Stephen Hawking and the Existence of God

[Ian David]

Run time: 03:19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCVqJw7T1WU   Posted on YouTube: September 03, 2010 By YouTube Member: seancarroll Views on YouTube: 5483   Posted on DU: September 05, 2010 By DU Member: Ian David Views on DU: 2409

 
Hat-tip to:

Caltech physicist Sean Carroll on Stephen Hawking & how universe can create itself out of nothing
http://twitter.com/michaelshermer/status/23057688614

[Warren Stupidity]

1. kick

[AlbertCat]

2. We can along just fine with the Universe and nothing else.

Thank you! In fact we DO just get along with the universe and nothing else. I rejected anything supernatural years ago and, except for people afraid to let go of their feel-good supernatural mumbo jumbo from god and Christ to tarot and astrology to crop circles and alien pyramids lecturing me, I am just fine.... well, no worse off than anyone else. Gods and ghosts don't add anything useful. There is no reason people couldn't get together and rejoice in the amazement of the universe and all that actually is in it without the fear of punishment after death or including things that clearly are NOT in it. If you need miracles in your life, just look at a drop of water and what science tells you we know about it... it's a miracle! No need to make stuff up!

Speaking of lectures, here's a good one about what they are talking about here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

[Raoul]

3. ROFL

The universe could have created itself? Okay, then I'll begin worshipping the universe instead of God since the universe obviously is omnipotent in itself. LOL

Actually the 'learned' professor kinda refutes himself in a way. For example, he claims that the 'natural laws of the universe' could have come into play in the creation of the universe. Sorry but in every science class I ever took I found that the supposed
laws of the universe, laws of physics, et. al. came into being only AFTER the universe was created. The laws were then conceptualized by various scientists down through the ages. The laws were even modified or changed once new data was discovered which dictated said changes.

Lastly, and this doesn't really pertain to the video as much as the snotty smart assed condescending comment or two I see from atheists - the dogmatic, blind view of no intelligence behind the universe that atheists hold is as irrational and non-intelligent as those of any bible thumper..

[greiner3]

5. "that the supposed laws of the universe, laws of physics, et. al.

came into being only AFTER the universe was created." Ah, that same old argument, laws of physics. Sorry but I believe that the statement should read, 'laws of physics as we now understand them.' If you look back 10, 20 30 and more years, the understanding of physics grows as each new discovery is made as to how the big bang, and hence, the universe began. To say that all the stated laws came into being only AFTER the creation of the universe supposes a unique knowledge of what was prior to the big bang.

[SkyDaddy7]

14. I disagree...

I am not a scientist but I have read a little about particle physics & scientist can account for how the known laws of physics & how they came into being AFTER the big bang..They are still looking for the particle responsible for gravity & they hope the LHC at CERN will provide the proof they need. From what I have read the Standard Model has proven to be a very accurate tool for predicting exactly what you seem to saying they can't.

So I think your statement "To say that all the stated laws came into being only AFTER the creation of the universe supposes a unique knowledge of what was prior to the big bang." is not true because they can recreate & explain exactly how they know what they know in the lab when it comes to how our laws of physics came into existence...And they do not need to know what was or was not prior to the Big Bang to explain what they know because they can recreate the conditions right after the big band in a lab..

Maybe you might find these interesting...
Standard Model:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Best0fScience#p/u/21/V0KjXsGRvoA

Here is a several videos that go into detail about this:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Best0fScience#g/search

I hope you find this helpful & interesting...I find this stuff extremely interesting & amazing!

I admire your skepticism but I think in this case scientist know more than what you think they do.

[Raoul]

19. More confusing

So then how were those alleged laws in place prior to the creation of the universe? And, was 'time' in existence as well? If so then I suppose 'Plank' time was erroneous.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AlbertCat]

22. is as irrational and non-intelligent as those of any bible thumper..

Baloney.

This old stupid argument. What does "intelligence behind the universe" mean anyway? There are huge long mathematical proofs and theories that make predictions that later are shown to be true that support the universe without a creator. It's not a guess, like religion or ID (which is religion). It is based on empirical evidence, not faith in some notions stone age men made up. It has no dogma and is not blind.
Laws of physics aren't modified or changed, they are investigated thru the scientific method and then the new findings are incorporated, expanding our knowledge of how things work. This is something dogmatic and blind views about some intelligent creator never do.

