Stephen Hawking Says God Did Not Create the Universe
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SEPTEMBER 03, 2010 05:07
British physicist Stephen Hawking says God was not necessary for the creation of the universe, just as Charles Darwin eliminated the necessity of God from biology.

In an exclusive interview, the science monthly Eureka of The Times of London released Thursday excerpts from Hawkings new book The Grand Design. He asks the question Did the Universe need a creator? in a book whose title seems to imply the intelligent design theory.

His answer? No.

Hawking says the Big Bang was the inevitable result of the laws of physics, not something explained by the hand of God or coincidence. 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, he writes.
It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.

His new book breaks away from his previous views on religion expressed in his 1988 bestseller Brief History of Time. Back then, he accepted that God could co-exist with a scientific explanation of the universe, saying, If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God.

Co-authored with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design deconstructs the Newtonian view that the universe could not have risen out of chaos but was created by God.

Hawking said the first reason is the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the sun.

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 evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings. Not just other planets like the Earth, other universes may exist,he said.

Believers will still believe, non-believers will still not believe... and the book-burnings and censorship will commence. I was just reading the list of the ALA's 2009 most banned books. Depending on when this one comes out, it should make the 2010 list easily.

It will be right up there with TTYL;TTFN;L8R,G8R and To Kill a Mockingbird, a perennial dweller on the most frequently challenged list.

Hawking's conclusion depends on certain assumptions which cannot be proven. We do not know what initial conditions in the universe were like. Who can say what was or wasn't required? Physics has not advanced yet to the state of knowing what those conditions were exactly, and what lay behind those conditions. Since we cannot recreate those conditions, we can make educated guesses, but we cannot know with certainty. Hawking is a hubristic little gnome, isn't he?

We don't even know what causes gravity, we don't even fully understand magnetism, yet here Hawking thinks he has it all wrapped up in a neat little ball? Premature, at best.

What Gravity? I thought it was curved space?

Man once believed the earth was flat. We also once believed our planet was the centre of the universe. We created laws of physics which we then discovered didn't apply the same way beyond our world. While I'm not disputing the "Hand of God" theory, I see it as one of many unprovable explanations as to the creation and the continued existence of the universe as a whole. It's easy to believe that a certain explanation is the truth as much as it is easy to disprove with something that eventually anyone can dissolve back into unprovable explanations.

Just to muddy the waters, a little... And for the record, I don't believe either explanation (religion or science) because neither, obviously, can be proved. They are simply explanations given by someone else and we choose to believe whatever we want. The real problem is that those who choose one explanation tend to see no proof in any other reason and some will go even so far as to try blocking alternative explanations from being considered or discussed. I have read various books, from the Bible to Chariots Of The Gods, although have never believed any of them despite their supposed overwhelming evidence.

Believe what you want to believe. Even if books are banned, there's always a place on the internet to fuel the beliefs, the conspiracies and the confusion.

Is that a picture of spontaneous creation?

Victor Created the Universe, Gee's

I once met the son of the guy who first discovered the "big bang" theory.

That takes more faith than I have to believe all this junk just got here and took form.

What will Stephen Hawking do when he meets his creator and it turns out to be just a green blob of slime?

He'll shout Mama!

Psalm 14:1

Galatians 6:7