Stephen Hawkings' Grand Design

[Sair]

Some one who leads a comfortable existence compared to the vast majority of people in the world obviously doesn’t regard this life as making the best of a bad job. Nor do you take into account the horrific injustice, cruelty and unnecessary suffering inflicted by human beings. It is easy to be positive when you’re not concerned about others…

I note there’s no divine intervention preventing the suffering of the masses either. Clearly it’s up to us to strive to be better and make life better for sentient beings (beings who actually have an interest in being alive), since there’s apparently no interested God to do it for us, or even help us with it.

BTW It was an atheist, Albert Camus, who described life as absurd and death as “le supreme abus”.

And this is somehow supposed to be taken as atheist dogma?

It’s a cop-out to dismiss life as “a marvellous accident” when you use your unexplained power of reason to conclude life is irrational.
To refer to “our ability to play the hand we’ve landed with” doesn’t make sense if we are biological freaks which have no choice as to which cards we shall play. Nor is gratitude or anger something under our control if we are the playthings of the blind Goddess - Chance. We would be merely cogs in the vast machine of nature…

You’re very all-or-nothing in your views about this, aren’t you? Either one believes in a supernatural god and a soul, or one decides that life is all a matter of chance. There is a middle ground here. Chance doesn’t account for cause-and-effect, and positing a supernatural soul doesn’t account for our inability to be unaffected by our environment.

 

[tonyrey]

Some one who leads a comfortable existence compared to the vast majority of people in the world obviously doesn’t regard this life as making the best of a bad job. Nor do you take into account the horrific injustice, cruelty and unnecessary suffering inflicted by human beings. It is easy to be positive when you’re not concerned about others…

How would recognise divine intervention? Leibniz pointed out that houses are far more common than hospitals. If the vast majority were maimed and killed by natural disasters you might have a point…

The fact remains that mankind is responsible for much horrific injustice, cruelty and unnecessary suffering.

Clearly it’s up to us to strive to be better and make life better for sentient beings (beings who actually have an interest in being alive), since there’s apparently no interested God to do it for us, or even help us with it.

You assume that:

1. Everyone accepts your beliefs and values - as if the principle of fraternity is self-evident.
2. We have some choice as to how to behave - even though animals are not morally responsible.
3. There are never answers to prayer.

BTW It was an atheist, Albert Camus, who described life as absurd and death as “le supreme abus”.

And this is somehow supposed to be taken as atheist dogma?

Do you deny that you regard life as a purposeless **accident **and that physical death destroys all love, hopes and aspirations for justice?

It’s a cop-out to dismiss life as “a marvellous accident” when you use your unexplained power of reason to conclude life is irrational.

To refer to “our ability to play the hand we’ve landed with” doesn’t make sense if we are biological freaks which have no choice as to which cards we shall play. Nor is gratitude or anger something under our control if we are the playthings of the blind Goddess - Chance. We would be merely cogs in the vast machine of nature…
You’re very all-or-nothing in your views about this, aren’t you? Either one believes in a supernatural god and a soul, or one decides that life is all a matter of chance. There is a middle ground here. Chance doesn’t account for cause-and-effect, and positing a supernatural soul doesn’t account for our inability to be unaffected by our environment.

1. You have not explained the origin of our power of choice.
2. There is no alternative to Design or non-Design because a sequence of **physical **cause and effect is necessarily blind, i.e. unintentional.
3. Being unaffected by our environment is not identical with being totally dominated by our environment.

 

[Sair]

How would recognise divine intervention? Leibniz pointed out that houses are far more common than hospitals. If the vast majority were maimed and killed by natural disasters you might have a point…

Well, how would one recognise divine intervention? How would one distinguish it from chance occurrence?

You assume that:

1. Everyone accepts your beliefs and values - as if the principle of fraternity is self-evident.
2. We have some choice as to how to behave - even though animals are not morally responsible.
3. There are never answers to prayer.

