Hawking_state
Hawking seems also to contradict himself: sometimes he claims there is no boundary, no singularity, there is no beginning, but in earlier works he claims there was a singularity. Perhaps age is taking his toll.
No matter his better book ā A brief history of timeā was less informative than the back of a shampoo bottle when it come to understand the universeā¦
Rhetoric on is older work aside:
Now there are several problems with Hawkingās work (that atheist fan boys always ignore and trusting him by blind faith)
a- Is Hawking model even physically possible? Thatās debatable⦠other atheist scientist contest the velidity of his model, like Susskind.
a2- are the assumptions (which are more metaphysical than scientific at times⦠like his model dependent reality concept)
b- Is there any empirical proof? If we are dealing with science, and not metaphysics, after all, there ought to be? Well NO. No proof. Hawking claimed they were closed to some proof but many questioned that⦠In the end: crickets chirping, proof missing (some argue it cannot even be prove in principle⦠but never mind that)
c- How about competitive theories? Nice and fair we can accept Hawkingās word just because he says thereās no God⦠but how about itās just a cookie theory with loads of competitors.
Now even accepting Hawking theory as true and proved⦠well⦠so? You explain HOW we got the universe, but not really why.
Why are those laws of physics there? Where do they come from?
Why was there a singularity or wavefunction to start the universe or multiverse?
Atheists seem not to ask these questions (but ask instead āwhat created Godā⦠in a leap og great intellectual honesty and coherence)
It seems that, like Krauss more recently, Hawking is playing some sort of shell game, some kind of trick of prestidigitation:
he pretends to answer with some āscientific TRUTHā in all caps but really even if his theory withstands scientific (and metaphysical) scrutiny⦠it really answers NOTHING.
We still do not know why the laws of physics are there (and they cannot be an āultimate sourceā either since they do not constitute a āpure actual beingā) .
More painfully: do the laws of physics have ANY sense if there is ānothingā (assuming nothing is literally nothing and not Kraussā something called nothing).
Also are the laws of physics the foundation or did they emerge with the Big Bang?
Hawkingās answers emerged spontaneously from nothing (or M-theory, whatever) and seem to me they amount to that: nothing, except, perhaps an interesting scientific model that might or might not be true.