[Raoul]

26. Sorry to burst your bubble

But I am very familar with that 'premise' regarding mathematical calculations created by a computer to show that the universe could have just popped into being. I believe that falls under the realm of 'theoretical mathematics' and is just that - theoretical.

Regarding your noting of 'scientific method' - I believe you know as much about the method as any other 'layman'. Science was never intended to prove or disprove an intelligence behind the universe. True science is humble in its quest to find truth in all facets of its realm. It's the worshippers of what we theists call 'scientism' who prostitute the process in their endeaver to disprove something that quite simply cannot be disproven.

Non-theists will ALWAYS come up with a theory or alternate view to explain away what Occam's Razor stresses must be the most logical explanation - the universe had to come into existence from something outside of its non-existence.

Decades ago when I was involved in vigorous and quite formal academic debates with numerous atheists, one of my arguments centered around the Big Bang Theory in which I posited that theory was identical to the very first verse in Genesis. Disclaimer - I never defended anything else in Genesis such as Adam and Eve or the earth being formed in 6 days, etc. But the very first verse, to me, described the Big Bang. Atheists ridiculed me and were as condenscending as many are over here - irrational belief, the need for a god, and all the other clap trap.

Well, since I was very determined in my defense of the Big Bang theory, the atheists attacked once more. Many of them said the Big Bang concept was only a theory - sorta like what you're spouting about the mathematical calculations. When I successfully countered their objections, they came back with other theories of the universe being created. The 'god' they seemed to follow at that time was Fred Hoyle who developed the Steady State theory which was supposed to refute the Big Bang.

Guess what? Around that time of the debates an astronomer by the name of Dr. Smoot published his findings after years of painstaking work which proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt among 'true' scientists, that the Big Bang was the ONLY explanation for our universe coming into being. The book was called 'Ripples in Time'. His findings were so compelling that even Dr. Hoyle threw in the towel and conceded that the Big Bang was the only valid explanation.

I went back onto the atheist boards and demanded, yes demanded because of all the ridicule they hurled at me and other theists, that they concede their error. Did they? Of course not - their universal reply was something like 'Raoul, that doesn't prove anything and besides, Hoyle is wrong' The SAME Hoyle that many of them quoted from prior to his concession.

My point? It should be obvious - talking to an atheist is like me trying to talk to the air. But don't mistake many of us theists for the redneck bible thumpers okay? And drop the condenscending tone - not you as much as others over here who are clueless regarding true scientific investigatory techniques.

[sam sarrha]

4. this is much more reasonable and provable in the laboratory.. >link>>

http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/034544034X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283703291&sr=1-1

"snip....Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Over the centuries, theories have abounded as to why human beings have a seemingly irrational attraction to God and religious experiences. In Why God Won't Go Away authors Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D'Aquili, M.D., and Vince Rause offer a startlingly simple, yet scientifically plausible opinion: humans seek God because our brains are biologically programmed to do so.
Researchers Newberg and D'Aquili used high-tech imaging devices to peer into the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan nuns. As the data and brain photographs flowed in, the researchers began to find solid evidence that the mystical experiences of the subjects "were not the result of some fabrication, or simple wishful thinking, but were associated instead with a series of observable neurological events," explains Newberg. "In other words, mystical experience is biologically, observably, and scientifically real.... Gradually, we shaped a hypothesis that suggests that spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with human biology."....snip"

[greiner3]

7. I believe that the take home understanding;

Of the article was that people who seem to have a biological 'need' for religion usually are the types who need to have an ultimate figure in control. Most cultures regard this as an ultimate being/beings. However, those without that biological need to have an ultimate authority figure are known as freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, etc...

[jerseyjack]

6. O.K. There is too a god.

It is one thing to say, "There is a god." The problems begin with trying to draw conclusions such as, "There is a god and ....."

[greiner3]

8. There is no god;

gods or any being that could be termed one. Although a superior race, somewhere in the universe, could be viewed by humans as gods. But how do pets think of their owners? Certainly they believe that they are magically fed, cared for, petted, walked at the 'right' time, praised and punished when bad and all this is magically given. Is that not the definition of a lot of gods?