How does one recognise answers to prayer, as opposed to directed action by a thoughtful sentient being? Do you think that physical determinism leads to one option and one only as to how we might act in a given situation? Everyone who has experienced cooperation and fraternity accepts it as a better alternative to conflict and rampant selfishness. It’s up to those of us who know this to maximise the numbers of people who experience these things.

Do you deny that you regard life as a purposeless **accident **and that physical death destroys all love, hopes and aspirations for justice?

You’re forgetting that in between birth and death, there’s a long span of years in which we can create and pursue and with any luck, fulfil our purposes.

1. You have not explained the origin of our power of choice.

A variety of causes which must have at least one outcome.

1. There is no alternative to Design or non-Design because a sequence of **physical **cause and effect is necessarily blind, i.e. unintentional.

Except when the physical causes and effects have resulted in the phenomena of self-awareness and choice between such alternatives as present themselves.

1. Being unaffected by our environment is not identical with being totally dominated by our environment.

Yet it is incompatible with the idea of a supernatural soul that is ultimately independent of the body and the physical conditions of the body. If it’s dependent upon the body, then the onus is on those who believe in it to explain how this supposedly immaterial entity is intimately connected to a material entity.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.4f8ccccd2e38de074f4c1305131c47e4.491&show_article=1

Does anybody know what Hawkings is talking about when he says there is no longer any need for the concept of God due to recent developments in physics? :confused

Yeah, Hawking is saying that his invisible things are better than our invisible things. :

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Yeah, Hawking is saying that his invisible things are better than our invisible things.

 

[tonyrey]

How would recognise divine intervention? Leibniz pointed out that houses are far more common than hospitals. If the vast majority

By its constant benevolence. Chance gives mixed results.

You assume that:

1. Everyone accepts your beliefs and values - as if the principle of fraternity is self-evident.
2. We have some choice as to how to behave - even though animals are not morally responsible.
3. There are never answers to prayer.

How does one recognise answers to prayer, as opposed to directed action by a thoughtful sentient being?

I see no opposition between the two!

Do you think that physical determinism leads to one option and one only as to how we might act in a given situation?

Yes!

Everyone who has experienced cooperation and fraternity accepts it as a better alternative to conflict and rampant selfishness. It’s up to those of us who know this to maximise the numbers of people who experience these things.

Only when it suits us if there is no other consideration.

Do you deny that you regard life as a purposeless **accident **

and that physical death destroys all love, hopes and aspirations for justice? You’re forgetting that in between birth and death, there’s a long span of years in which we can create and pursue and with any luck, fulfil our purposes.

The majority do not live such a long span and even for those who do there is always the problem of unfulfilled ambitions, injustice, ill-health and the prospect of separation from those they love.

1. You have not explained the origin of our power of choice.

A variety of causes which must have at least one outcome.

That is not a rational choice.

1. There is no alternative to Design or non-Design because a sequence of **physical **

cause and effect is necessarily blind, i.e. unintentional. Except when the physical causes and effects have resulted in the phenomena of self-awareness and choice between such alternatives as present themselves.

The issue is not the results but the original setup.

1. Being **unaffected **

by our environment is not identical with being** totally** dominated by our environment. Yet it is incompatible with the idea of a supernatural soul that is ultimately independent of the body and the physical conditions of the body.

Why incompatible? A fact is independent of the body yet can it can be understood and used by the mind.

If it’s dependent upon the body, then the onus is on those who believe in it to explain how this supposedly immaterial entity is intimately connected to a material entity.

It is not dependent upon the body. It interacts with the body and it is the dominant factor.

 

[razredge]

I like Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time’ is one of my favourite science books -
but the problem with the multiverse theory is that it just pushes the question back one level to who created the multiverse?

 

[Sair]

By its constant benevolence. Chance gives mixed results.

Then the God you posit either cannot or doesn’t care to intervene, if constant benevolence is the hallmark of his activity. Such is very, very far from what we observe.

Only when it suits us if there is no other consideration.

