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.'"

Comments

Hardly news

[jawtheshark]

He wrote that anecdote himself in "A Brief History of Time". So, this *really* is old news.

Re:Hardly news

[Tx]

You got there before me. Well, Hawking once believed that time would reverse when the universe started contracting towards the big crunch, so this would have been news on the way back down the timeline ;).

Re:Hardly news

[dr_dank]

Agreed The real news is that the Inquisition finally caught up with Galileo. I'll submit the story right away!

Re:Hardly news

[jawtheshark]

Ah, that is why lots of drops of coffee from my computer screen just magically jumped in my mouth! ;-)

Flawed Logic

[mfh]

If you love God, why not read up on his work?

Re:Flawed Logic

[Kiaser Zohsay]

As far as they're concerned, they're using their God given brain to study how God does His thing.

A biology professor I once met was fond of saying that if you study biology in long enough, you will find not only that God exists, but He has a sense of humor.

Re:Flawed Logic

[larkost]

You don't have to study very much, just have a good long look at your own reproductive organs. After all, as the joke goes: "God must be a civil engineer, who else but a civil engineer would put a waste water outlet through a recreational facility?".

Re:Flawed Logic

['nother poster]

The problem is he built the recreational facility on the existing waste water plants property, so it sounds like he's a speculation developer rather than an engineer. "Hell, this place will be so much fun they will come no matter how bad it smells."

Re:Flawed Logic

[kpesler]

I believe that many are missing a critical point in this discussion. The universe, by definition, encompasses all events which are causally connected, and therefore observable, at least in theory. As such, studying the universe falls within the realm of science. Discussion about what preceded the universe is, by definition, a discussion about things that cannot, even in principle, be observationally confirmed or refuted. As such, it is not science, but speculation. If you want to make such speculations, go ahead, but it shouldn't be passed off as science. I believe the Pope's comments were not intended to curtail legitimate science, but philosophy disguised as science.

Re:Flawed Logic

[Artifakt]

Precisely - Reading the whole of John Paul 2's own comments and even a few of the other things he wrote to scientists shows that he was well aware of what Hawking and others were claiming and why it wasn't science. Hawking is one of a number of Cosmologists that have started from the assumption that many fundamental variables must be randomly selected, and from that assumption, an untestable (and therefore non-scientific) prediction commonly follows, mascarading as science. Hawking's made it, Sagan's made it (although he at least qualified (in Cosmos) that it was speculative), Guth's made it, and half the people pushing String theory or various Brane theories have made it, while the other half have been tweaking their theories to avoid explicitly making it.
        This is the prediction that an infinite number of 'parellel' universes must exist. Note that the scientists, unlike SF authors, are careful to say these are likely to be forever unobservable. I'd argue that the prediction that the fundamental constants nust be random is itself unscientific, but why bother, when there is such a common tenedency in the scientists that start from that premise to jump to the consequent and proclaim infinite parellels.
          Now I don't personally believe in the whole heirarchial structure of angelic beings postulated by some parts of the Roman Catholc church, with Powers, Seraphim, and Thrones, etc. - but even a claim involving a detailed listing of what every single one of fiftyfive billion angels did every moment of creation would be simpler than a theory that predicts an infinite number of unobservable phenomina, by Occam's Razor. A theory that blames the universe on a conspiracy between Olive (Santa's other reindeer), and Sagan's Invisible Garage Dwelling Dragon is still more scientific than one that makes an infinite number of untestable predictions. It at least has the virtue of testability.
            For more on this, /.'ers might want to read "The Infinte Book", by John D. Barrow, FRS and professor of Math at Cambridge. He has some great arguements about just what must inevitably exist if the universe (or multiverse if you prefer) is truely infinite in either time or space, and these show just how most of the Cosmology speculation is rooted in niave models of infinity similar to an uneducated layman's, and not real math. Without real math behind it, it ain't science.

Next up...

[evileyetmc]

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

[Kamineko]

The Inquisition can't come for Hawking now: he's expecting it!

Re:The Inquisition

[91degrees]

Ah, but he knows they can't come, becasue they're expected so they're unexpected. Which means they can come. Except Hawking obviouslyt expects them to know they're expected and therefore unexpected, so he should probably expect this.

From TFA:

[blackbeaktux]

[FROM TFA]...he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."

The Vatican was unavailable for comment.

During the meeting

[Billosaur]

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...

Re:If studying the work of God isn't allowed....

[lbrandy]

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.

Re:Nevertheless, it inflates

[Jboost]

Well, Pope Pius XII approved of the Big Bang theory in 1951 and Pope John Paul II said "that it is acceptable for Catholics to believe and teach evolutionism."

The Vatican also has some fine astronomers (and one of the oldest astronomical research institutions).
http://vaticanobservatory.org/

The Vatican isn't as backwards as those fundamental christian creationists that take everything the bible says literally.

Re:The Pope

[haluness]

Religion explains who and why.

Just to nitpick (since I have nothing else to do right now) but religion states who and why, rather than explains

I seriously doubt he said it

[Creedo]

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?

swen yldraH:eR

[Hoi Polloi]

!gnineppah si ti ,on hO

reminds me of another story...

[Marsmensch]

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.

Not Merely Flawed Logic

[camperdave]

The Pope is not merely using flawed logic, the bible commands us to consider the work of his (God's) hands.

• 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.

In a sense both are right

[Moraelin]

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.