[sasquuatch55]

18. WHERE DID GOD COME FROM????

nt

[Raoul]

27. Yawn..

I wish you non-theists would come up with something original. That question was asked decades ago and rebutted in toto. The short and very simple answer is that God would not be God if He had to come from something else. That's why he's God and we're not..
That was a very simple interpretation of Anselm's argument about God and is considered the philosophical response.

Now, a more complex answer falls under the realm of mathematics - specifically the defense of actual infinite sets of mathematical strings. Actual infinites suggest that there was never a beginning to anything. But that concept has been trashed over and over by much more learned persons than I. Some have shown that if they really did exist then our concept of everything - physics, time, etc. are meaningless and unmeasurable.

Pertaining to God, the atheist will exclaim "AHA - but if actual infinites don't exist, how do you explain a being who always existed?" The simple answer is that God resides OUTSIDE of our concept of time, mathematics, physics, et. al. Once more, if He were limited by the laws of science that man has developed, He would no longer be God..

[Trajan]

34. This is where your premise breaks down

If there can be an infinite god, there can be an infinite nature without a god ... If one can choose to believe in an infinite being, then one can certainly choose instead to believe in an infinite universe.

The big bang event may not specifically be a 'creative' event - There is no evidence that 'everything' came from 'nothing' at that one particular instance ...

One can certainly point to evidence that there was a singularity at the BBE - Yet the state or existence of universal components (energy, matter and the physical laws in some form) prior to the BBE is unknown ...

It doesn't have to be a nothingness ... One doesn't have to say the universe was 'created' by the BBE ... One could say the universe was 're-ordered' from primal components existing in a PRE BBE state, which is as of yet unknown to us .... The choice to call it 'creative' is a personal choice ....

I think it is a 'revolutionary' event - a synthesis of the components of a proto-universe ... There is no reason to presume 'nothingness' ever existed, or that an infinite being existed alongside of 'nothingness' ...

Argumentum ad ignorantiam

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

[sasquuatch55]

43. That which dies is born again!

The cycle of the universe.

[sasquuatch55]

42. A copy of someone elses comment.

In the beginning God BECAME the heavens and the earth. There's your God!

[Raoul]

20. Who said that?

Never said anything about a 'god'. Merely stated something about an 'intelligence' behind the creation. Please refrain from psychological projections.

[AlbertCat]

23. Merely stated something about an 'intelligence' behind the creation.

Please refrain from trying to disguise your belief in a god as something else. There is no intelligence behind random quantum fluctuations.

[Raoul]

28. Will do so if

you refrain from pretending to be a psychologist who can look into my motives okay? I refrain from Christian words out of RESPECT and deference to non-theists, okay?

And perhaps there is no intelligence behind random quantum fluctuations since they are merely the result of scientific 'theories' and not necessarily things of the Intelligence behind the universe..

[colorado_ufo]

9. Well, that was boring.

Stephen Hawking is a brilliant man, but even brilliant people - as they continue to learn and think - continue to evolve their ideas and beliefs.

Odds are that Stephen Hawking has not yet reached the end point in his thinking. Stay tuned . . .

[Jack Rabbit]

10. There is nothing new in this argument: A Defense of Religion

Scientists stopped appealing to divine causes for an explanation two hundred years ago. The major philosopher who had the last word on the matter was Kant, who demonstrated convincingly that the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved in The Critique of Pure Reason (1787).

Science is a philosophy which seeks to explain material phenomena in terms of other material phenomena. A theory that appeals to a divine cause cannot be a scientific theory. Consequently, the teaching of creationism is out of place in a science class.

Does this mean that religion is dead? No. Religion grows out of the wonder about the universe, not the desire to promote wars or other narrow political ends. Religion is a striving to connect with a cosmic oneness. I believe in God, but a God who is far too big for one faith and far too big to concern himself with the petty meanderings of human history and civilization. The God in which I believe does not hear the prayers of warmongers from Julius Caesar to Peter the Hermit and Pope Urban II to Osama bin Laden and Dick Cheney.

This kind of religion doesn't need to appeal to science any more than science needs to appeal to religion. In seeking an infinite oneness, we must necessary seek in our fellow human beings not those petty or trivial matters that are used to divide us and make excuses for us to kill each other, but a common humanity in which we embrace each other.