Does the happiness of others constitute more or less of an ‘other consideration’ than the supposed fate of one’s supposedly immortal, supernatural soul?

The majority do not live such a long span and even for those who do there is always the problem of unfulfilled ambitions, injustice, ill-health and the prospect of separation from those they love.

As many have said before, the finite nature of life is not a reason to discount its potential, and is in fact a reason to do the best with what one has, to prioritise one’s ambitions and to fight injustice where we can. The separation from loved ones is onerous while it lasts - but it is something we all have to come to terms with, and the sorrow, like life itself, is finite. How would one come to terms with an eternal separation from a loved one, if we suppose one goes to heaven and the loved one goes to hell? If we don’t care once we’re in the afterlife, then what’s the point?

The issue is not the results but the original setup.

Matter and energy is the original setup - their interactions produce the results.

Why incompatible? A fact is independent of the body yet can it can be understood and used by the mind.

All facts of the physical universe impact upon the body in some manner. The mind builds conceptual models of reality, based on information from the senses. The mind would not exist without the physical body and environment, because it would have no content. On the other hand, according to your view, much of what we consider to be the actions of the mind are the province of an immaterial soul that exists independently of the physical body, and thus independent of the physical universe. What is the content of a disembodied mind? To clarify the nature of this question, what exists apart from matter, energy, their interactions and the concepts we form in our minds (which are themselves interactions between matter and energy)? What would there be to animate a completely immaterial entity (if that isn’t an oxymoron)?

It is not dependent upon the body. It interacts with the body and it is the dominant factor.

How does it/could it do this? What behaviours of humans are specific manifestations of the soul’s control over the body? In what sense are we independent of the physical?

 

[Sair]

*Q: How would one distinguish divine intervention?
*
A: By its constant benevolence. Chance gives mixed results.

To clarify - and if we assume, for argument’s sake, that the only alternatives are design (divine intervention) and random chance, then the world and the progress of events in the world looks exactly as we would expect if chance was the governing principle, and pretty much nothing like what we would expect if it were watched over and cared for by a benevolent, interventionist deity. My point is that when good things happen, what leads you to ascribe them to an act of God, as opposed to a situation in which chance occurrences converged in a subjectively favourable outcome?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Sair

To clarify - and if we assume, for argument’s sake, that the only alternatives are design (divine intervention) and random chance, then the world and the progress of events in the world looks exactly as we would expect if chance was the governing principle, and pretty much nothing like what we would expect if it were watched over and cared for by a benevolent, interventionist deity.

Why isn’t it just as likely that a benevolent Deity is in charge? Where you see random chance, others see plenty of circumstances that would hardly have developed if not for a designing intelligence right from the start of Creation. Many great scientists have seen this and commented to that effect. Only with lesser scientists, like Dawkins and the rapidly deteriorating Hawking, do we see the resignation to a Blind Watchmaker who has no idea what he is doing, but is doing it anyway.

 

[razredge]

*Q: How would one distinguish divine intervention?
*
A: By its constant benevolence. Chance gives mixed results.

To clarify - and if we assume, for argument’s sake, that the only alternatives are design (divine intervention) and random chance, then the world and the progress of events in the world looks exactly as we would expect if chance was the governing principle, and pretty much nothing like what we would expect if it were watched over and cared for by a benevolent, interventionist deity. My point is that when good things happen, what leads you to ascribe them to an act of God, as opposed to a situation in which chance occurrences converged in a subjectively favourable outcome?

Not all of us believe in frequent divine intervention you know.

It’s impossible to reconcile a God who grants favours and miracles to believers with the evil and suffering in the world today.

 

[Sair]

Sair
Why isn’t it just as likely that a benevolent Deity is in charge? Where you see random chance, others see plenty of circumstances that would hardly have developed if not for a designing intelligence right from the start of Creation. Many great scientists have seen this and commented to that effect. Only with lesser scientists, like Dawkins and the rapidly deteriorating Hawking, do we see the resignation to a Blind Watchmaker who has no idea what he is doing, but is doing it anyway.

