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Pope Advised Hawking Not to Study Origin of Universe
BlueCup submits a link to an Associated Press article running in the Northwest Florida Daily News which begins "Famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God. The British author, who wrote the best-seller 'A Brief History of Time,' said that the pope made the comments at a cosmology conference at the Vatican."
According to the article, "The scientist then joked during a lecture in Hong Kong, 'I was glad he didn't realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo.'"
He wrote that anecdote himself in "A Brief History of Time". So, this *really* is old news.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If you love God, why not read up on his work?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Pope Palpatine will advocate not studying conception...since it is an act of God. Great. Guess my girlfriend won't be putting out.
The Inquisition can't come for Hawking now: he's expecting it!
[FROM TFA]...he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."
The Vatican was unavailable for comment.
Church versus Science. Not exactly a new story.
But, I'm surprised to hear the Pope said this. I'd thought the Catholic church was relatively progressive in terms of creationism. A few hundred years ago, it might have made a difference what they thought.
These days, this kind of comment makes the church look archaic rather than actually discouraging scientists. At least in Europe.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Pope, speaking in bad Italian accent: Yeah, you see, it's like this Mr. Hawking... the beginning of everything... that's God's work... he wouldn't be too pleased if you found out too much about what he did... he's very private that way... he tends to get upset easily... and we wouldn't want anything to say, happen to you... you wouldn't want to end up in a wheelchair or nothin'... oh wait...
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It's turtles all the way down.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The Pope doesn't represent all of Chistianity or religion for that matter. Hawkings should study and theorize the origin of the universe as much as he wants. He probably will never determine if a higher being actually flipped the switch that made it happen, though. Science explains how, what, where, and when. Religion explains who and why.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Funny how they only do this with the sciences that threaten their beliefs.
Huh? What? Threatens their beliefs? The Big Bang? Are you reading the same theory I am? The Big Bang is litterally a religious persons DREAM scientific theory. They couldn't have written it any better themselves. Not only is it the perfect theory explaining the moment of creation, but it also predicts that not only does everything happen, all of creation, in a single moment, at a single point, but it even predicts that our laws and rules and science cannot touch anything that happened before it. It, literally, points to a single moment/point and says the entire universe came from this point, at this time, and we can never hope to know what happened before that.
If that's not "biblical" in it's details, then nothing is.
That's my thought. Why shouldn't we study everything so we can bask in the full glory of God's work?
of course with knowledge comes the fact that most religions are just social engineering scams designed to control the population and make people feel better about themselves at the expense of others^H^H non-believers.
Oh well I have my beliefs and I don't care if no one else believes what I do. A good life involves giving to others, for in the end only kindness matters.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If you look at all of the other statements that JPII made regarding science and faith, this would immediately strike you as out of character. Add that to the fact that I've never seen someone actually produce proof that he ever said it, like a transcription or something. So, I think Hawking either misquoted, misunderstood(given JPII's accent, understandable) or made up the quote. After all, it makes a good joke, right?
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Just think about what a pathetic concept of divinity that is: a supposedly almighty God who dislikes it when his creation looks at his works. That's in addition to all the smighting, shame, pain, and torture that Catholicism says God inflicts on the world.
I'm agnostic about whether there is some higher power. But a world created and ruled by the kind of schizophrenic and conflicted being that the Catholic church postulates makes no sense to me, and my faith tells me that they are wrong; no omnipotent being could sensibly be as petty and hateful towards mankind as the Catholic church claims God is.
I was raised Baptist but am not religious these days. Many many scientists have a deep spirituality or faith and feel that science just gets you closer to the creation. I've never had a problem with science versus faith: to put it into religious terms, I presume that science is our attempt at explaining "how," and spirituality is our attempt at explaining "why." There's no disconnect here.
The bible doesn't explain how the universe was created, and explicitly says that God's timeline is nothing like man's timeline, so there's no point in parsing "six days" as meaning anything in particular to us. If I feel like parsing it at all, I'd say the seventh day of rest aligns quite nicely with the future era of calmness mentioned in Revelations, so maybe we're still in the sixth day as far as God is concerned. I've subsequently heard some Israeli theologians have put forth the same conjecture. But I don't parse the bible that much, as I already figured out what I want to figure out with regards to my own spirituality: do less harm than good, and the world will be alright.
Major organized religions (aka, Church Inc.) just don't want any explaining of either, as it impacts the bottom line. Come in, drop off your tithe, pat a homeless man on the head, and go watch your kids' soccer game. Questions come pretty close to questioning authority, and they like being the unquestioned authority. I mean, really, condoms in Africa...
[
"Galileo got in trouble for saying that the earth moves... in a book that irreverently satirized the current pope."