[AlbertCat]

25. Science is a philosophy which seeks to explain material phenomena in terms of other material phenome

No. Science is a method of investigation that involves observation, experimentation and independent verification. The observation involves a hypothesis. Then carefully devised, to minimize pollution and outside influences, experiments are performed to try to prove the hypothesis false. Now you have a theory.... with which you can make predictions. The experiments must then be independently replicated and verified by getting the same results before it is accepted.
That is all science is. A specific way of investigating phenomenon. It has been wildly successful! And religious claims can be scientifically investigated. (Did Mary shoot up to heaven? If so her physical body went somewhere. Where is that place? Do you have a soul? Where is it? How does it affect your physiology? and so on.)

"Religion grows out of the wonder about the universe," No, that's where science comes from. Religion is more about keeping the people in line, like a government. Religion never seeks to explain the wonders of the universe except with guesses about something one can never know. It is useless for knowing anything. Science shows clearly "cosmic oneness". All the laws of physics that govern us here seem to be the same everywhere in the vast and old universe. We are all made of the same stuff that stars are made of.... literally the same stuff. Science delivers on this as religion never does or can. Religion is mainly about the fear of death with rules for getting along with those who share the same guesses.

[Jack Rabbit]

31. Dissenting

To be precise, the scientific method involves observation, experimentation and independent verification. Science is, as I said, a philosophy that seeks to explain material phenomena in terms of other material phenomena. At that it has been, as you say, wildly successful.

The Christian God is a supernatural being and as such, in theory, could impregnate a virgin and cause one to bodily rise to heaven without falling down. I don't believe in supernatural beings, so if you're looking for an argument you'll not find one with me. The God in which I believe is co-extensive with all natural phenomenon, including distant stars in other galaxies. Seeing it as a unity can result from a practice of Zen Buddhist meditation of Sufi mysticism or some similar method. Science can only provide intellectual knowledge, a rather cold thing, about how we are made of the same stuff as the stars, but a religious practice provides the feeling of being a part of it.

Nevertheless, as applies to the God worshiped by the people of the Book (Jews, Christians and Muslims), it is not a material phenomenon and thus must be investigated by some other method than one that works with material phenomena. The same with the concept of a soul. While I do not believe in anything like the Christian God, I will not be so presumptuous as to say that there is proof that such a God does not exist.

Science explains material phenomena and how material things work. Historically speaking, it is a recent intellectual discipline. From the stone ages until the modern era, the principle discipline for explaining how things work was magic. One main difference between science and magic worth mentioning here is the use of symbols. In science, the symbol has only an accidental relationship to the thing for which it stands; in magic, the symbol and the thing for which it stands are intimately related. Stick pins in a doll representing a particular person and, in magical theory, one can bring harm to that person. Blood is red; iron oxide is red; the planet Mars appears in the sky as a red star. Iron is used for making weapons of war, which spill blood. Consequently, magicians, who were the learned men of their time, sought to explain the coming of war with the position of the planet Mars. Magic didn't work nearly as well as science. Nevertheless, magic, for centuries, was what scholars turned to when they wondered about the universe. The sixteenth through early nineteenth centuries were a period of transition. Newton was as much a magician as he was a scientist. Goethe was often thought of as a scientist in his time, but was really the last magician. His interest in alchemy made for some good drama in Faust, but also for a poor theory of optics that was long ago discarded.

The formal institutions of religion supported magic over science because ancient sacred scriptures, such as the Bible, is written in by men with a magical point of view. The Church condemned the teachings of Copernicus, but Luther and Calvin were no more enlightened in this respect. This is unfortunate; in my view, the defenders of the faith were in error. A scientific view of the mechanics of the universe and a religious view of cosmic unity are not inconsistent. A better approach would have been to have opened the historical narratives of scripture to symbolic interpretation and put more emphasis on the more mystical parts of the Bible such as the Psalms, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

The idea that religion is all about "keeping people in line, like government" is absurd. I know a lady who edited underground publications in Poland in the eighties. While she is a lapsed Catholic, she can appreciate how the Church was a spearhead of anti-government subversion at the time. Under those circumstances, the Church was not keeping people in line, it was actively getting them out of line. Need I remind you also that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King were deeply religious men? The religious convictions of both men led to mass movements of social upheaval that respectively brought down the British Empire and ended formal racial injustice in the Southern United States. Their followers were hardly in line with the established order.

[Raoul]

29. The error with your

comment has to do with the word 'religion' where the word 'spirituality' ought to be applied. Religion kills. Sprituality gives life.