In fact, I don’t see everything as the result of random chance, and I reject the design-or-chance gambit as a false dichotomy.

My point is that we manifestly don’t live in a world watched over by a benevolent interventionist deity. Certainly there are many things in the world that are favourable for life, and from our subjective viewpoint, beautiful. But there are at least as many things that are hostile to life and downright ugly. This leaves us with a few potentially plausible options - that there is no god, or that one exists that for some reason doesn’t intervene, or one exists that selectively intervenes - but it does rather cancel out the notion of a God that is universally benevolent and takes an active interest and intervenes in the world. If God designed the world, or the laws of nature, it is reasonable to suppose that he - being omniscient and omnipotent, if we’re talking about the Christian God - intended not just the favourable and beautiful, but the hostile and the ugly. Doesn’t smack of universal benevolence as far as I can see.

This seems like an appropriate place for a no-doubt familiar quotation from David Attenborough:

“They [who credit the Christian God with the wonders of creation] always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs.”

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Sair

**“They [who credit the Christian God with the wonders of creation] always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs.” **

This is ridiculous. You mean that worms did not exist until little children in east Africa existed?

What do you think of as ugly in its natural created state?

What we have done with that thing might well make it ugly, but in its pristine state of nature there is nothing ugly about it.

The fact of the matter is that nobody I know is in a hurry to die. That means that most people (unless they are victims of a perverse lifestyle or perverse powers that be) enjoy life. Ergo, God must be benevolent. If He is not benevolent, if He is essentially mean spirited, everybody would be glad to die just to get out from under His savage tyranny.

Instead, anybody with a brain and an open heart turns to Him for aid and comfort.

 

[YankeeRC]

This seems like an appropriate place for a no-doubt familiar quotation from David Attenborough:

“They [who credit the Christian God with the wonders of creation] always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs.”

Hmm, such a childlike petulant comment from a so well known name. So I take it Attenborough is a God hater and not an atheist?

We all eventually have worms borrwing through our eyeballs. When mankind allows other men to live in this condition it is sinful. I guess the thinking here is, for God to exist we must all be born into some kind of Garden of Eden and be healthy happy and live forever…oh wait, we once had that

 

[Charlemagne_II]

From England, a really interesting rebuttal to Hawking.

guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/17/stephen-hawking-heaven

 

[tonyrey]

From England, a really interesting rebuttal to Hawking.

guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/17/stephen-hawking-heaven

Thank you for the reference to a poignant, pertinent and penetrating analysis by a fellow sufferer of motor neurone disease…

Some good things still come from this sick (in other respects) society.

 

[Sair]

Hmm, such a childlike petulant comment from a so well known name. So I take it Attenborough is a God hater and not an atheist?

We all eventually have worms borrwing through our eyeballs. When mankind allows other men to live in this condition it is sinful. I guess the thinking here is, for God to exist we must all be born into some kind of Garden of Eden and be healthy happy and live forever…oh wait, we once had that

Oh, that’s right. The benevolent deity designed humans in the full knowledge that they would screw up so he could inflict all manner of tortures on them…selectively, and then those spared such tortures could be held accountable for not preventing or easing the suffering of others, and punished later.

And people think atheism is depressing!

The point Attenborough was making was that the existence of life in all its forms, of the world, the universe, are actually a very bad argument for a god who cares about the welfare of sentient beings. His comment was made in response to criticism that he never gave God ‘credit’ for the beauties and intricacies of the natural world. The response is an acknowledgement of what few creationists seem to freely admit - that to do so requires us to give that same God ultimate responsibility for the violence, horror and misery of the natural world as well. This is a pretty simple argument for which I’ve never seen an effective counter that leaves the Christian concept of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God intact.

 

[tonyrey]

Oh, that’s right. The benevolent deity designed humans in the full knowledge that they would screw up so he could inflict all manner of tortures on them…selectively, and then those spared such tortures could be held accountable for not preventing or easing the suffering of others, and punished later.