/. So Galileo proceeds to publish a book in which he thoroughly flames the Pope, and puts the Pope's words, in some cases distorted or taken out of context, in the mouth of a character whose name is just one letter away from "Stupid"... and is pronounced almost the same as "Stupid." In effect it's the kinda flamebait post that goes on and on about how the opponent is just too stupid to understand, only in print.
Read again the part after the "..." and there you have the real problem.
AFAIK, Galileo had had a pretty civilized talk with the Pope, and while the Pope wasn't convinced by Galileo's argumentation, he let Galileo go.
Before you blame the Pope of being too fanatical to accept science, remember that it wasn't just faith, but they did have their own explanations (derived from Aristotles) about how the world works. It may have been wrong in retrospect, but as far as any wise man at the time was concerned, they already had a science of sorts. Something that comes and turns the whole cosmic model on its head, damn better be convincing, and at any rate the Pope wasn't convinced. And remember that the Pope had been willing to hear Galileo's arguments, which doesn't strike me as too closed-minded.
Unfortunately, Galileo seems to have had the same kind of personality one can see often on
Now also bear in mind that the Pope at the time was debatably the biggest political figure. A king above kings, if you will. They weren't big on democracy and freedom of speech back then...
And Galileo goes and flames him in public and calls him stupid...
I don't know, seems to me like science-vs-religion had _nothing_ to do with what happened from there. You get in a public pissing contest with the dictator of the realm, you get roughed up in return. It's that simple.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
!gnineppah si ti ,on hO
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I heard this same anecdote from Hawking himself when he visited Chile a few years ago.
I'm reminded of a story Carl Sagan used to tell. He once asked the pope (John Paul II, of course) what he would do if some scientific discovery proved once and for all and irrefutably that the precepts of Christianity were false. The pope lectured him for a few minutes about how this wasn't possible.
Sagan once asked the Dalai Lama the exact same thing. The Lama's answer?
"I would tell the world, of course! There are millions of buddhists in the world and if I find out their all wrong, I should tell them as soon as possible, and we should look for a better way to live then.
Very different mindset.
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- Genesis 15:5
He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars..."
- Psalm 143:5
I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.*
- Psalm 92:4
For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands*
- Proverbs 6:6
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
- Luke 12:24
Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!
*Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
In a sense, JPII is actually right there: it's impossible for science to prove anything about an entity outside the observable universe.
Let me use WoW as an example. Let's say the observable universe is WoW. Even the wisest scholar living _in_ the WoW universe, even with the best gnomish instruments, can only observe and measure things that are _inside_ this universe.
What it _can't_ observe is the universe's creator: Blizzard.
Can such a scholar prove, with only the data in his universe, that Blizzard doesn't exist? No. He just doesn't have the data on which to base such a proof. The best his science can do is state that the universe can be explained well enough without this mystical "Blizzard" entity at the helm.
Same is it with RL science and God. Science _can't_ prove that God doesn't exist. All science can do is explain the universe well enough without needing some "God" entity. But that's all.
No, seriously, I know that we all love to troll and bait the christians. But put your thinking cap for a second and you'll realize the same: if a "creator" exists _outside_ the universe he created (just like Blizzard exists outside the WoW universe), science can't prove or disprove this creator in any form or shape. It just can't get any data from there. At all. Ever.
Not to mention that it's not even possible to prove a negative like that. As long as science can't know every single atom in the universe, _and_ go back in time and observe what happened at every single moment since Big Bang, you simply can't have enough proof that something _doesn't_ exist even _inside_ your universe. It's like proposing to prove that a green three-legged rabbit doesn't exist and never existed. You only need one specimen to prove that it does exist, but it's simply unfeasible to prove that nowhere in the universe such a creature ever existed.
The best science can do is apply Occam's Razor. Basically to say "well, we can explain the universe perfectly well even without some 'God' hypothesis, so we don't need such a hypothesis." But that's all.
Plus, some of the precepts of Christianity are pretty much notions, ideals or moral judgments. How do you scientifically disprove "love thy neighbour"? How would you scientifically disprove "thou shalt not kill"? No, seriously. They're moral precepts that reflect a certain set of values, not something you can run through a spectrograph or whatever other instrument.
So basically, yes, JPII was right: it's not even possible. So while it makes for some good christian-bashing material to compare the answers there, in practice it's about as relevant as asking "what would you do if gravity just suddenly disappeared?" It seems to me like "it's not even possible" is a perfectly valid answer there. Sure, it's not the most interesting or imaginative kind of an answer, but nevertheless it is a valid one.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"First you crawl back up into your mother then are sucked out of there by your dad. Wonderfull. I hope they have shrinks in the pre-life."
What about Santa Claus? What a bastard! He's just a big fat git who sneaks down chimneys and steals all the kids' favorite toys!
"Derp de derp."
"...then are sucked out of there by your dad."
If this image bothers you then I strongly suggest that you never play a porn movie backwards. It is very disturbing to see semen fly out of a woman's mouth into a guy's penis.