[Jack Rabbit]

33. I am not distinguishing religion and spirituality

Religion kills. Spirituality gives life.

That seems like a matter of semantics. There is nothing more to that applying the word spirituality to the positive aspects of religion while using religion for its dark side.

If one fills out a questionnaire for an online dating service, one has the option of checking something like "spiritual but not religious." To me, that means that one has something of a religious outlook without observing the tenants of any orthodox organized religion.

[awoke_in_2003]

37. "Religion kills. Sprituality gives life."

Tomato, tomahto- both are nothing but supernatural bullshit.

[ooglymoogly]

12. self delete

[Tutankhamun]

13. That Stephen Hawking is lucky he's American.

If he were English, he would be dead from "socialized" medicine.

:sarcasm:

P.S. Hooray for Gawd!

[azmesa207]

15. People

int the US are to stupid to understand Hawking's theory it much easy-er to believe in a invisible Cloud Being

[Althaia]

16. For those curious about the physics involved

a lecture explaining it for laypeople, by Lawrence Krauss.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

[Jack Rabbit]

21. Thank you for posting

The idea of a universe being created ex niliho, either "by itself" or by an intelligent designer, is disposed of be eliminating the concept of "nothing". Nothing is something.

Since matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, and nothing is something, that pretty well takes care of the concept of a creator or a "creation".

This could have implications for modes of thoughts that hold to a beginning (as in In the beginning), but it doesn't prove there is no God.

[Althaia]

24. the burden of proof is not on atheists to disprove god's existence.

It is impossible to prove a negative.

The burden of proof is on those who believe in god, to prove that god exists.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Negative_proof

[Jack Rabbit]

32. There is nothing to prove or disprove; there is nothing to argue

One of the postulates of the theory of relativity is that the existence of ether can neither be proved nor disproved. Einstein advanced this postulate in order to free himself from having to account for the effects of ether after the Michelson-Morely experiment couldn't detect any effect ether had on the speed of light. After that, scientists ceased to discuss ether altogether.

The existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved. Scientists needn't discuss God in a scientific theory, and they don't.

The existence of God is not a matter for science. Let the theologians argue about it.

[Raoul]

30. Yes, totally agree!

The scientific findings I cited by the astronomer Smoot stated that prior to the universe's explosion, all matter and energy were in a microscopic dot - I forget what the actual measurments were. Then 'something' caused the microscopic matter to explode and expand into the beginnings of our universe.

Now, this begs the question - what caused it to explode? Why did it explode? And, most importantly, why did it explode at the EXACT time that it did? Other scientific findings have shown that had the universe come into being a fraction of a nano second BEFORE or AFTER it actually did, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation right now since we and everyone else would not exist.

[sulphurdunn]

17. In the beginning...

God became the heavens and the earth.

[awoke_in_2003]

38. and jesus walked on water...

and fed 5000 with a couple of fish and a loaf of bread :crazy:

[sulphurdunn]

39. Please read the first verse in Genesis.

I don't know if he did or not, but I do find all forms of smug absolutism, whether sacred or profane, amusing. :dunce:

[awoke_in_2003]

40. I have read it...

It was written by men who thought the world was flat and the center of the universe- pretty hard to take that type seriously. Glad I could amuse you.

[sulphurdunn]

41. I apologize, but I was trying to make a point.

Please consider the difference between "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and "In the beginning God became the heavens and the earth." Or, to quote Carl Sagan, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."

[leftjohn]

35. Hawkins gave us nothing

Doesn’t basic physics tell us that there is no self sustaining system? There has to be some outside source of energy or eventually the system burns itself out.

If the universe is viewed as a system, it had to have a beginning. It cannot be eternal, yet there has to be something above and beyond that is eternal.

People don’t want there to be a God because they don't want to answer to a God, so they make up stuff to explain how something can begin without something to begin it.

In my opinion, Hawkins advanced the discuss NONE. We are still left saying the universe is eternal which breaks the laws of physics. Or, you admit there must have been a starting point and a beginning implies there had to be something (God or whatever you choose to call it) to begin it.

Again, the universe is eternal (breaking laws of physics), or there is something above and beyond it that created it.

Common sense goes a long way, why do smart people ignore it.

[Supply Side Jesus]

36. God or no God, all I know is...

Those books behind the speaker definitely adds to his creditability....