And people think atheism is depressing!

If you had been created without free will you wouldn’t even have been able to draw rational conclusions about the horrors in the world…

The point Attenborough was making was that the existence of life in all its forms, of the world, the universe, are actually a very bad argument for a god who cares about the welfare of sentient beings. His comment was made in response to criticism that he never gave God ‘credit’ for the beauties and intricacies of the natural world. The response is an acknowledgement of what few creationists seem to freely admit - that to do so requires us to give that same God ultimate responsibility for the violence, horror and misery of the natural world as well. This is a pretty simple argument for which I’ve never seen an effective counter that leaves the Christian concept of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God intact.

I have never seen a blueprint for a natural world devoid of violence, horror and misery. Can you supply one?

 

[Sair]

Sair
This is ridiculous. You mean that worms did not exist until little children in east Africa existed?

Not the kind of worms that evolved to burrow into human eyeballs. And if we assume special creation, why would a benevolent God who cares about humans create a creature that could only survive by causing humans misery?

What do you think of as ugly in its natural created state?

Are you talking physically or behaviourally? I mean, warthogs aren’t the prettiest of critters, and neither are star-nosed moles. But that’s kind of superficial.

What we have done with that thing might well make it ugly, but in its pristine state of nature there is nothing ugly about it.

Ichneumon wasps, in their pristine state of nature, lay eggs inside live caterpillars so their young, upon hatching, can eat the caterpillar from the inside out. African wild dogs are known to tear their prey apart whilst it’s still alive. Wild chimpanzees have been filmed tearing live monkeys to pieces. I could go on, but you get the point, I hope.

The fact of the matter is that nobody I know is in a hurry to die. That means that most people (unless they are victims of a perverse lifestyle or perverse powers that be) enjoy life. Ergo, God must be benevolent. If He is not benevolent, if He is essentially mean spirited, everybody would be glad to die just to get out from under His savage tyranny.

Not if he was calculating enough to provide just sufficient enjoyment of life before pulling the rug out from under us. It’s true to say that suffering is made all the more exquisite by the memory of happiness. Stephen Law made a pretty good argument for an all-powerful evil god, which has at least as much in terms of any evidentiary support as the argument for an all-powerful benevolent god. In any case, if God is benevolent, he is very selectively so, and there doesn’t seem to be an ethical rationale for his selective process.

Instead, anybody with a brain and an open heart turns to Him for aid and comfort.

That is manifestly untrue.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Sair

Stephen Law made a pretty good argument for an all-powerful evil god, which has at least as much in terms of any evidentiary support as the argument for an all-powerful benevolent god. In any case, if God is benevolent, he is very selectively so, and there doesn’t seem to be an ethical rationale for his selective process.

God is either all good or all bad. Since he can’t logically be both at the same time, he must be one or the other. He cannot be a mixed bag of good and evil, for that would make him no more powerful than the creatures He has created.

That God permits evil is easily demonstrable. That He wills evil is not demonstrable, unless by will you mean the same thing as permit. But the arguments for the permission of evil have already been established, including the mystery (or problem) of evil, which it is beyond our ability to solve … but which is certainly not beyond the possibility of God to understand and resolve. The fact that we cannot understand why God permits evil is no argument against the ultimate goodness of God in creating us in such a way as to give us a lust for life rather than for death.

Those who lust for death are making a choice of their own, not God’s.

Those who are undeserving victims of natural disasters are of two classes only. Those who lived in such a way as to earn their eternal reward. And those who did not. God knows which are which. The innocent die in this world to be born into a better one. That is no tragedy. The rest … who knows? That is God’s business to judge, not ours. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God is not in the dock.

But we are.

It is manifestly true that anyone who in times of profound trouble does not turn to God for understanding and solace has neither a brain nor an open heart.

Even the most die-hard atheist in an airplane plummeting to the earth might shout in desperation, “Oh, my God!”

He certainly won’t be shouting, “Oh, my Self!”